Feminism: The Discussion

The fact that this is an article that even needs to be written saddens me greatly, but it must. Last weekend, two action films were released, the R rater Lucy featuring the definitely female Scarlett Johansson and the PG-13 rated Hercules, starring the definitely male Dwayne Johnson. These are two fairly similar movies, not thematically but in terms of marketing and quality. Both films were marketed on the strengths of their stars, and both have similar metascores. Dwayne Johnson is an undeniably charismatic actor, this year i proclaimed him to be the only true action hero left, and he was the highest grossing actor of 2013. What was surprising to industry insiders was that Lucy won, it grossed more than Hercules despite having a female lead and being rated R.

For years filmmakers have been reticent about making high budget films with female leads. Despite the fact that women make up 52% of the population and, like men, do go and see films, and despite the fact that men also like going to see films with female leads. The figures speak for themselves, Lucy made $44 million at the box office, and was evenly split between men and women. 2013 was also a remarkable year for women in film. For the first time since 1973, the highest grossing film at the US domestic box-office had a lead female character, the film was Catching Fire, starring Jennifer Lawrence. The highest grossing film worldwide was Frozen, an animated adaptation of The Snow Queen featuring not one but two leading female characters, and finally of the films nominated for the best picture Oscar, the highest grossing nominee was Gravity, which was not only a film with a lead female character, but a film with only a female character, in addition, the highest grossing comedy of the year was The Heat, a film, again, featuring two female leads. It seems that people don't mind seeing films starring women, who knew?

Studio executives are notorious cowards, we live in a world where there are plenty of fantastic films, but where most of them are low budget independent films, for instance of the Best Picture nominees, only gravity was a studio financed film, the others were independent's, only distributed by major studio's. The problem is that studio's will only release a film if it can be turned into a franchise, or merchandised, thus many high budget action films featuring women simply never see the light of day. The problem is that studio's, which do so much research and polling, fail to understand and struggle with change. Hollywood is a world, where when something works we just keep doing the same thing, the problem is that films with male leads make money, and so there is no impetus for studios to place women above the marquee.

The biggest problem with the film industry is that it doesn't show any sign of changing, the world is round, women make up half of the western worlds population, and like men, women also like to go and see movies. It is time for studios to wake up and realize that female driven films can be successful, that women are just as funny as men, and that men are not repulsed by the idea of going to see a film with a female lead. Films with women at the helm are some of the most successful films released today, and studio executives must start to realize that.