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personalapocalypseI was thinking about Iron Man 3 again, in relation to another piece of meta I'm probably still going to write, and I came to a rather troubling conclusion about how the movie treated its lady characters.
Cut for a variety of film spoilers.
(And as usual, this only relates to the MCU. If there are comic storylines that aren't like this, by all means, tell me about them. I'll check them out.)
I realized today that the only times the major lady characters in the film were allowed to be competent was when there was an action by one of the male cast members enabling them.
Think about it. Pepper was shown to be competent and heroic when she was able to use the suit to save herself, Tony and Maya from being crushed... after Tony gave it to her. And then, much later, she emerged from some flaming wreckage and started fighting with Aldrich and fending off stray suits and basically owning everything around her... because Aldrich had given her Extremis against her will.
Maya was shown to be a brilliant scientist. She was the one who developed the idea and formula for Extremis in the first place... after Tony came up with a fix for a problem after a one-night stand. (I mean, think about that... he was able to figure out the problem in one night, after all of her own work had failed!) Later she developed it into a more stable form that was actually viable for use on some human beings... but only after she joined up with Aldrich and his think tank, who funded her, and as a result were able to push her research into directions she'd never intended.
You see the pattern here? Both of the ladies had their moments of awesome, and their great accomplishments. But all of those moments were enabled by the men in the film. When they were trying to do something on their own, or when they were acting against one of the men without aid (Maya taking herself hostage,) they were immediately shot down. In Maya's case, literally.
Why? Maya's a brilliant scientist who laid the groundwork for Extremis herself. Pepper's a highly competent woman and the CEO of Stark Industries, and apparently doing fairly well for herself in her own right. Why aren't they allowed to be competent by themselves once in a while?
There's not even any relief from it in the minor characters. Chad's mother is constantly drunk since losing her son years ago. All she can do is save the file so that Tony can pick it up, and that's only because Tony is finally able to tell her some small part of the truth about her son. (And yes, I understand her pain about what happened to Chad, as she understood it, but it's the overall pattern that I can't stand.) Likewise, Brandt was a tough woman, but even she isn't able to take Tony down on her own. Savin is the only one who comes close, and the only reason that Tony isn't forced to surrender after he takes the kid hostage is because of something he gave the kid earlier.
I already sense a counterargument to this, the fact that Tony needs Pepper, is dependent on Pepper. He said so, right? Except that's not what the film gives us. When Pepper is separated from Tony, she gets kidnapped by Aldrich (and possibly that was Maya's plan, possibly not. I'll get into that another time.) She was captured, injected with DNA-changing treatments, permanently altered against her will, and basically told that she was a trophy. When Tony is away from Pepper, he manages to put his suit back together under subpar conditions - granted, he's used to that after building an arc reactor IN A CAVE! WITH A BUNCH OF SCRAPS! But then he overcomes his own panic attacks to raid the base of the most dangerous terrorist in the free world with stuff he bought at a hardware store. So who's being portrayed as the dependent one, here? (And he wasn't even trying to rescue her, because at this point I am fairly sure that he didn't know she was gone!)
It's enough to make me miss Black Widow in Iron Man 2. I don't particularly even like the Action Girl archetype (although she was pretty bad-ass,) and the cinematography of her big fight scene bugged the hell outta me with all of the fanservice shots. (I liked her, especially in The Avengers, but I didn't like the way that Iron Man 2 treated her.) But at least she was allowed to be awesome on her own, and was actually shown to be more competent than the other men around her, on either side.
Nonetheless, it depresses me that hers is seemingly the only type of female character that's allowed to be shown as competent on her own.
(Crossposted to tumblr).
Cut for a variety of film spoilers.
(And as usual, this only relates to the MCU. If there are comic storylines that aren't like this, by all means, tell me about them. I'll check them out.)
I realized today that the only times the major lady characters in the film were allowed to be competent was when there was an action by one of the male cast members enabling them.
Think about it. Pepper was shown to be competent and heroic when she was able to use the suit to save herself, Tony and Maya from being crushed... after Tony gave it to her. And then, much later, she emerged from some flaming wreckage and started fighting with Aldrich and fending off stray suits and basically owning everything around her... because Aldrich had given her Extremis against her will.
Maya was shown to be a brilliant scientist. She was the one who developed the idea and formula for Extremis in the first place... after Tony came up with a fix for a problem after a one-night stand. (I mean, think about that... he was able to figure out the problem in one night, after all of her own work had failed!) Later she developed it into a more stable form that was actually viable for use on some human beings... but only after she joined up with Aldrich and his think tank, who funded her, and as a result were able to push her research into directions she'd never intended.
You see the pattern here? Both of the ladies had their moments of awesome, and their great accomplishments. But all of those moments were enabled by the men in the film. When they were trying to do something on their own, or when they were acting against one of the men without aid (Maya taking herself hostage,) they were immediately shot down. In Maya's case, literally.
Why? Maya's a brilliant scientist who laid the groundwork for Extremis herself. Pepper's a highly competent woman and the CEO of Stark Industries, and apparently doing fairly well for herself in her own right. Why aren't they allowed to be competent by themselves once in a while?
There's not even any relief from it in the minor characters. Chad's mother is constantly drunk since losing her son years ago. All she can do is save the file so that Tony can pick it up, and that's only because Tony is finally able to tell her some small part of the truth about her son. (And yes, I understand her pain about what happened to Chad, as she understood it, but it's the overall pattern that I can't stand.) Likewise, Brandt was a tough woman, but even she isn't able to take Tony down on her own. Savin is the only one who comes close, and the only reason that Tony isn't forced to surrender after he takes the kid hostage is because of something he gave the kid earlier.
I already sense a counterargument to this, the fact that Tony needs Pepper, is dependent on Pepper. He said so, right? Except that's not what the film gives us. When Pepper is separated from Tony, she gets kidnapped by Aldrich (and possibly that was Maya's plan, possibly not. I'll get into that another time.) She was captured, injected with DNA-changing treatments, permanently altered against her will, and basically told that she was a trophy. When Tony is away from Pepper, he manages to put his suit back together under subpar conditions - granted, he's used to that after building an arc reactor IN A CAVE! WITH A BUNCH OF SCRAPS! But then he overcomes his own panic attacks to raid the base of the most dangerous terrorist in the free world with stuff he bought at a hardware store. So who's being portrayed as the dependent one, here? (And he wasn't even trying to rescue her, because at this point I am fairly sure that he didn't know she was gone!)
It's enough to make me miss Black Widow in Iron Man 2. I don't particularly even like the Action Girl archetype (although she was pretty bad-ass,) and the cinematography of her big fight scene bugged the hell outta me with all of the fanservice shots. (I liked her, especially in The Avengers, but I didn't like the way that Iron Man 2 treated her.) But at least she was allowed to be awesome on her own, and was actually shown to be more competent than the other men around her, on either side.
Nonetheless, it depresses me that hers is seemingly the only type of female character that's allowed to be shown as competent on her own.
(Crossposted to tumblr).
