June 18th, 2008
by
Liz Henry
Onward and backward to the previews before Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull!
The movie previews promised to be good since they would be action movies. I’m a HUGE sucker for explosions, chases, fights, and other action movie bullshit. Add space battles and I’m extra happy. So, no horrible “romantic comedy” previews I had to suffer through.
Instead I got to admire the explosions, while bitching about the Smurfette Syndrome about 5 times in a row. “The Spirit” – Frank Miller movie, made fun of preview already, hilarious voiceover with superhero going “The city screams, she is my mother, she is my lover.” (Not for the first time I mutter, “Sooo that makes you a motherfucker then?”) *sigh* So stupid! So annoying! So unnecessary! Then yet another movie about a Man having Important Man experiences with women as peripheral sex prizes (some movie about a guy living backwards in time and his romance, but mainly lots of World War I battles with vaseline-lensed sex bits mixed in with sexy-woman-tragically-aging shots. I would prefer they just LEAVE WOMEN COMPLETELY OUT, thanks but no thanks. Give explosions and battles, keep nasssty chips.)
Hellboy which looked fucking awesome!!!! Awesome! Hello! Just great! I will see it like 8 times because it looked like candy! But again, is all about a man having his Man Moments because Hollywood if it’s an action movie has to show how being a Man is all about heroism and heroism is all about being a man! I am so annoyed. I bet if the female characters have any good fighting moments of bravery it will be only because they are defending their man, or their dad, or their brother, or carrying out their father’s last wish, or some other annoying-ass thing whose subtext implies that women only exist in relation to men, especially when they kick ass.
Then, Eagle Eye, which looked to be even more of the same. It is all about the profound experience of the lone man who in his lonely way has an Experience.
Do I make myself clear, here? Why is this always the plot? It’s like the Joseph Campbell sexist as hell Hero’s Journey just mutated itself into every story possible.
Don’t even get me STARTED on Wall-e. For fuck’s sake. I mean, I want to see a fucking awesome movie about some robots. In space. Why must it get all messed up with gender stuff? Why not just put some eyelashes and lipstick and a fucking Minnie Mouse dress and bow on that rescue-screamy-flirty-sexy robot girl? WTF with the robot gender roles? You know, if I were a robot, I’d think the nicest bit of would be getting to be ungendered. Like we didn’t go far enough with the movie where all the ants were heterosexual male/female couples (??) and the Bee one, and the one where the (male) cattle had udders? What?
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Liz Henry at
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Filed under assorted | Comments (6)
OMG – I just looked up and found “Barnyard” (2006) was the movie that had the male cows with udders. Toss in the 1998 “Godzilla” movie where they kept calling it male after it laid eggs, too. WTF?
I rather like my friend’s re-interpretation of Wall-E. Since robots don’t actually have “sexes”, they could both be considered to be the same sex – one is just more butch, the other more femme. Not what they intended, of course, but, hey, I think I’ll join her in pretending it’s a lesbian robot romance.
*sigh* Couldn’t we have a nice action movie with women for a change?
I would prefer they just LEAVE WOMEN COMPLETELY OUT
Word.
“I bet if the female characters have any good fighting moments of bravery it will be only because they are defending their man, or their dad, or their brother, or carrying out their father’s last wish, or some other annoying-ass thing whose subtext implies that women only exist in relation to men, especially when they kick ass.”
Okay so what about Laura Croft?
Is that better? If this has been discussed to death here previously, just point to the post and I’ll shut up.
I liked jhkim’s comment on the defenders of the temple:
“Why exactly do mysterious native people twice pop up out of nowhere to wordlessly attack for no apparent reason? Were the writers just not paid enough to give even a passing line to explain them? Or was it just supposed to be obvious that natives are sometimes built into old graves/temples and the thing that they do is attack white people?”
OK, it’s hard to think of a more comic-book-phallocentric title than Iron Man. That one falls in the “so fantastically unsubtle it goes beyond self-parody” category, at least to me.
I never saw a trailer for it, but the movie itself wasn’t so bad on the gender-relations score. Robert Downey, Jr.’s character is a philanderer, but the film portrays that part of his life as rather empty and unsatisfying; as far as I could tell, he gives up the one-night stands once his actual character development starts going. The heroine, Gwyneth Paltrow’s character, is his assistant rather than his titular equal, but she’s quite clearly competent and independent, outwitting the Big Bad at a key juncture. Since the whole movie is basically an “origin story”, I think there’s really only room for one suited superhero. A throwaway line near the climax hints that Downey’s best guy buddy will suit up in the sequel; I’m hoping that Paltrow gets a chance to expand her character’s skills, too.
What bothered me most, coming back from the cinema, was that by midway through the flick, Downey’s character has both a clean source of effectively unlimited energy and an AI which could pass the Turing Test if it cared — and the sequel will probably just feature him and Samuel L. Jackson beating people up. Imagination, people, imagination.