Slide idea's

Black Widow.. Then and now

Then:

When Scarlett Johansson was first cast as Black Widow in Iron Man 2, it's clear that she was just there to please fan boys. From watching the video above it's clear she was extremely objectified, with the male cast members commenting mostly on her costume and looks (a subject which Scarlett herself now hates to be asked about in interviews). The character seemed completely wasted in this film and nothing like her strong, interesting comic counterpart. It appeared as if she was just there to look good,and 'bring the tongues hanging drooling towards her' as Samuel L. Jackson put it.

Now:

Moving on a few years and the character has come so far, becoming a fan favourite. She is no longer a good looking mute, but a main player in the Marvel universe. One so popular that fans are demanding she gets her own film. The film makers have finally successfully portrayed her as the 'strong, independent, intelligent woman' that she is, who is no longer just the sexy character in the catsuit.

Film vs. TV

Perhaps where the Marvel Cinematic Universe is lacking, TV can make up for. Marvel has recently decided to bring more females to the TV screen, mostly importantly Peggy Carter, from the Captain America series, and Jessica Jones, a rather unknown character to the mainstream audience, but one that is popular with comic fans.


http://screenrant.com/marvel-netflix-daredevil-jessica-jones-casting/

The demand for females in the superhero genre..

As seen above, the demand and enthusiasm for females in the superhero genre is high. This want for a bigger female presence is an example of how the studio's are slacking. Yes they have female characters in their movies, but it's how they're used which makes the difference. A huge example of this being the way Marvel have treated the character of 'Gamora' from Guardians of the Galaxy. In the film she was a strong and prominent member of the team, however in reality she is featured on very little Marvel merchandise, which has angered a lot of female, and even male fans. (http://www.dailydot.com/geek/fans-notice-lack-of-gamora-merchandise/) So in this sense it appears Marvel are taking one step forward and two steps back in terms of representation. As well as this the demand for a female lead superhero movie is high, most prominently a Black Widow movie. Although it would appear this could be a huge hit, as over 40% of comic fans are in fact FEMALE (http://comicsbeat.com/market-research-says-46-female-comic-fans/) Marvel have still not announced any plans to go ahead with a Black Widow movie due to the risky nature of such a project. Instead they decided that having a talking tree and raccoon in a movie is less risky than a female lead.

Empire's review of Captain America: The Winter Soldier

Plot
Thawed-out war hero Steve Rogers (Evans) is ever more uneasy about his affiliation with deep-spy network S.H.I.E.L.D.. And when the organisation turns on him, he uncovers a horrifying conspiracy.

