Girl power looming large on big screen
Female superheroes increasingly flex their muscles
— Batman. SpiderMan. Iron Man. Ant-Man.
The list of male superheroes starring in their own big-screen escapades is bigger than Tony Stark’s ego, and the billions of dollars these films have generated rival the fortunes of the well-off tinkerer. However, in spite of Hollywood’s continued fascination with supermen, a new surge of female power could finally electrify the genre and more closely resemble the audiences of comic book adaptations.
That’s the apparent take-away from Marvel Studios’ Ant-Man. The film concludes with — spoiler alert — Evangeline Lilly’s character, Hope Van Dyne, being bestowed with her late mother’s prototype superhero suit and alter ego. When she spots the ensemble, she informs her inventor father, “It’s about damn time.”
It likely is, considering 42 per cent of Ant-Man ticket buyers on opening weekend were women.
“It was always intentional to end the movie that way with Hope saying she’s going to be suited up in future adventures,” said Kevin Feige, president of Marvel Studios. “Over the year since we shot that, it’s taken on a greater meaning out there in the fan community. It’s more relevant now than it’s ever been.”
Over the past seven years of interconnected Marvel superhero movies, female characters who are not code-named Black Widow have mostly been relegated to the sidelines as love interests, sidekicks, damsels in distress or all of the above, making Hope’s parting words resonate beyond the screen for viewers long dissatisfied with the lack of female superheroes in movies, despite their decades-long histories in comics.
Scarlett Johansson’s shadowy agent Black Widow, is no longer the sole Marvel movie heroine following the introduction of Zoe Saldana’s alien assassin Gamora, in last year’s Guardians of the Galaxy, Elizabeth Olsen’s mind-bending Scarlet Witch, earlier this year in Avengers: Age of Ultron and Lilly’s winged Wasp at the end of Ant-Man.
“Their intentions are in the right place,” Lilly said. “They just have to get there. They’re breaking new ground. I’m really honoured and excited to be part of that, to be one of the pioneering women within the superhero realm, to represent strong women and put more of a female presence into these movies.”
Andrea Letamendi, a psychologist and comic book expert, was disappointed the filmmakers stopped short of having Lilly’s character actually don the Wasp’s get-up and help save the day alongside Ant-Man.
“When women don’t see ourselves represented in an important role, for instance as a superhero, we begin to question our value in society,” said Letamendi. “It’s surprising that we’re still considering that, but it’s very true. The clinical term for it is symbolic annihilation, and it has a damaging effect, especially on younger audiences.”
Financially, solely focusing on female superheroes has never boosted the bottom line for movie studios. Supergirl, Elektra and Catwoman each failed to dazzle audiences or critics, but that was more than a decade ago before the current superhero boom.
Since then, the young-adult, female-led adaptations of The Hunger Games and Divergent series rocketed to the top of the box office.
Regardless of the recent boost of womankind in Marvel’s superhero movie lineup and among theatregoers, the Disney-owned studio isn’t planning to release a film centred on a singular female superhero until 2018’s Captain Marvel.
Warner Bros. will beat Marvel to the punch a year earlier with a Wonder Woman film in 2017 starring Gal Gadot. She’ll first pop up as the DC Comics character in next year’s Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. The demigod will later join several male superheroes for a two-part Justice League film series.