The take: We should be heroes
Hollywood’s elite women are demanding an allfemale superhero film. And it’s long overdue, argues film writer Helen O’hara
last week’s thor: ragnarok gave us yet another superhero blockbuster starring yet another handsome blond guy called Chris. The film is immense fun, but isn’t it time for a different sort of star? Chris Hemsworth’s co-star Tessa Thompson – who plays the drunken, deadly Valkyrie – thinks so. Along with her fellow Marvel actresses Scarlett Johansson and Elizabeth Olsen, Tessa has been pressing studio boss Kevin Feige to make an all-girl superhero film. The boys have had 17 Marvel films now – with women confined to supporting roles – and the ladies want their turn.
‘I walked up to Kevin Feige with Black Widow (Scarlett) and Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth) [to make the case],’ Tessa said. ‘Brie Larson is now in the Marvel universe. I mean, Angela Bassett is. I want a movie, like, it’s everybody.’
It’s an exciting notion, but on current plans, we won’t even meet Brie’s heroine until next year in Avengers: Infinity War, and she won’t go solo until 2019’s Captain Marvel, the 19th Marvel film and the first with a female lead. Angela, meanwhile, plays the hero’s stepmother in 2018’s Black Panther, where great actresses such as Lupita Nyong’o and Danai Gurira also appear. It’s good that Marvel’s supporting roles are meaty enough to attract such a high calibre of talent, but why not let the ladies take the lead? Scarlett’s Black Widow is hugely popular, yet, unlike the four principal male Avengers, she’s never had her own film. Behind the scenes, insiders say that both Scarlett and Brie have privately lobbied for an all-female outing. Wonder Woman, from rival comic book universe DC, showed that a female superhero can lead a compelling, inspiring story, so there’s no excuse for the more established comic-book universe not trying the same thing. If Marvel can make a successful film about a space racoon and a walking tree, why not a woman?
You may say that superhero films don’t really matter; perhaps they’re not your thing. If so, you’re in good company: Emma Thompson claimed that, ‘If I see yet another Spider-man [film], I’m going to actually hang myself ’ (thankfully, she’s still here so she must have skipped Spider-man: Homecoming). But where the men in tights lead, Hollywood follows. A quarter of the 20 highest grossing films ever are superhero films (the rest are sci-fi, fantasy and… Titanic). They have launched careers, saved studios and shaped Hollywood’s priorities. The film industry is increasingly polarised between these mega-budget genre movies and no-budget indie experiments, and you don’t want to be permanently stuck in the latter category.
Look at the numbers. Superhero movies cost $150m or more to make, and even advertising can total up to $300m globally. Studios keep roughly 50% of the boxoffice, so they need these movies to make more than $600m worldwide to turn a profit in cinemas. To put that into context, a really successful romantic comedy that stays top of the box office for weeks might hope to make $200m worldwide, with an advertising campaign that is not much cheaper than for the men in capes. And that’s just a piece of the money puzzle: superhero movies and all the other geeky blockbusters earn money on toys, books, clothing and the usual DVD/TV deals that dwarf every other genre going. It’s no wonder that traditional rom-coms with big, expensive stars have largely vanished: they might not even break even until they reach home entertainment release.
Without rom-coms or dramas making a splash in cinemas, how can a promising indie starlet become a confirmed A-lister? There’s no modern equivalent to Pretty Woman or The Pelican Brief, so where do we get the next Julia Roberts? For men, the way from obscurity to leading-man status involves superhero tights: look at Michael Fassbender, Chris Pratt and Hemsworth. The ladies just want the same opportunity to cement their box-office appeal – which is why every Best Actress Oscar winner since 2010 (except Meryl Streep… so far) has appeared in a comic-book film, albeit usually in a diminished role.
But it’s not just about the stars. These films define the world for all of us. Forty years ago, Star Wars shaped the taste of every filmmaker working today and, through them, all the stories we are told. Today, kids are watching superhero movies – and every kid deserves to see themselves as the hero, not just blond boys called Chris. Ask your nearest eight-year-old girl how it felt to watch Wonder Woman and you’ll see the importance of representation in big films – the shared feeling of empowerment and inspiration that it gives. A generation that grows up seeing women as heroes will be a generation that is less sexist and more equal.
So we need not just female superheroes, but good ones, too. As actress Jessica Chastain puts it, ‘If you look at Elektra and Aeon Flux, the problem is that they try to make kickass women very sexualised. But if you look at the most incredible female roles, such as Ripley in Alien, what’s sexy about her is how capable she is. If the female character isn’t as interesting as the male character, I’m not interested.’
Marvel, to their credit, have given us loads of interesting female characters. But Wonder Woman showed that there is more to be done, that women can lead a successful superhero film and look good doing it. Tessa, Brie and Scarlett are right: we need superwomen, too. Helen O’hara is Empire’s editor-at-large