It just occurred to me that Resident Evil is one of the only female action franchises in existence. Especially if you exclude YA stuff like Hunger Games. There's basically Resident Evil, Underworld, and maaaybe Terminator. But even that's a stretch because Sarah Connor is more of an ensemble character.
I wonder why that is? There's clearly a hunger for action movies about sexy women killing sexily.
Wait, what about...*thinks for a second*...how about...*looks down, deep in thouc2uiqiiJhjckkkskskk83848zmamfhuelzjxudbna
>There's clearly a hunger for action movies about sexy women killing sexily.
There is?
Alien?
Alien is tricky because Alien 1 and Alien 3 are not what I would usually call action movies. Alien 2 and 4 absolutely are, though.
>one of the only female action franchises in existence
so?
Resident Evil was way more popular than underworld, but both pulled in decent money on lean budgets, showing that there was an audience interest in these kind of movies.
It sorta makes sense why they got the Underworld guy to direct that John Wick Ballerina spinoff. Because in theory they should be able have to a female John Wick-like. But that hasn't happened yet. There's clearly a way this can work, but a vast majority of action movies go for a male lead instead. There's no female equivalent of Lethal Weapon. There's no female equivalent of Die Hard, not really.
Yesterday's moviegoers aren't today's moviegoers. Just because they went to see a type of movie a decade ago doesn't mean they'll go see it today
>It sorta makes sense why they got the Underworld guy to direct that John Wick Ballerina spinoff. Because in theory they should be able have to a female John Wick-like. But that hasn't happened yet.
The John Wick origin show was an abject failure, I'm not sure why a female John Wick should work. There are basically no actresses that bring the action credibility that Keanu does. Only one that comes close is Michelle Yeoh.
>There's clearly a way this can work, but a vast majority of action movies go for a male lead instead. There's no female equivalent of Lethal Weapon. There's no female equivalent of Die Hard, not really.
Again, what is the way to make this work? I see evidence that horror themed video game adaptations work (Resident Evil, FNAF) but I don't think this means audiences are calling out for a female led action series.
To be fair, if you told me way-past-his-prime Keanu could be an action hero again in John Wick I wouldn't have believed you. But it's sort of a chicken and egg situation because audiences are primed to see Keanu Reeves as an action hero because of The Matrix. But there aren't many actresses with that kind of personal brand where you can sell a movie on "Remember that actress? She kills dudes in this one." There's Jolie, Jovovich, Johansson, and of course Yeoh, but even Yeoh was often playing second fiddle to people like Jackie Chan.
>There's Jolie, Jovovich, Johansson, and of course Yeoh, but even Yeoh was often playing second fiddle to people like Jackie Chan.
>Jolie
I think she's directing full time now
>Jovovich
Actually don't have a clue what she's been doing since the resident evil movies ended? More video game movies?
>Johansson
Turned into too good of an actress, too big of a name. No studio is going to make a lean John Wick type action movie with salary being what it is.
The only other name I can think of is Charlize Theron
>Actually don't have a clue what she's been doing since the resident evil movies ended? More video game movies?
She was in the 2019 Hellboy which was not good, but that was hardly her fault. Then she did Monster Hunter, which was a flop. She then took a few years off to raise her youngest kid. She filmed a movie called Breathe, which came out last month and is fricking terrible. Sam Worthington is in it, too, and its' ridiculous that they were roped into such an incompetent movie. She filmed a smaller role in a movie called World Breaker a month ago, and she has a movie coming out later this year called In the Lost Lands, which sounds interesting, but has some red flags around it like the fact it hasn't been picked up by a US distributor yet, which could mean it absolutely fricking sucks.
>The only other name I can think of is Charlize Theron
Which makes recasting her in Furiosa sorta annoying.
Turned into too good of an actress, too big of a name. No studio is going to make a lean John Wick type action movie with salary being what it is.
That is actually a fantastic point. It also explains why some of these female lead action movies have such bizarrely inflated budgets because they get a big name actress, and I guess they feel like this is an opportunity to pay them the way male stars often get paid, but the reality is that a lot of the male action franchises start out with the male star not being paid a huge amount. That comes in the sequels.
Giving the lead in a movie a frick-huge paycheque is cripplingly unwise when the first movie probly won't do huge at the box office. You have to star out modest and grow the brand. John Wick wasn't pulling in 400 million dollars in the first movie. You can't spend 200 million dollars on a Black Widow movie and then be like, "Oh, we need to make a gazillion dollars to justify a sequel." No, you spend 30, maybe 50 million on the first movie. Keep it lean, keep it character driven, get people invested.
