I am surprised anyone can draw meaningful statistics from such small sample sizes when so many variables impact the commercial success or failure of films. Trying to extract the commercial impact of female-lead vs. male-lead seems mostly likely to be an exercise in manipulating numbers to justify your political point. You'd need a much larger sample across a much longer time frame. Given that the authors have deliberately chosen a very small window when it would seem possible to have a much larger sample set indicates to me that the larger sample size did not demonstrate the political point the authors were trying to make.
If there were an "alpha" in having female leads to films, some smart man or woman would have taken advantage of this market mis-pricing to make the extra profit. To assume otherwise is to assume that everyone in the history of Hollywood was stupid.
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And the profits are higher for the company cause they don’t pay the women as much!
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True
I’m a 64 year old female and have spent my life watching boys and men be the lead in adventure films, the brains, the bad guy, the entrepreneur, the leader etc.... Of course films with women leads are making money, we’re starved to see ourselves.
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A whole lot of knee-jerk against what the article has to say, including some pretty hysterical tirades that seem to imply more women starred films is going to result in men getting lynched or something. All this just because of some observations based on box office numbers.
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I think it's interesting, tho, if you asked movie goers:
Who's the main character in Star Wars: The Force Awakens?
Uh... the girl.
She didn't get top billing because she wasn't the most famous actress. It *was* an ensemble film as MOST Star Wars movies *are.* But *clearly* the movie is *about Rey.*Just like the first three movies were about Luke and the second three were about Annikan.
Just because an actor gets top billing, doesn't mean the story is *about him.*It doesn't mean he drives the plot. Han Solo no more drove The Force Awakens than Luke drove The Last Jedi. Without Rey there would not have been a movie. SHE is the main character.
Here's the forest. You missed it for the trees.
---
Also should note:
The Bechdel Test is a *lower* limit. It's not some kind of achievement. It's the barest minimum that a film can be required to pass and actually treat two women like human beings, if the film isn't all about men and their petty parochial interests.
This isn't Highlander. There can be more than two.
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so, the only thing keeping women out of movies is men
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Funny how anything on the same side as The Last Jedi fails.
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Maybe it all comes down to 'do we really need to see another explosion or car chase?'
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I'm so bored by super hero movies I pass them by and have been since X-machina released. It seems to me that the minute a male hits his 40's he becomes a super hero. From then on it is simply a matter of *wash, rinse, repeat from *.
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Isn't that special? So will you now write that people are against men? If it was the reverse, you surely would.
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@pepper1 Where EXACLTY does it read that "people are against men"?
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Sexism! I demand parity in earnings!
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In spite of all the naysaying (or maybesaying), I still think the Bechdel test is an interesting lens through which to examine movies --- or, as jrd suggests, books.
It's kind of fun, or something, to realize that there are some great classic movies that would fail the test, e.g. Casablanca, Dr. Zhivago. (Surely there are many more, but of course I'm blanking now that I try to think of them. Suggestions?)
Doesn't lessen my love of these great movies, any more than realizing that the upper-class family's wealth in Jane Austen's "Mansfield Park" comes from slave labor in the West Indies.
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You MUST stretch before you reach, and this article includes some serious reaching. The films mentioned were either animated or Marvel; I don't necessarily believe that the gender of the stars was a driving box-office force. I would really like to see more female-led dramas, thrillers, action capers, etc. But, if you include those kinds of movies, I don't the main point of the article holds up.
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I'm glad to see that films that pass the Bechdel test tend to be more successful. Virginia Woolf discussed this idea in "A Room of One's Own." While progress has been made since then, we have a long ways to go.
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The top grossing films of 2014-2017 from the press release of this report
- Star Wars: The Force Awakens
- Jurassic World
- Star Wars: The Last Jedi
- Avengers: Age of Ultron
- Furious 7
- Beauty and the Beast
- The Fate of the Furious
- Captain America: Civil War
- Rogue One: A Star Wars Story
- Zootopia
- Finding Dory
Yep, plenty of hunger for fresh films with new ideas and stories. That's why only 1 film here in this list is an original production.
In 2017 the top 10 grossing films made about 22% of all film revenue. Studios will continue to make the same tired stuff because the rewards for doing so vastly out pace earnings for smaller films. They are seen as safe bets for investment. The key hasn't been either male or female leads, but rather the appeal of the "brand" of the film. Whether its Marvel with Black Panther, Disney with Beauty, and the Beast, or Fast and the Furious for some bizarre reason. I see no "hunger" for new things, but for the familar.
I feel this is a classic case of thinking A causes B, but B is in fact a symptom of C or even D. The report is trying to push a viewpoint, and so has no real desire to explore this point. Fair game to them, it's their report.
But I'd reckon if they made a Black Widow Marvel movie, it's not because the lead is a woman which therefore leads to a higher revenue, but because its a Marvel movie (a known franchise) and is therefore a safe bet.
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@Mark F The argument isn't that women should lead movies because they make more money; rather it is that studios shouldn't shy away from leading women based on the (now proven mistaken) belief that women lower box office returns.
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"The research also found that films that passed the Bechdel test — which measures whether two female characters have a conversation about something other than a man — outperformed those that flunked it."
This is funny. On an exchange on the Women's March thread, one celebrating (as always) Beyonce's tedious "Lemonade" -- an album entirely about discussing, obsessing about, and pleasing men -- an activist furiously informed me that "we don't need no white woman Bechdel test."
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@Hypatia I didn't realize the Bechdel test was meant to be applied to music. I think of music as storytelling rather than as a conversation. Also, Lemonade wasn't about pleasing men in the least. I was about a woman finding a way to handle infidelity in her marriage.
So much of contemporary music is about heterosexual relationships. I would be shocked if the music of your favorite female pop artist actually meets the standard you seem to be implying here.
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This article underscored the fact that frequently, when Hollywood (or other industries) insist that "We would do x, if only it made money," they are often operating under a working mythology that allows them to act upon their own unquestioned biases and preferences.
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@RVC Thanks for actually addressing the point of the article. The deflection in these comments is tiring and disheartening.
I commend Time's Up for actually attempting to make a business case for diversity.
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It strikes me that the results might be different if the numerous "cartoons", such as those listed in the first paragraph, were separated into their own category. Movies aimed at children have their own strong enticements beyond the disembodied voices of the actors.
Also it will not improve the outcome for women actors in live action roles if the studios analyze the data and come to the same conclusion. It is my impression, and I'm happy to be corrected, that such films tend to perform below blockbuster level. Wonder Woman is, of course, an exception.
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Ah, the wonderful never unquestioned "Bechdel test".... How many masterworks of literature would "pass", including those written by women, if we exclude trivial, bombastic or purely informational dialogue?
Could the author of the test be unaware that men routinely talk about women and women routinely talk about men? And what was she expecting from the movies? Quantum mechanics?
Given the choice between self-fulfillment blather and obsession with the doings of the opposite sex, do audiences really prefer the former?
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@jrd
I think the test asks if the women, at some point, talk substantially about issues other than relations with men. I don't think it demands that there is no talk of relations with men.
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@jrd It's striking how the word "blather" and "trivial" slip into your discussion of people who enjoy movies where two women occasionally talk to each other about something other than a man.
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@jrd “self-fulfillment blather”
Why is two women talking about something other than men “self-fulfillment blather?”
Also, yes, given your definition of “self-fulfillment blather.” If you had bothered to read the article, you have read the part about how movies that have passed the Bechdel test perform better at the box office.
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