Female-fronted superhero movies to come
FEMALE-LED superhero movies are not new – remember Elektra (2005) and Catwoman (2004)? When both films flopped, it chilled Hollywood’s enthusiasm for the genre.
Actress Brie Larson’s Captain
Marvel is a milestone because it is the first character in the hugely successful Marvel Cinematic Universe to lead a film, solo.
Wonder Woman (2017), featuring Gal Gadot in the lead, showed Hollywood that superhero fans have nothing against women; they just do not like bad movies, which Catwoman and Elektra were.
With the commercial success of
Captain Marvel, it will further open the door for more science-fiction and fantasy films in which women are not sidekicks, love interests, or whose deaths are the reason men leave home to find their destiny.
X-Men: Dark Phoenix
Coming in June this year, this movie’s title figure is Jean Grey, a mutant whose extrasensory powers are hugely enhanced after an incident in space. Sophie Turner from the HBO series Game Of
Thrones (2011 to present) will play Jean and she will be joined by familiar faces James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender and Jennifer Lawrence, all reprising their roles as members of the X-Men.
Wonder Woman 1984
Due next year (2020), this is the sequel to the 2017 origin story. Gadot returns to play the part of the Amazonian royal who lives as Diana Prince. The story will take place in the year of the title and is the second part of a trilogy that will end with a movie set in the present day.
Birds Of Prey
Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn character was perhaps the best thing in the otherwise mediocre DC Comics movie Suicide Squad
(2016) and studio executives have taken notice. She will be joined by other DC women heroes, among them Black Canary (Jurnee Smollet-Bell) and Huntress (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), to form the crime-fighting team of the title. If all goes well, this film is due out next year (2020).
X-23
One of the best things in Logan (2017), the Wolverine swan song movie, was the girl played by Dafne Keen who turned out to be less helpless than she at first appeared. Laura, also known as X-23, might have her sharp claws and healing ability make a return if Logan director James Mangold has his way. In interviews, Mangold said that the success of Wonder Woman has inspired more studio confidence in an X-23 spin-off. – The Straits Times/Asia News Network