Right. I only saw that terrible movie once so I don’t remember the context, but there was a context, and that context is missing from the poster. It’s the image taken by itself that I imagine many found upsetting. There are plenty of superhero movies where women fight men and women lose at times. You have to have a back-and-forth struggle for domination to pull off a fight scene. I don’t know for sure, but I doubt the image would be as upsetting for people who saw the entire scene.
Some women are taught that they must be perpetually in competition with other women, and I think part of the appeal of women vs. women fight is fulfilling those cultural expectations. It’s like this truism that women are catty and competitive, and isn’t it great when they throw down. The villainous woman is often some kind of femme fatale stereotype so it might appeal to the baser nature of some women who are imagining vanquishing their beautiful foes. This is more obvious in teen movies where the fights aren’t actually physical. There’s always some pretty, catty bitch character to put in her place. I really appreciate stories that show strong relationships among women. I’m not a huge fan of the Captain Marvel movie, but I have to give them credit for showing women collaborating rather than competing.
The fight with Maggie Q was actually decent. The fight portrayed Willis as stronger, but she was clearly more skilled. In the end, iirc, he had to run her down with a car. Part of why DH4 is the last decent film in the franchise - not great, but entertaining.
I thought Alice in Borderland on Netflix (Japanese import similar to Squid Game) did a pretty good job of this:
-The main female character (the climber) was tough and athletic and resourceful, but not really a fighter, and basically never fought anyone hand to hand
-The trans (but petite and slim) woman was a trained fighter, and beat some men, but got beaten by some others
-All of the above, plus a tough teenage girl archer and a tough woman cop, along with much of the male cast, got savagely and brutally beaten up, despite trying their hardest, by the male main-fighty-boss
-One of the mini-bosses was a woman, very tough, kicked the crap out of the male protagonist, but he was a thinker, not a fighter
Overall, lots of fighting, a fair bit of it hand-to-hand, and some man-vs-woman, with the women winning some. But never any petite-woman-squares-off-against-equally-trained-man-150-pounds-heavier-and-beats-him nonsense.
The older I’ve gotten, the less I like those silly fights where one dude takes out an veritable army in hand-to-hand combat. Though I admit I give a lot of leeway for genre consideration. For superoes like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the Avengers, or a lot of martial arts movies, I’m fine with it whether the person kicking ass is a man or a woman. I don’t really require realism in a lot of my movies, just verisimilitude, the appearance of realism. Ellen Ripley, Sarah Conner, and Furiosa (Mad Max) were all believable enough to me to pass the smell test.
Had the poster shown Apocalypse choking Magneto or Professor X I don’t think anyone would have cared. Violence against men is normal and acceptable.
I’d agree, if you could show me a poster like that. I suspect, though, that you might have a hard time finding one. Violence of the kind we’re talking about only seems to be aimed at women.
