Asklemmy

One of the ways i select a movie or series is by watching the poster. That tells me enough about whether it will be about male heroes and (maybe) female sidekicks or mothers in the kitchen. Particularly american ones have a lot of those movies. So, these i will not even try to watch anymore.

I'll preface with I'll agree that for the most part, it's men being whiny about "woke" and other nonsense. They're assholes. I really don't have anything to add to that front.

So I'll add a perspective of the small other crowd in situations friends of mine and I have found ourselves in, that having criticisms of women led stories gets us lumped in with the above group when the same criticism of a male led roles/stories are fine and dandy. And we're not exactly a group that hates women led stories despite our love of scifi action. Sarah Conner, Ripley, Jesse Faden if anyone has played the game Control.

Some of it I get as a female led cast movie/show will get hate before the first previews even launch so legitimate discussions can happen. However, I can go on absolute rants about how terrible movies can be: Tom Cruise remaking The Mummy was, attempting to do Hellboy without Ron Perlman and Guillermo Del Toro, whatever the Conan the Barbarian attempt Jason Mamoa had, and no one bats an eye. (Lets be honest, those were all terrible movies) However I've been called a misogynist when I talk about in the list with those above ones how absolutely terrible the all women cast remake of Ghostbusters was. Again, I knew there was a lot of undue hate, but if I ever discuss it, I've had to outright asterisk it every time that none of my complaints were to the actresses themselves but the movie from worldbuilding to some of the concept of it being made itself (As in: It's Ghostbusters, an IP that's been around for decades, did we need to dedicate screentime to remaking it from scratch? A complaint I'll have at every reboot of a popular IP.)

And there's legitimacy to the why. As you point out, there's very few women led movies/stories which (I assume) means that with some representation there's the want to nicer to it, especially as there are people who are outright assholes about it. Vs Another White Guy Does Things is easy to deride a movie because... speaking as a white guy, I'm going to be there mocking that movie too. But that's why I put the "(I assume)" earlier, because it's not like I'm lacking in some form of representation, so it's easy to mock it.

I will wrap up this though with again, it's a small extra outside perspective for a different viewpoint. If people just complain "There are too many women in x", no, they've stopped having legitimate complaints and are just being jackasses.

Some people see themselves as the default, and any change is abnormal or pandering. Same thing happens in video games. Anything that brings attention to the idea that they aren't the default audience is seen as a an offense. They assume these stories are an attack, an expensive way for people to say their way of doing things is wrong and therefore they are wrong, so they get defensive. In reality, it just someone else telling a story for another audience.

To them, the argument is, "why add more poc/genders if we're all the same? Are you saying something is wrong with people like me so they have to be gotten rid of? How come it's always me that's getting removed? Why am I under attack!" They see the addition as the erasure of some, like, Schrodinger's self-insert that would have been there if they didn't have to force a" woke" choice.

I’m male, I’ve never complained about this. I think it’s not good to generalize everyone

Can’t help but feel like you’re mansplaining how women are underrepresented and that your favorite female led shows and movies should be more appreciated and men are cancers.

It really is very simple. Well written shows and movies do well. Good actors/actresses make a well written movie better. It doesn’t matter if it’s men and women. I’m no expert but the majority of female led movies are poorly written and the actresses act bad but that may be because of the writing. That also doesn’t mean there aren’t good female movies that do well.

Where much of this marketing goes wrong is the studios try to take something that’s male led and change it to be female led. That will obviously not go well for an audience that preferred the male led material.

Maybe it's not being female led that's the problem, it's Mary Sue's that I think people are tired of.

The following is a representation of conservative thought:

Because it defies belief! Everyone knows any real superhero team would have NO women, women couldn't be superheroes! Movies only force us to have women there because of Woke. We can "tolerate" (will still complain about but will give Hollywood our dollars anyway) a 5/6 men/women ratio. If we gotta pretend to be Woke, it better not be more than five sixths!

Source: I was raised in a conservative household and did not fully reject that poison until I was 27.

so much was comics at the start I was wondering if it was more a comics thing. I know I don't like when they change the characters in most cases (green lanterns being a job makes it easy to change it up). But then it went into other genres. is this really a widespread complaint. I have just not been watching much modern stuff really so maybe Im missing the drama.