Review
There is something pleasingly, and no doubt deliberately, ironic in Marvel Studios' flag-wearing hero fronting its most subversive movie yet. Not that writers Stephen McFeely and Christopher Markus are being subtle about it. "You're holding a gun to everyone on Earth and calling it protection," Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) tells Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) early on. During the very same dialogue he says, "I thought the punishment usually came after the crime," and - just in case we hadn't got the point - "This isn't freedom, this is fear." Even so, what we have here is the key to Captain America's real appeal, the answer to any criticism that he's just a stiff-necked, steroidal boy scout. As a 95 year-old thirtysomething with an early-'40s value set in War-On-Terror America, he is less the USA's poster boy than its most steadfast foil. Something co-directors Anthony and Joe Russo (Welcome To Collinwood) clearly relish getting their indie-cred teeth into on a blockbuster scale.Post-Chitauri invasion, Rogers is a useful asset for shady superspy network S.H.I.E.L.D., but also a pain in the ass. During a great opening set-piece in which Rogers, Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson) and a squad of S.H.I.E.L.D. goons take out a crew of French/Algerian pirates, our blond hero complains of being forced to play "Fury's caretaker". This is not what he signed up for. This is not what America should be doing. History has seen the nation gradually diminished from world's saviour, to world's policeman, to a "caretaker" over the course of decades. For Rogers the moral decline appears instantaneous, and it rankles intensely. There are then indirect tributes to Edward Snowden's whistleblowing and shades of the NSA privacy-invasion scandal. Pretty bold stuff to be sneaking under the canvas of this primary-coloured marquee.It's uncertain how much any of it will land with the film's young, core audience, although this does feel like Marvel's most 'mature' picture yet, an admirable risk to take. It is certainly the studio's most talky and plotty, and the big wink that is the casting of Robert Redford (who, by the way, would have been ideal Cap casting in the '70s) as S.H.I.E.L.D. suit Alexander Pierce suggests 1975's Three Days Of The Condor as its most obvious inspiration. The Manchurian Candidate (1962) is in there too, for sure. But, as Rogers' journey manhandles him out into the cold and makes him a hoodie-wearing renegade advised to "trust nobody" and targeted by a similarly empowered super-agent (the titular Winter Soldier), the influence of the Bourne trilogy weighs down, too - the Russos even going so far as to steal a famous Bourne shot directly towards the film's end.The action and violence are the most grounded we've seen in a Marvel film. The First Avenger, with its steampunk-laser weirdness and numbing, never-ending montages, felt dull and insulated. Iron Man, Thor and Hulk all dodge (or brush off) bullets via their self-evident fantastical/sci-fi trimmings. But, apart from the fact that he lobs a big metal Frisbee around and has been artificially pumped to the very peak of attainable physical fitness, the Captain is operating on the same plane as Jason Bourne, Jack Ryan and James Bond. He even throws a knife at someone.Evans has settled comfortably into the title role, and bolsters its appeal with a precise charm, never letting you forget that the heart of a regular and sincere wimp beats beneath that rock-sculpted chest. He spends much of the film working up a will-they-could-they? partnership with Johansson's still-sparky Black Widow, who enjoys her greatest chunk of Marvel screen time yet. It's an engaging double act. And when he isn't ticking off Fury, running righteous rings around the cycloptic boss' persistent, end-justifies-means ambivalence, he's fostering a whole new buddyship with Anthony Mackie's likable veteran support-group organiser Sam Wilson.And then the wings pop out. Wilson, after all, is also The Falcon. Not just any ex-forces guy, but someone with secret impossi-tech that enables him to flap about like a supersonic swift. To chide this development as silly in a comic-book movie may be like spitting out a jellybean for tasting of chemicals, but even so, after the Russos' first-rate work setting up a smart, Washington, D.C.-based conspiracy thriller, it feels like a backstep into formula. And The Falcon does look naff: Three Days Of The Condor giving way to Condorman.Inexorably, the whole enterprise drifts into business as usual. The more the story refers back to the first Captain America film, the less interesting it becomes - its subversiveness becomes subverted. The twists are easy to figure, and certain reveals are just stamp-your-foot hoary. Plus, given the constant reminders that this is just one adventure within the greater Marvelverse, you can't help but be distracted by one, nagging question: wouldn't Tony Stark have something to say about all this? Especially when those huge, deadly S.H.I.E.L.D. machines - now propelled by his technology - launch into the sky.Speaking of which, The Winter Soldier is the third of the last four Marvel movies to take its final-act set-piece into American airspace and feature a lot of shiny CG things whizzing around amid orange-blossom detonations. In Avengers Assemble it was exhilarating. In Iron Man 3 it was acceptable. Now it's a case of, "This again? Really guys?" There's also an earlier action gag, in which the Captain single-handedly takes down an aircraft on a bridge, that is almost a beat-for-beat repeat of Heimdall's dark-elf ship takedown on the Bifrost in Thor: The Dark World - and it, too, feels like a last-minute, studio-led insertion.None of this is ruinous, though. The Winter Soldier does go out on an intriguing note, which should have big repercussions on future Earthbound Marvel stories. Captain America is an interesting character, arguably the most interesting of the Avengers, the one with the greatest thematic scope. And that can only bode well for his next solo, hopefully Helicarrier-free, outing.

Verdict
It may climax with an overly formulaic splurge, but The Winter Soldier benefits from an old-school-thriller tone that, for its first half at least, distinguishes it from its more obviously superheroic Marvel cousins.

Empire's review of X2: X-Men United

Plot
Following a mutant assassination attempt on the President, Colonel William Stryker initiates a war on mutants, specificially the superhero group, the X-Men. Now, they must join with their sworn enemy, Magneto, to survive; while Wolverine discovers that Stryker holds the key to his murky past...

Review
Where would X2 be without evolution? Three years ago, general consensus had it that the first X-Men movie, while enjoyable, was somehow lacking; that Bryan Singer, the Usual Suspects wunderkind, was patently uncomfortable working within the big bucks arena. Well, what a difference three years makes: for Singer has evolved. And as a result, X2 is one of the finest comic book movies to date, and a film that in every conceivable way improves upon its predecessor.

