SSC Film Studies

Representation of women in superhero films

Throughout the history of film when have seen a lot of superhero films and the majority of them have had men star as the main role, Henry Cavill's Superman, Christian Bale's Batman and Ryan Reynolds Green Lantern.

Three big superheroes and they where 9 times out of 10 men back in the day women where very weak and where most of the time and the damsel in distress and the reward for the superhero. 

"she did not have to seduce men in order to fight them or to win a fight, and there wasn’t a barrage of cheesy, sexy remarks." "Genderly Speaking"

This quote form the website genderly speaking shows that women are starting to get stronger in films and the world grows more mature and understand that women are just as strong as men today. I mean there are so many examples of women that are in the same situation for example the x-men franchise we Rouge, Storm, Jean Gray, Mariko, Yukio, Viper I could go on and on. But the fact I am trying to point out is that women are starting to get more prominent roles in superhero films and that they are starting to actually become big characters in their own right. In the last couple of months there has been a Wonder woman movie and Black widow movie announced with wonder woman being Gal Gabot and Black Widow set to be Scarlett Johnasson. I think this shows that not all films use sexuality to make women strong but their personality alone can do it for themselves.

There were no “wow” remarks when she did a good job, or glances between the male characters of shock and awe. "Genderly Speaking"

This quote is about Black Widow in Captain America 2 but this quote also represents a lot of women superhero's nowadays for example Hit-Girl in kick-ass and Kick-ass 2. In Kick-ass 2 Hit-Girl is mostly the main character getting more screen time than Kick-ass and generally being stronger than Kick-ass  saving Kick-ass in both Kick-ass 1 and 2 plenty of times throughout each film.