I said that in most action films the characters are mostly unimportant caricatures and he asked "why are they always white western male caricatures?" My rather short and pat answer to his question was "probably because they are written by white western male caricatures". This was meant mostly as humour, and the following is a longer and more serious answer.
Money
That's it. If you're in a hurry you can move along right now. You probably won't be missing much.
Still here. Great.
The bigger picture
I think the question "why are there so few meaningful female characters in hollywood films" is actually part of a larger conversation that has been going on for a few years now. That conversation usually focuses on questions like "why are all Hollywood movies so samey?", "why does Hollywood produce so many sequels?", and "why are so many Hollywood films based on popular books/toys/games/etc...?"
The answer to these questions always boils down to money and Hollywood paranoia.
Blockbuster films cost a fortune to make. We've all heard the stories about how this film cost $15m to make or that film cost $23m to make. Hollywood money men are notoriously conservative and will only tend to greenlight projects that they are sure are going to make them money. Under this environment we get constantly barraged by the same films getting made over and over again. Superman is on his third reboot, Batman is on his third reboot, and Spiderman is on his second reboot.
Action films about cops follow one of a very small set of formulas.
You have the lone (usually white male) protagonist with some trauma in his past that causes him to be antisocial (and sometimes borderline alcoholic) and his eventual love interest.
Or you have the buddy movie where you have two people, usually male, usually one white and the other black or very occasionally some other ethnic minority (usually Chinese or Japanese). Occasionally one is a woman, very rarely both though. Usually one of the two will have a trauma in the past, blah, blah, blah. Usually it will be a white guy.
Other types of action movies have their own formulas.
These films generally fill cinemas, so there is no incentive to change them. If it ain't broke don't fix it they would say. It is broke, of course, but from a financial point of view you can't see that and that is the only point of view these people have.
And when directors try to do something a little different the money men get edgy. When Tim Burton directed the Batman films he gave them his own slightly dark and twisted style. After the (ahem) unusual Batman Returns he was axed from the project and Joel Schumacher was brought on to direct the mediocre Batman Forever and the execrable Batman and Robin (a film which somewhat ironically resembled The Penguin in Batman Returns in that it was a grotesque monster that should never have been conceived, let alone born, but was unleashed on the world to the detriment of all).
And so the same bland mulch gets served up over and over again. And so women and minorities get short changed over and over again.
After all, why waste money to film a couple of women having a meaningful conversation that is not necessarily related to the main plot when the film will probably do just as well without it? Right?
Yeah. Right?
As to why more writers aren't trying to get a bit more use out their female characters. I really haven't got a clue. But I would suggest the writers need to get one. And fast.
After all, why waste money to film a couple of women having a meaningful conversation that is not necessarily related to the main plot when the film will probably do just as well without it? Right?
Yeah. Right?
As to why more writers aren't trying to get a bit more use out their female characters. I really haven't got a clue. But I would suggest the writers need to get one. And fast.
