6 Stupid Movie Characters That Hollywood Now Puts in Every M

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6 Stupid Movie Characters That Hollywood Now Puts in Every M

Postby AdricDePsycho » Fri Jul 31, 2015 9:19 pm

http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-stupid-ch ... ery-movie/

So apparently Katniss Everdeen is a useless damsel...

I don't know much about the Hunger Games, so someone else get mad about this.
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Re: 6 Stupid Movie Characters That Hollywood Now Puts in Eve

Postby gisambards » Fri Jul 31, 2015 10:24 pm

I actually agreed with most of this article. And, to be honest, while Katniss Everdeen certainly isn't a useless damsel in distress (so far as I know, I've only seen the first film), she certainly has flaws as a "strong female protagonist" - spending more time concentrating on which boy to be in love with than on leading the revolution, etc.

The thing I really disagreed was with this one line:
In theory, writing a strong female character should be as easy as writing a neutrally-gendered action hero and then throwing in a vagina.

I disagree completely. A female character does not have to be neutrally-gendered to be strong. For example, Ripley or Sarah Connor. Both are tough, but both are in many ways feminine. The two things are not mutually exclusive. I dislike this branch of feminism that insists femininity is somehow bad. A woman is not inferior just because she chooses to be stereotypically "girly" in some ways. It's similar to an article Cracked published a while ago, saying that gender neutrality in toys should be reached by only selling toys currently marketed to boys - because god forbid a child of either gender would want to buy something feminine (which does make one wonder what they think of those boys who want to buy toy kitchens, or other "girl's toys").
It's rather like suggesting we bring about racial equality by forcing minorities to drop their own cultures and take up stereotypically "white" culture.
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Re: 6 Stupid Movie Characters That Hollywood Now Puts in Eve

Postby Askias » Fri Jul 31, 2015 10:33 pm

Weak article overall. But I think #6 and #5 are correct. #4 and #2 were a tad underwhelming.

This writer or editor has a serious problem with the new Terminator. It got really in the way of the humor. ''Fuck you movie'' does not constitute a joke. It also gave off the vibe that this article was written because of the movie (4/6 points mention the movie, which sticks out because the examples given are never more than four and sometimes as low as two). Rule of thumb for me: it's better not to write about an industry due to having one bad experience. The few times I broke it I often regretted it.

I shrugged my head at #3. I blew my top off at Cracked on this topic last week and I can't stay mad all the time.

#1 is cherry-picking at its finest. How many times has Cracked, or most people here for that matter, commented on how DC's superhero films take themselves completely seriously (I've heard and used the phrase 'Nolanesque dialogue' a few times already) and don't get lighthearted? And we get dramatic movies too, although Marvel doesn't make those, no. Making fun family entertainment is their formula. That's not to say they don't do serious (Daredevil), but Age of Ultron needs only a plot summary for everyone to realise this is not a serious movie. It also made sense in context and was a logical comment from Hawkeye, after it had been a big plotpoint earlier that he's a normal human amongst supermen, and feels like he has to deal with that because they need him. ''Just accept this shit and get to protecting people'' should be his motto after fighting off an alien invasion in the middle of New York.

No, Terminator didn't go the Matrix route and tried to create a 'deep' tale and didn't try to bend four movies with plotholes all over the place together. It's The Terminator. It's about time-travelling robots from the future. It's not my movie, but I'm surely not going to complain they use a joke instead of a PowerPoint presentation and a flowchart to explain their plot.

Is it a sign of bad writing? Yes and no. On one hand, you're sacrificing plot big time. On the other hand, if you don't do it, very few action movies would exist. Cracked has written quite a bit of movie plotholes, narrative trickery, improbable coïncidences and so on and so forth about great movies. Do we need to come up with a coherent reason a city is being liften into the air while an army of robots fight a norse god, a man in a combat suit, a spellcaster, a speedster, a World War Two enchanted soldier, a green guy with an anger problem, an archer, a sovjet-trained spy, a newly formed android and if you want to count them another guy in a suit and a guy with mechanical wings? Because I don't need a reason. Would we have Terminator 2: Judgement Day if we'd have to make sure the plot was completely coherent first? Because I don't think we would.

If I may go on a tangent on a point halfway #2:
But this isn't simply one instance of bad writing; it's a side effect created by the "soft reboot" trend, which is when a movie somehow resets the storyline of a franchise while still trying to remain in the same timeline. It's a cute little trick used with time travel in the new Star Trek, X-Men, and Terminator franchises ... but the problem is that the writers now have to think up entirely new ways for the same characters to meet.


I, too, wish they did. 'Soft reboots' are basically a free pass to do anything you want again, any way you want. This should be candy to a writer. Days of Future Past at least tried. When they wanted a soft reboot, they used it to adapt an iconic storyline, be it unfaithfully. Otherwise DoFP would never have fitted into a movie series. How it works out is yet to be seen, but at least they did something with a free pass to disregard their canon and timeline. Star Trek just tried to hurry back to the status quo.

On the other hand, while I haven't seen Genisys, the writer tells it like they tried, too.
And when you think about it, Kyle Reese and Sarah Connor have no business falling in love in the first place. The John-Connor-producing sex those two had in the original Terminator film was a night of fear-induced junk-bumping, not the result of some heartfelt courtship.


Sounds more like botched execution (not uncommon for romance plots in action movies) than anything else. It's a new approach to them having John-Connor-producing sex, a different dynamic between these characters. I don't see the problem. Besides 'do something new' (which is critizised) and 'do the same thing again' (which in addition to being rather pointless would also be lazy writing at it's finest), what options are there?
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Re: 6 Stupid Movie Characters That Hollywood Now Puts in Eve

Postby JamishT » Sun Aug 02, 2015 2:55 am

Yeah, I got really annoyed when the author said that Katniss was a damsel-in-distress. I haven't seen the last movie or two, but I own the books (don't judge me), and she most certainly is not reliant on men to do the hard work or whatever. She doesn't have superhuman strength either, but she is really strong for a human.
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Re: 6 Stupid Movie Characters That Hollywood Now Puts in Eve

Postby Australia » Sun Aug 02, 2015 4:52 pm

I just want to point out that when people say "strong female characters", they don't mean physically. If men are stronger than women in a movie, that's fine. It's why the guys at work have to do the majority of the bulky items. "Strong" just means pro-active. You can make a woman benchpress cars but if that's all she does the entire film, she's not a strong female character. If her choices impact the plot in a positive or negative way, if she's strong-willed and doesn't back down - from a battle or an argument, a lawsuit or a rap-off, then she's a strong female character. It's not sexist for a woman to be a love interest. It is sexist if that's the only reason she's in the movie. It's not sexist for a woman to be sex-crazed. It is sexist if that's the only tacit of her personality.

Basically, as long as both genders in a movie are complex, three-dimensional people who move the plot forward, you're fine. Now where are my hos at?
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Re: 6 Stupid Movie Characters That Hollywood Now Puts in Eve

Postby rowdyrodimus » Tue Aug 04, 2015 5:38 pm

I'm not an MRA, Male Feminist, SJW or any of the new terms people like to throw around to label anyone with a differing opinion. It's hard enough to live my life without telling everyone else how to live theirs, too. However, the thing that gets to me is all of the people always saying they want more strong female characters but then when movies, shows or books (comics or normal) do create new strong female characters they don't sell. People will find too many things they have problems with (such as being either too or not girlie enough to be realistic, etc.) and ignore the characters. Then the owners of the properties reboot them and then the same people that they were created for and who ignored them will com
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