Ok, I’m a woman and some of the comments in this thread are bordering on offensive. Quality content appeals across the board to female and male audiences.
But to blame failures on trying to appeal to women is ridiculous.
For the most part I agree, I think the bigger problem is the mindset behind Disneys “girl boss” ideology.
Disney doesn’t know how to make good, relatable, female characters because they are terrified of giving them flaws, or a weakness, or having them grow… their female characters don’t look inwards to improve themselves, they look outwards and point out external flaws in the world, to improve the audience.
People can smell BS from a mile away, Luke was relatable, he was a whiny kid who wanted a more exciting life, he had to train for years to become a Jedi, had to fight inner demons, had to overcome doubt… Rey was simply perfect from the start and everything just happened. Hulk endured years in isolation learning to control his emotions and his anger, SheHulk mastered it in a couple hours. I don’t think Disney understands that being a relatable person with doubts and internal struggles is a large part of what makes characters appealing.
I think that’s what I was trying to get at in my first post, we dream of overcoming our flaws, we’d dream of being big and strong because most of us were small and skinny (or chunky), we’d dream of being handsome (or pretty) because most of us were awkward and covered in acne, we’d dream of riding in on a white horse and saving the princess because most of us had no idea how to even talk to girls. My guess is the same is true of young girls, they dream of being a beautiful princess because they are just normal awkward teens who don’t stand out and aren’t “special”.
Disney has been making “girl boss” movies for a half decade now and I’d argue not a single character has been as strong as older “non girl boss” characters like Princess Leia, Ripley (from Aliens), Sarah Conner (from Terminator), etc. The older characters didn’t feel forced, they weren’t perfect, they were just people who ended up in bad situations and overcame them, aka strong men and strong women.
I’d be curious to know if this is a male view or shared by women also, I wouldn’t place any of the recent heroines as strong women, but Leia, Conner, Ripley… even characters like Katness and Hermione fall into this category… they are all very memorable strong women in large part because they are “normal” characters we can relate to who simply overcame overwhelming situations.
about Iron Heart, especially the people they were so desperate to attract. Another good example is The Marvels. You’d think women would love to see a female superhero team up right? Nope. They preferred Barbie, and out of the small amount of people that went to see The Marvels the audience was still mostly male. Superhero movies like Marvel and Space Operas like Star Wars will always heavily skew towards a male audience no matter what anyone tries to tell you. Appeal to them first and if your product is good enough it will expand outwards naturally from there.