Singer's evolution is confirmed in the astonishing opening sequence in which Alan Cumming's teleporting Nightcrawler attempts, under duress, to assassinate the American President. As he bamfs [itals] around, moving too fast for terrified Secret Service agents (and the camera itself) one thing is clear: Singer no longer has any hang-ups about handling action. Which is just as well, as X2 redefines 'action-packed', including incidents both large (a suspenseful attack on the X-Mansion, during which Wolverine unleashes his berserker fury in truly iconic fashion) and small (a fiery conflagration at Iceman's family home). Spidey can sure swing, but, with a $50 million budget increase, this is the first comic book movie to really explore the potential of its heroes' powers. Halle Berry's Storm sets tornadoes on a pair of fighter jets in a cracking dogfight sequence. Jean Grey's telekinesis expands at a frightening rate. Professor X's telepathy has global consequences. Singer handles the diversity of powers superbly, assisted by cinematographer Tom Newton Sigel and editor/composer John Ottman, whose prudent pruning gives the film real momentum.

At 130 minutes, X2 is some 37 minutes longer than the original, and Singer needs every second of it, for there's a lot to cram in. Amazingly, though, Singer avoids the 'too many cooks' syndrome that so tarnished the Batman films, while at the same time giving pretty much everyone - save James Marsden's Cyclops, sadly - something meaningful to do.

Jackman's Wolverine is again very much the focal point, and the hugely charismatic Aussie conveys Logan's growing anger and confusion about his shadowy past. Yet he's ably supported by the likes of Famke Janssen, subtly portraying Jean's struggle with her burgeoning powers, Rebecca Romijn-Stamos, having all sorts of fun in a beefed-up role as Mystique, and the old stagers McKellen and Stewart. And the newcomers don't disappoint, either. Aaron Stanford is all rebellious chic as the tormented, torn Pyro; Brian Cox's Stryker is so nefarious that he enables the audience to temporarily sympathise with Ian McKellen's Magneto; and Cumming's Nightcrawler is a delight.

X2 is also possessed of an emotional complexity that won't surprise comics fans, but will delight connoisseurs of the summer blockbuster. This film wears its heart on its sleeve, be it Wolverine's anguished search for his past (which kicks off with a chilling confrontation with his 'creator', the evil Stryker; and which takes in a savage scrap with Kelly Hu's similarly-clawed Lady Deathstrike), the poignant sequence in which Iceman 'comes out' to his family, or Magneto's corrupting influence upon the X-Men. The plot, in which hatred of a minority group threatens to spark a global war, is frighteningly topical and Singer doesn't flinch from showing that resolution often comes at a bitter price - albeit one which paves the way for a pleasingly inevitable X3.

Yet it's not all FX-augmented naval-gazing. Though it does get very dark, X2 is unashamedly entertaining, with crowd-pleasing moments for geeks (the appearance of metal-skinned muscle man Colossus in full armoured form should benefit upholsterers everywhere) and non-geeks (a Nightcrawler-led mid-air rescue is exhilarating) alike. There's also a very welcome sly sense of humour, courtesy of a fine script by relative newcomers Mike Dougherty and Dan Harris, who manage to balance multiple storylines while maintaining continuity from the first movie.

There are problems - the third act sags a little under the sheer weight of storylines; while some of the expositional dialogue is a little heavy. However, this thought-provoking, scintillating and stylish flick has opened the summer of superheroes in fine style. The Matrix Reloaded may have better effects and The Hulk may be more eye-catching, but as an overall package, X2 is going to be hard to top.


Verdict
During shooting, Singer constantly referred to The Empire Strikes Back as his template - and, by jove, he's made a movie that's worthy of the comparison. On its own terms, though, it's a truly great genre sequel.

Empire's X-men Days of Future Past review

Plot
In the year 2023, the weather is really, really bad and killer robots have hunted mutants to the point of extinction. Desperate, the X-Men zap Wolverine’s (Jackman) mind into his 1973 body. Can he change the course of history?

Review

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X-Men: Days Of Future Past is a movie about the slippery paradoxes and mutable mechanics of time travel. Or, as James McAvoy’s Charles Xavier winningly puts it: “Future-shite.” Although the storyline was conceived back in the early ’80s for a two-issue run of the Uncanny X-Men comic book, it feels like it was dreamed up especially to solve the problem Fox faced after 2011’s X-Men: First Class: what to do with a franchise that’s been split into two timelines, with two sprawling casts? The answer, clearly, is to put all of it in a big pot and stir. Hence this vast-scaled, decades-leaping blockbuster, which throws in everything up to and including the kitchen sink. Plus the sleeker, leather-jumpsuit-clad kitchen sink of the future.
Marshalling it all is Bryan Singer, who seems to have himself jumped back in time. Whether he’s been recharged by his decade away from the series, or by the prospect of eradicating some of the dodgier plot-turns made by Brett Ratner’s The Last Stand — a movie that could now be retitled The Not Massively Relevant Stand — this is easily the most on-form and playful he’s been since X-Men 2.

