Guardian - 17 January 2018, 08:00 (+ 2292 days 18 hours and 3 minutes) Movies & TV
Long-delayed plans for a female-led Marvel superhero movie following Wonder Woman’s triumph should deliver one of the studio’s biggest hittersIt’s not difficult to follow Hollywood’s logic in avoiding female-led superhero movies for most of the past 20 years. Whenever studios have taken risks on characters such as Catwoman (in 2004, with Halle Berry in the leathers) and Elektra (2005, with Jennifer Garner as the famed assassin), the box-office results have been paltry and the critical brickbats relentless. Of course, when I say it is possible to follow the logic, this is not the same thing as saying such blinkered thinking is logical, which led us to a point where there were no major female-led comic-book flicks released in cinemas between 2005 and the debut of Patty Jenkins’ Wonder Woman last year. For, by the same rationale, Hollywood ought to have banned all male-led sci-fi romps following the failure of Cowboys and Aliens to light up multiplexes in 2011. It did not, of course. When a female-led movie fails, the gender of the lead protagonist is immediately flagged up. When a male-led film heads straight for the DVD bargain bin, other aspects are highlighted. Continue reading...