He's right and wrong though. Multiple popular genres with women are based on submission while still giving the female characters agency. Jane Austin novels, Romance novels et all, even stuff like Twilight or 50 Shades of Grey. You can still have power while being stuck in a traditionally feminine or submissive plot.Q99 wrote:"Not even girls want to be girls so long as our feminine archetype lacks force, strength, and power. Not wanting to be girls, they don't want to be tender, submissive, peace-loving as good women are. Women's strong qualities have become despised because of their weakness. The obvious remedy is to create a feminine character with all the strength of Superman plus all the allure of a good and beautiful woman."
To bring this to a point, a BIG deal in a lot of fiction (and reality) is "winning the girl," but this isn't "Oog club woman, Oog drag woman back to cave." The women allow themselves to be won and the man has to prove he's worthy. They are making a choice to be wooed. This isn't some Stockholm syndrome stuff. They can say no, they just rarely do because people love a happy ending.
Not every movie has to or should end like Red Sonya where Auhnold has to beat her in a physical fight to get access to her lady parts. That's dumb and I doubt it appeals to many women either way. Men and women just compete differently.
Yea, it's brutish to rely on physical violence to achieve this goal, but in action movies, that's the whole deal. But it's not a physical violence exclusive thing. Romantic (comedy and non-comedy) movies fit into this same theme. The guy has to fight for his woman in one way or the other and she general fights for him to. If they just met and fell in love because "reasons," there's no point to the movie other than "two stupidly hot people got busy." (EDIT: That's called porn) There's just generally no punching as part of the "fight."
The thing is agency. No one wants a damsel in distress for the most part. Men are falling out of favor with the sex plot coupon and it offers women nothing. Looking at something like Lenina Huxley from Demolition Man (a movie I recall being fairly popular among women): she's outmatched in a lot of ways, but Spartan considers her more than an equal. They more win each other than anything.
Cliche, but I don't consider it insulting to either gender.
This is what kills it for me. And it's not exclusive to Hollywood. We get tons of mediocre games in a series like Halo and they just keep printing them.And, I'd say 'too dumb/too caught up in their own prejudices'. Note how Hollywood still clings to 'action movie heroines don't sell' in the wake of Hunger Games (4 movies, worst performing made 4x budget on a 160 mil budget), and even successful women directors tend to stop getting jobs after one or two duds, while meanwhile Zack Snyder can get chance after chance after chance.
Meanwhile, we get one mediocre Metroid game and they dive into shit like Federation Force.