'Meh' superheroines: the unfortunate sorority of the cape

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A few months ago I interviewed a respected Spanish screenwriter.

, she confessed to me that she was taken to hell by the number of female characters that were appearing like mushrooms just because those who wrote them were forced to comply with the rules of parity and rising feminism for no other reason than that of securing subsidies.

Of course we had been facing

of leading roles designed for women.

"But it wasn't this, was it?" the writer lamented.

We have all seen in the movies and series of recent years

, heroines who save the furniture at the last moment in an almost forced way, a conversion of women into warriors because yes, a

feminism , T-shirt, involved shoehorned on many occasions.

The superhero movies and comics were not going to be less.

In fact, the toll of feminism and diversity has been especially loud and

in this genre, or at least in many of its examples.

In comics there have been successes: Marvel gave wings years ago to the superheroine America Chavez,

, ultra-fast and capable of crossing dimensions.

A young woman who fights aliens just as she deals with Hitler.

Readers today can find themselves with the adventures of a black Iron Man and Captain America, or with those of the Muslim teenage superheroine Kamala Khan (Ms. Marvel), who has her own television series on Disney +.

Marvel, in fact, has not relented in its efforts to bring alpha females to the screen according to the social context, finally giving prominence to characters such as Captain Marvel, The Black Widow and Scarlet Witch, with whom, in their own way, they join movements like the #metoo.

The last to join the list was Natalie Portman in the role of Mighty Thor in

, which follows the adventures of the God of Thunder after

.

What 's new: this heroine

– or at least hide it – hypersexualized stereotypes.

On the contrary, she is visibly strong, as evidenced by the biceps that the actress has worked on.

If we take into account that the greats of the genre were born in the 30s, a time when women are still sadly relegated to a secondary role in society, we can assume that the co-stars of these stories were often

,

, the domestic or the administrative, as is the case of poor Pepper Potts to whom Iron Man gives such a bad life.

When we talk about original heroines, we always refer to characters whose powers were reduced to defense or magic and whose adventures had too much to do with their love affairs and other problems with men.

It took decades for us to read with

the qualities of creations like Wonder Woman, until now the jewel in the crown of superheroine movies as far as box office is concerned.

Because, and here is the mother of the lamb, more or less feminists,

.

The path of losers is inaugurated by

in 1984, six years after the blockbuster

of Donner 's first

The film was watered down by a

that the public was not prepared for and, well, bluntly, by bad and stupid.

The enthusiasm with which her protagonist, Helen Slater, faced it was perhaps the only thing salvageable, but the ship sank anyway: it cost 35 million dollars and barely raised 14.

Fast-forward to the next decade: the '90s still echoes with the flop of

, another film neither the world nor the genre was ready for.

.

It was based on a cult British comic and wanted to combine in its cocktail shaker the sordid and motorized post-apocalyptic world of

with the aesthetics and rage of the

.

It did not sound bad, but the footage left a disjointed and chaotic story with terrible results: angry comic fans and a derisory collection, six million dollars against its 25 budget.

Even so, today we are many women -also in Hollywood- who claim it.

Let's go to the first

.

There still hurts the hit of

with which Halle Berry, then at the top of her career,

.

She said it herself, willingly accepting the award and writing one of the best speeches in living memory: "First of all, I want to thank Warners for putting me in this horrible movie, for putting me in this piece of shit. It was just what I needed in my career," he began.

Another actress who was kissing the sky at the beginning of the millennium was Jennifer Garner, who did not hesitate to put on the red suit of Electra created by the wonderful mind of Frank Miller.

She did it first as a secondary in

(2003), which received praise and criticism in equal parts, and then in her own

in 2005

, whose bad guys were funny and whose script was extremely poor.

The expected,

: it raised 10 million less than it cost.

There are many examples of heroines that have not worked and others that have been left in the starting box, as has just happened with

, canceled a few days ago when it was practically finished.

The production company has alleged

.

This despite having cost 90 million dollars and having Leslie Grace in the role of the heroine and Michael Keaton again as Batman three decades later.

The networks have raised their hands to their heads criticizing that this condemnation to ostracism is related, more than with mutant strategies, to a gender problem.

Be that as it may, there is no way for these super women to take flight.

Good luck for the next one.

Next week

Howard the Duck

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