You know all the stuff we like to believe about ourselves? Truth, Liberty, Equality and that patriotic rah-rah, huddled masses yearning to breathe free?
Captain America believes all that. He lives all that. He is deeply ashamed of himself and all his countrymen when we fall short of our ideals, and he inspires us all to try harder.
I do not believe a Captain America movie can be made today, as we have become too cynical and distrustful of anyone who actually wants America to be an example for the world.
Runaways and Exiles are two teams I can think of which have good female characters, but of those only Runaways is really movie material.
I’d watch it. Everyone prefers FemShep to… whatever people call guy Shepard.
If he was a new superhero starting out in the 21st century, sure. But he’s literally a man from another time, when the USA was the reinforcements coming in to kick Hitler’s ass, not some loser dropping bombs on third world countries. Once he wakes up in the modern day, then you can show that the USA of today isn’t the USA of 65-70 years ago.
The problem is that all this was true and happened in the comic 40 years ago. Cap has spent four decades as a ridiculous relic of a past in which the government was all good guys who could never do wrong and all enemies were the ultimate in evil. Cap never recovered from Vietnam and Nixon. Nothing anybody could do today could make him relevant.
Good god. I hope your nightmarish vision of the future of superhero entertainment never comes to pass. “Mary-Sue Jean Grey-Lite and Disco Hooker Vampire : They Fight Crime.”
Strong Marvel Female characters : Storm. Ms. Marvel. Invisible Woman. (As not portrayed by Jessica Alba) She-Hulk.
Strong DC Female characters : Power Girl. Zatanna. Catwoman. (As not portrayed by Halle Berry) Supergirl.
Wonder Woman is a good choice for this kind of thing because she was iconic and though she wasn’t quite the first female superhero, she’s the oldest one that endured. But every female comics character that’s been around more than ten or twenty years has some horrible un-feminist stuff in their past, because that’s how they got written back then. That hasn’t stopped characters like Black Canary from being remolded to a more modern sensibility.
I like the choices you mention. All good characters too. If Power Girl & Supergirl can get out from under Superman’s shadow, & Catwoman out from under Batman’s shadow in the marketing, they could have a shot. Zatanna’s name is too much like Satana. She won’t work commercially. The Marvel ladies you mentioned are workable.
Note that I didn’t just go for the big names, I mentioned concepts I like. Who knew* Men in Black* was a comic book?
And I named some that I think have as much potential as Wonder Woman (low threshold there). So you can take it as bad I think Wondy really is conceptually.
And I *said *Looker was creepy & hard to do well. She is. Hard does not mean impossible; it would just take a very specific enthusiasm for & approach to the work. Further, she wasn’t always a vampire & she was never a hooker.
As for dissing Faith, whatever. Having as little source material as she does can be an advantage–less baggage.
What does that even mean? Superman and Batman have both also had multiple costume changes over the years, and multiple origin retellings as well. Wonder Woman is not some special case. That would be like complaining about an article about Superman that didn’t picture him in his “energy Superman” phase and showing his more iconic outfit instead.
And anyway, the new costume is specific to a story arc and not a permanent thing.
Jolie and Johansenn know exactly what I’m talking about.
Salt’s ticket sales were down around Clash of the Titans and The Expendables. And that’s typical of Jolie’s movies: her hits have been in the $100,000,000 to 130,000,000 range - good returns but you’re not going to build an action franchise on those numbers.
Johansenn was in Iron Man 2 but that was not her movie (she was sixth in the credits). Take Iron Man 2 off the table and Johansenn has never hit a hundred million in ticket sales.
In real life, like many other writers, I’m an extreme introvert. At a big science fiction convention one night I went up to the SFWA suite, where the writers were hanging out. It was loud and I didn’t know anybody so I found a chair off to the side, next to another guy with the same issues. We had a great hour-long chat.
He turned out to be Lowell Cunningham. And yes, this was in 1997, just after Men in Black appeared on screen. And we talked about everything but that.
You’re comparing apples to really big apples, which just isn’t fair. Salt only cost $110 million, about 1/3 to 1/2 of your typical blockbuster. The fact it only pulled in $120 million is what makes it a hit.
As for Scarlett, she hasn’t been in movies that make a lot of money because she normally doesn’t take those roles. But she is extremely marketable (which is the argument I was replying to) as a SERIOUS ACTRESS.
The argument that women can’t compete in Hollywood only works if you ignore all the movies where they prove they can.