Quick, name a few recent popular movies where the two top-billed stars are female.
Here’s a miscellaneous survey I just did, tallied by gender of top billed/second billed star:
| M/M | M/F | F/M | F/F | |
| 20 biggest movies of 2007 | 10 | 10 | 0 | 0 |
| 20 biggest movies of 2006 | 11 | 7 | 0 | 2 |
| 20 biggest movies of 2005 | 11 | 7 | 2 | 0 |
| 20 biggest movies of 2004 | 10 | 9 | 1 | 0 |
| 20 biggest movies since 1977 | 15 | 5 | 0 | 0 |
| IMDb Top 20 of All Time | 15 | 5 | 0 | 0 |
There were about 110 movies with a male lead and 5 with a female lead. Of the second-billed females, nearly all are written as love interests of the first-billed man. There were over sixty movies in the sample with two male stars top-billed. The only movies with two top-billed female roles, on the other hand, were The Devil Wears Prada and Scary Movie 4.
My cousin has been working on tallying (by hand!) all movies with two top-billed female stars. She reports that there are staggeringly few of them, and the roles fall mainly in two genres: mother-daughter bonding movies and horror films. Hollywood is not creating female heroes.
Suppose we had a generic Michael Bay/Jerry Bruckheimer movie with some evil organization (say, a shadow government headed by Dick Cheney or whatever) bent on destroying something (say, the internet). Who would you rather see battling their way through the system to stop them — another basic Bruce Willis/Denzel Washington/Vin Diesel character? Or River Tam, Sarah Connor, Lola from Run Lola Run, or Beatrix Kiddo? Not only could the film industry suck less in the examples it sets, we could have some awesome movies.
Notes: If anyone wants to expand my list into a more comprehensive and authoritative survey, I’d love to see the results. I did my tally by hand, using The Numbers for the basic lists and stars, plus IMDb and Wikipedia to get a consensus on billing order.
Resident Evil has a female hero type, and she’s the main character. She even has a MALE love interest. They made three movies so far…
Here’s a fucking thought.
Maybe women just don’t make very good movies? Like, honestly, why bother pointing this out? Men are the hero archetype, they always will be. Why would you WANT women to be known for being big, bulky and full of testosterone? It’s a major feature of being male and it’s one of the main features of movies. I’m sorry to hear that you have a hard time overcoming the world. Please, when you get a grip on reality and begin to understand that there is more to life than women being the best at something, give me a shout. For the time being… shut the fuck up.
Oh let’s also add this little list for you of movies that SUCK that have female leads.
I’ll give you a few to start:
Elektra
Catwoman
Aeonflux
Ultraviolet
There’s a place in my heart for Kill Bill though, that movie just hits all the right spots.
But for the sake of all that is good on this planet. stop trying to put women at the forefront of the film industry. Women are not naturally big and strong like the majority of the male population. Men are (usually) born protectors and it’s going to stay like that due to nature. Have fun with your further whining though. /rant
Seriously? Why so much anger, guys.
Heroes don’t necessarily have to be ridiculously huge, bulky stereotypes. And there’s plenty of male lead films in which the main character isn’t big and bulky:
Spiderman
Men in Black
Garden state
V for Vendetta
Moulin Rouge
The Fantastic Four
Harry Potter
Lord of the Rings
Tapping into more than just action films there, obviously.
And films like Elektra are more focused on showing off the body and flexibility of their leads than they are telling a story. Underworld was quite similar in direction but a little better on storyline.
Perhaps if everyone lightened up on the “Ooh, this is how movies are SUPPOSED to be made” films wouldn’t suck quite so badly just now. I mean, the best film I’ve seen in two years was a political film about aliens.
wow a lot of people are crying about something so stupid!dont go to the freakin movies if you dont like them and dont read the comic strip if you cant handle freakin stick figures…jeesh its a COMIC! get a life