Remember the magnificent, bamf-happy Nightcrawler sequence that opened that movie? Wait until you see the mutant melee that kicks off this one. Pitting new heroes, the flashiest of which is Fan Bingbing’s Blink (special ability: being able to play Portal in real life), against a teeming mass of unstoppable Sentinel robots (essentially a cross between the T-1000 and Louis Smith), it’s a thunderous succession of nifty action beats. And that’s just an amuse-bouche. Just as slick and inventive is Magneto’s (Michael Fassbender) escape from a plastic Pentagon prison — one-upping a similar sequence from X2 — and a series of moments involving everyone’s favourite nudie aqua-skinned shapeshifter, Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence).
Jumping between the future (light source: apocalyptic lightning) and the past (light source: lava lamp), the plot teeters on the edge of becoming exhaustingly knotty. Fortunately, the story distracts from any temporal muddles by zeroing in on three of the most charismatic characters in the X-universe: Wolverine, plus the younger iterations of Xavier and Magneto.
Charged with stopping Mystique from assassinating diminutive weapons-maker Bolivar Trask (Peter Dinklage) — a deed which will result in global extinction — Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) is hampered by obstacles: his claws are no longer metal, Magneto’s being his usual bastard self, and his serene mentor Charles is now a thirtysomething depressive who won’t get out of his dressing gown. In fact, the largest throughline of the film is dedicated to the latter (who doesn’t seem to have yet thought up his snappy mutant monicker Professor X) attempting to get his mind-mojo back. Given all that, and the catastrophic peril that hovers over proceedings, there’s a high potential for angst. But Simon Kinberg’s script keeps things breezy; there are quips, in-jokes, Terminator references and, one of the high-points, a callback to the F-bomb dropped in First Class.
Following in the footsteps of Matthew Vaughn, who gets a story credit here, Singer has a blast going period. Richard Nixon is glimpsed on the cover of a National Lampoon magazine well before he becomes a key player in the climactic set-piece. The film deploys Zapruder-y handheld footage to jitter up a tense sequence in Paris. And while First Class tied the mutants’ exploits in with US milestones like the Cuban Missile Crisis, Days Of Future Past gleefully rewrites the history books on a massive scale. Most notably by redecorating the White House lawn with the RFK Stadium.
With so much going on, and such a ferocious pace, several parts of the story feel undernourished. There’s not nearly enough Ian McKellen. And it would be nice to learn more about villain supreme Trask. What is his motivation? With him so physically different, why would he choose to persecute others who are different themselves? And when the hell does he turn into Bill Duke, as seen in Last Stand?
But what we do get here is largely fantastic, not only re-energising old-favourite characters (and after his two spin-offs, Wolverine was in dire need of that) but introducing intriguing new ones. Most surprising is the fact that the super-speedy Quicksilver (Evan Peters), whose Ramona Flowers-y appearance did not inspire much confidence in marketing materials, turns out to be the coolest thing in the film. The sequence in which he leisurely takes out a squad of lawmen while stopping to taste soup makes Nightcrawler, in the words of Blackadder, look like an asthmatic ant with heavy shopping.


Verdict
The best X-Men film since the second one, this sequel/prequel/reboot trashes the ’70s with élan. Some of the massive cast struggle to register (there’s only a brief Storm), but what’s here is all good. We want X-Men: Apocalypse, now.

Empire's Sin City review

Plot
Three hardboiled tales from Basin City, an American film noir community. Ex-con Marv (Rourke) avenges a murdered hooker, private eye Dwight (Owen) helps a red light district stay independent from the Mob and disgraced cop Hartigan (Willis) shields a dancer (Alba) from a psychotic sadist (Stahl).






