Know a ridiculously over-powered female character, deep-set on a serious quest? I give you The Bride (Beatrix Kiddo) from Kill Bill. She still managed to show a wide breadth of emotion and, despite being a white female bent on horrific revenge, was totally relatable even as an overt "angry woman" stereotype.

Also: Ellen Ripley & Pvt Vasquez from Aliens, just to name a couple more. Mostly Vasquez, since anybody who's ever worn the uniform both understands and loves her type of character irrespective of sex.

Unfortunately, we live in a time when VAGINA-or-you-hate-women! is being used to excuse poor execution and boring characters (Star Wars, Ghostbusters, etc.)

I've used women & minority characters since I started writing fiction at the age of 13. The biggest complaints I've ever received have all come from the same source, and it ain't the "cishetero white males" it's become fashionable to malign.

Well said!!

Huh...interesting perspective on the bride from Kill Bill. On reflection, yeah I guess she was overpowered, but heh...loved that movie.

She might be OP but she did get shot in the head and raped in the hospital....

She took her licks!!

Yep, but the very concept of a slender, photogenic white female as "the greatest assassin of all time" is silly. The Soviets employed women as snipers due to a variety of reasons (different center of body weight and "who would suspect a woman?", for instance), and the various factions of Islamic terrorism are happy to put suicide vests on women, but that's about it.

Everyone in the movies is photogenic. The idea that movies stars are representative of a true cross section of humanity is ludicrous. But would we watch then if they where?

Bitchin' about what the movies show is a first world problem if epic dis-importance.

Most of the time that's correct; except for Danny DeVito, Amy Schumer, Roseanne Barr, Steve Buscemi, Clint Eastwood (after 1990)... there are a lot of film stars who got beat with the ugly stick.

You do not see many new ones. I can add quite a few older actors to that list as well. Some place, pretty became more important than talent.

True also.

Interesting stuff. :o

I agree with all your points except one.
You are right about Superman that he is a bad idea as a character, but Superman is not supposed to be a character. He is supposed to be an icon and as such he works.

In any case, the cat? Really? The cat???

Superman was originally bald and going to be a villain. They changed him to a hero. he makes a better villain.

Having recently watched Justice League: Gods and Monster I must say I like that version of him the best. Someone with flaws that wants o be a Hero that makes mistakes, but learns from them. It's too bad that they left the scene with Brainiac out. That would have added to the depth of the character.

I do enjoy Superman for his strength of character.

The fact he beats up planets is just silly.

No argument on both points

I've had a friend give me a detailed account of why he dislikes the character of Superman, and I have to agree with him.

Imagine if the Flash were able to run at twice the speed of sound. That would be awesome. But, because Superman is around, the Flash must run at light speed.

Every superhero's powers need to be pushed upward to the limits of the imagination in order for them to be relevant in a world that has Superman.

The presence of Superman takes the heroes out of the realm of being people with powers and places them into the realm of gods.

Similarly, I dislike Wolverine. (He is the embodiment of 13 year old male fantasies. Whatever is cool, Wolverine is. He's a samurai, soldier, special forces secret agent. He cannot lose a fight. He fights all the time and cannot be hurt. He always gets the girl (he's somewhere between 70 and 15,000 years old, and always gets the teenage girl). He smokes and can't get lung damage. He rides a motorcycle and can't be injured in a crash.

He always wins at poker too...

Superman was a product of his time: invulnerable to bullets, few to no weaknesses, able to save the day against any foe, the power of flight--and living among normal humans in a secret identity so he could be anybody. Superman was every boy's fantasy avatar and every girl's dream protector. And in the 1930s, people needed that kind of fantasy just to get thru the Great Depression.

Similarly, James Bond is an avatar of male virility: handsome, debonair, versed in wine and cars and guns--the kind of man which Average Joe on the production line wanted to be and therefore a massive draw for books and film.

Luke Skywalker: farm boy who rises to defeat the bad guy. Even in a far away galaxy people can understand the rise of the underdog.

Barbie: a young woman with an impossible figure, who commands vast and unaccountable wealth & does whatever she wants without having to earn anything.

These characters and zillions of others like them are massive draws for a reason.

Somehow many, especially showrunners and movie makers seem to have forgotten these reasons.

They never learned them, I'd say. They looked at a preexisting property and thought: "That, but with me instead, times a billion." It's the formula on which the new Star Wars series (The Force Gets Woke, The Last Yeti, etc.) is based, which is why they're simultaneously cramming all the lore into a Mary Sue character whilst claiming the past should be destroyed. It's an open confession that they don't want the source material to have existed while plagiarizing it outright. This is a mentality of cannibals.

Tragic but true.

And the business people behind it are just as bad in my opinion. There you have decades of data in form of books, games and comics with the numbers what people liked and could be made into a movie or show and they ignore it.

What would I give for a 'Tales of the Jedi' movie series. There even were four very strong female characters, two starting out strong and two becoming strong. Enough for everybody.
Oh, well, time to get the comics out and read them again I guess.

"I'll tell you the problem with the ... power that you're that you're using here. It didn't require any discipline to attain it. You read what others had done and you then you took the next step. You didn't earn the knowledge for yourselves so you don't take any responsibility for it."

https://youtu.be/4PLvdmifDSk?t=47

I guess it's time I watched that movie again. I barely remember the scene but it fits this context so well.

It was better in the book but that's essentially true.
Also Hammond in the movie learned his lesson, Hammond in the BOOK didn't and that was the actual set up for the sequels that followed.

Well it's fine. They killed the past and all my interest in the brand.

*Captain Marvel flying home in ship above earth*

"Chewie, we're home"

^Happen in one of the newer comics

A good character isn't praised for their group identity markers. They are remembered as being a good characters that made people passionately like them or passionately hate them.

Also, Ashoka is/was a BADASS character that people loved. Rey, not so much. Both are women, yet people like to pretend that men don't like women heros. Totally false, we just want interesting characters. So write a better backstory or something to attract a universal fan base.

Captain Janeway from Star Trek. Wonder Woman. Even Mrs. Marple. All strong characters who happen to be female.

The Teen Titans cartoon had strong characters who happened to be female (Starfire, Raven, Terra, Jinx).

That show did.. though I will admit I didn't watch the newer one as the art style hurt my eyes. So 'can't really say for myself if they still were or nah.

I didn't watch Teen Titans Go either. I was told that it was poorly done.