There’s another reason a lot of people don’t talk about…
5.) The omission of the hero’s journey.
(Shout out to
@O.Red who puts it better than I can.)
Almost every fantasy/adventure/superhero styled protagonist in fiction follows the basic character arc laid out in the hero’s journey.
The problem is that a lot of modern writers writing female characters want their heroines to have all of the glory without any of the blood, sweat, and tears that it takes to get there. These characters tend to be overpowered with
no flaws—they’re always right, everyone loves them, and you never see them in real danger. These characters tend to be very selfish (“I belong…” “I deserve…”, “I am…” “My truth…”) and never have to learn from failure, sacrifice anything, or overcome any real adversity to accomplish their goals. They get everything handed to them too easily.
Think about all the L’s that Luke Skywalker, and Peter Parker had to take when they were starting out—and how they had to learn hard lessons about the consequences of being impatient and making selfish choices.
Remember how Alex Murphy caught the ultimate L and got lit up by Clarence Boddikker’s gang before he was RoboCop?
Think of how vulnerable John McClane was in Die Hard. That man spent the whole movie outnumbered and outgunned running around barefoot cutting his feet on broken glass.
Amuro (from Gundam) was a whiny, spoiled teenager until Bright Noa smacked the taste out of his mouth and told him to man up.
You don’t see that in a lot of movies or shows today because so many modern feminist writers are too egotistical to let their self-inserts be wrong about anything or take any real L’s. You already know the story will never put these types of characters in real danger so there will never be any stakes. Which makes their stories straight-up boring and predictable.
If you want to be a hero, you’ve got to struggle, sacrifice, train, learn from failure, get better, accept discipline, and overcome your character flaws to earn that.
The original animated Mulan got it right because Mulan was a character who put her life on the line for a selfless cause. She actually had to overcome real failure and adversity in order to become a hero. She went through the trenches to earn her hero cred.
The Bride in Kill Bill was another character who survived taking L’s, trained up, and overcame adversity to get revenge on all the bad guys. She EARNED her wins.
Im not saying this to come off sounding like one of those alt-right he-man-woman haters, because great stories about women deserve to be told. You just have to remember the hero’s journey.
Unless they start casting the Jade Cargills of the world. Or it becomes normalized for the women in these roles. To beef up like their male counterparts. Then don’t expect the Wonder Womans, and Captain Marvels to actually look like brick houses lol. That’s not to say that none of these actresses. Aren’t getting into shape for their respective roles.