>She was in the 2019 Hellboy which was not good, but that was hardly her fault. Then she did Monster Hunter, which was a flop. She then took a few years off to raise her youngest kid. She filmed a movie called Breathe, which came out last month and is fricking terrible. Sam Worthington is in it, too, and its' ridiculous that they were roped into such an incompetent movie. She filmed a smaller role in a movie called World Breaker a month ago, and she has a movie coming out later this year called In the Lost Lands, which sounds interesting, but has some red flags around it like the fact it hasn't been picked up by a US distributor yet, which could mean it absolutely fricking sucks.
God I've never heard of any of those. Sounds like she needs a better agent.
I also looked up Theron and she's basically just been cashing checks the last few years. I'm sure Fast+Furious pays well but also it would be nice to see her stretch her legs a bit
>There's clearly a hunger for action movies about sexy women killing sexily.
clearly not.
do you think there's a hunger for women's professional sports leagues, too?
>do you think there's a hunger for women's professional sports leagues, too?
Yeah, women's sports is actually more popular than men's in Europe
Sorry forgot image
The 3 highest attended matches last year were all for women's sports
Israel has entered the chat
Resident Evil, Underworld and Alien.
That's about it.
Tentatively, Tomb Rider. Tentatively.
If the studio hadn't fricked up Tomb Raider so badly with Cradle of Life they could easily have managed a trilogy with Jolie. Instead they fricked up the movie so badly that Jan de Bont retired from directing forever in response.
A lot of it has to do with the fact that YA movies have the tone generally figured out. It's dumb but it works. There's a girl, she's special, she is maybe in love with two different boys. And she has to shoot people in the face with a bow or whatever. That works.
But for adult-oriented female action franchises, things get a bit trickier. Audiences are not that fussy, but they don't like cringe. They like tough women, but they tend to be somewhat irate if they think that the female lead is trying too hard.
Now there are a fair number of standalone female action movies. And some of them have done decently enough. But almost none of them have been able to turn into a franchise where people come back to see Kate Beckinsdale in latex again.
It's a pretty interesting problem, and we're literally 3-5 years away from any kind of answer to it. Because in order to launch a female action franchise today, you'd need to release a movie in the next 12 months, have it be a hit, and then get at least 2 sequels. If you can make it a trilogy and you're still doing decently at the box office, you're golden.
>A lot of it has to do with the fact that YA movies have the tone generally figured out. It's dumb but it works. There's a girl, she's special, she is maybe in love with two different boys. And she has to shoot people in the face with a bow or whatever. That works.
I get what youre saying. But the last divergent movie was a decade ago. Does the formula still work? Where is the evidence of this?
>Now there are a fair number of standalone female action movies. And some of them have done decently enough. But almost none of them have been able to turn into a franchise where people come back to see Kate Beckinsdale in latex again.
Are there actually a fair number? What was the last major female standalone action movie? Black Widow?
>It's a pretty interesting problem, and we're literally 3-5 years away from any kind of answer to it. Because in order to launch a female action franchise today, you'd need to release a movie in the next 12 months, have it be a hit, and then get at least 2 sequels. If you can make it a trilogy and you're still doing decently at the box office, you're golden.
Well yeah but that's not a unique problem. That's how it goes for just about any major studio release.
>I get what youre saying. But the last divergent movie was a decade ago. Does the formula still work? Where is the evidence of this?
They released a new Hunger Games movie in 2023. It made 337.4 million. Not terrible. Would have probably made more if Jennifer Lawrence had been in it.
Fugg I totally forgot about that. How closely does it follow the formula anyway?
It's a prequel set years and years earlier. So it's like Hunger Games but the whole thing is a foregone conclusion which is... tonally odd.
Pirates of the Caribbean. Keira Knightly and Orlando Bloom is basically a troony.
By the sequels Jack Sparrow had clearly usurped all the other characters. Which was honestly a huge problem because the character works a lot better in small doses.
The industry in general has really struggled to create a modern female action hero. It's frankly having a hard enough time making a modern male action hero that audiences will go to the movies to see. The action hero in general is built on the idea of a movie star. And there aren't a lot of modern male stars where people will go to the movie specifically to see further adventures of the character that star plays.
It's also kinda shocking how much Grandfathering is going on with these legacy sequels like Bay Boys 4 and stuff. It's a testament to how people sorta stopped paying attention after 2005 or so, and the recognizeable movie stars of today are largely the stars of yesteryear, but older. And that also encompasses co-stars. People are more attached to Megan Fox's character from Transformers whose name they can't recall than they are to any of the modern female Transformers characters.
>People are more attached to Megan Fox's character from Transformers whose name they can't recall than they are to any of the modern female Transformers characters.
Has a significant female character carried over between movies besides Megan Fox?
Why would audiences get attached to them if they are one and done in the movies?
The new movies have had a revolving door of characters, so that partially explains why none of them stick.
I love the movies.