Of all the comic-book adaptations that have ever been mounted, from Flash Gordon in 1936 to The Fantastic Four in 2005, this is liable to score highest in the ‘fan satisfaction’ category. No niggling here along the lines of “Spider-Man shouldn’t have organic web-shooters” or “Batman’s parents shouldn’t be shot by the Joker”. This collaboration between two one-man bands, comic-book writer-artist Frank Miller and director-writer-editor-cinematographer-producer Robert Rodriguez, is as faithful to the source material as those cheapo ’60s Marvel cartoons that panned over panels from the comics while voice-over artists read out the word balloons. Like most successful comics, Sin City created a recognisable concrete-but-unreal world. Miller mixed a stew of thugs in trenchcoats out of Chandler or Spillane, a spice of the ‘bad girl art’ that made paperback covers of the 1950s stand out from newsracks and a splash of the manga-ish stylised goriness which inspired movies buffs like Quentin Tarantino (who guest-directs one scene) have only recently discovered. The film exactly matches the look of the comic: stark black-and-white images, with the occasional shocking or beautiful splash of rich colour. Most modern noirs incline to the blacker side of monochrome, but Miller’s scratchboard techniques, adapted superbly by Rodriguez, often get the most impact out of white – the blank round reflections of a killer’s sunglasses, crosses of sticking-plaster on a much-wounded face, arterial gushes of milky blood.
The movie script also matches the original stories virtually word for word. The original mini-series was about Marv (perfectly incarnated here by comeback kid Mickey Rourke) an unstoppable but soft-hearted freak who avenges the murder of his sweetie-for-a-night by taking on a ghastly cannibal (a blank-faced, wordless, far-from-Frodo Elijah Wood). The film adapts this (later retitled The Hard Goodbye) and two of its follow-ups, The Big Fat Kill and That Yellow Bastard, seemingly unconcerned about the similarities between the plots and characters, confident that the seductive images and picturesque people will hold the interest. Lifting structure from Pulp Fiction, which is hardly in a position to complain if it’s imitated, Sin City has top-and-tail scenes that frame the three episodes, which are told out of order.
Be warned, though – this is a working definition of a boys’ film. Men are either wounded, sensitive mass murderers (good guys) or repulsive, sadistic mass murderers (bad guys). Women are either improbably beautiful whores (good girls) or improbably beautiful pole-dancers (very good girls). Any exceptions, like Carla Gugino as a male-fantasy lesbian, tend to get killed off – nastily.
The extreme stylisation takes the sting out of the pandering, though, in that the hallucinatory female characters tend to be exploiting male desire while living their own lives removed from others’ ideas about them. Arguably, the male characters are even more of an insult to the sex; Rodriguez and Miller’s once-in-a-lifetime cast of bruised, near-unrecognisable faces bring to life an array of tarnished heroes, each tougher than Mike Hammer on steroids, and appalling villains who’d be too deformed and demented even for Gotham City’s Arkham Asylum.




Verdict
Some women might deem this a two-star male fantasy of the sort they wish the men in their lives would grow out of. However, for the guys it’s Rodriguez’s best film by far and a treat for fans of good-looking girls in black-and-white, of classic film noir and of imaginative ultra-violence. It even has dinosaurs and a samurai chick…


Reviewed by Kim Newman

Are women in the superhero genre to please the fanboys, or do the studio's care about the female audience?

Focus films:

X-Men Franchise

• Focusing on the portrayal of the character Mystique
• Compare the performances of Rebecca Romijn and Jennifer Lawrence, and how the character they play has changed with the time
• Is the character sexualised through her costume or actions? And how is the designed to please a male audience?
• Positives/negatives about the portrayal of this character

Sin City

• Study how the film portrays women - focusing on their clothing and importance
• Are they main characters, or supporting roles?
• Are the female characters sexualised through their costume or actions? And how is the designed to please a male audience?
• Positives/negatives about the portrayal of these characters

Captain America: The Winter Soldier

• Focus on how the character of Black Widow is at the forefront of the film and is portrayed in a good light
• Is she sexualised through her costume or actions? Designed to please fanboys or female audience?
• Compare her to the male characters
• Positives/negatives about the portrayal of this character

Case study

Mystique (Raven Darkhölme) – Marvel Franchise

 

                                                                  Jennifer Lawrence
 

 

                                                                   Rebecca Romijn

 

In the film's X-Men, X2, X-Men: The Last Stand and X-Men: Days of Future Past, Mystique appears basically naked throughout these films. The only difference is in X-Men: First Class where she appears in her human form through most of the film, but wears a uniform when in her blue form. Although the decision to make Mystique naked fits with her characters development and idea of "mutant and pound" it does not fit with her appearance in the comics.



 

• In the comics Mystique is fully clothed in contrast the her onscreen appearance
• She normally always wearing her 'iconic' white dress, which covers most of her body
• The decision to make her naked while in her blue form is possibly a way to keep the male audience
• 'interested' in her character..
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The role of women in the super hero genre

Although there are an array of female characters in the superhero film genre, there are only a few which are actually somewhat developed.

For example:

• Hit-Girl
• Mystique
• Black Widow

.. And yet despite the extreme popularity of these characters audiences are yet to see a good female lead superhero film.   

 

 

 

Female hero's need their  own films too.. http://www.newsarama.com/15438-move-over-boys-10-female-superheroes-who-need-movies.html



The changing roles of women in film

Genre’s to think about:

·         Fantasy

·         Sci-fi

·         (particularly the superhero genre)

Important films to note:

• Alien franchise
• Maleficent
• Snow White and The Huntsman
• Frozen
• The Hunger Games
• Kill Bill
• Juno
• Brave

Etc..

First post research project