Apes, Transformers And Dragons: But Where Are The Women In The Summer Blockbusters 2014?
Summer has arrived (if you ignore the weekend rain) and so have some fantastic cinematic blockbusters.There’s exciting viewing for everyone: out-and-out action, talking apes on a CGI-level almost incomprehensible, tamed dragons, a cinematic experiment that took 12 years to make and a romantic comedy to satisfy your sentimental side. However, if you delve a little deeper, an inescapable fact arises and the question has to be asked: where are all the women?
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Next we have Boyhood which is a revolutionary film idea, charting one individual through 12 years of his life from boyhood to adolescence in actual time. The film, as is obvious, has chosen to chart the life of a boy. Of course, there was a 50/50 chance that it could have been called Girlhood. Wasn’t there?
Michael Bay’s latest robots in disguise offering is also out: Transformers: Age of Extinction. The film is a new era in the Transformers franchise, with Mark Wahlberg taking the helm as the new hero. Unfortunately that’s where the evolution ends as the female in the film remains the classic ‘damsel in distress’, only this time it’s her dad who has to come to the rescue.
More: Transformers: Age of Extinction might not be great, but it's bringing in the money
Then we have Expendables 3. The third in the instalment of a group of old men who once wielded their guns and muscles in quite a few action movies, teaming up together to defy the natural ageing process and still kick everyone’s ass. It’s hard to imagine a production company commissioning an all female line-up with the majority over 50, isn’t it?
Next page: where are all the women in 'How to Train Your Dragon 2'?
How to Train Your Dragon 2 is fun for all the family – action-packed, enjoyable and even capable of jerking a few tears. But, even in animation, women get roles no bigger than that of female accomplice or long lost relative that looked after herself for 20 years before immediately needing to be saved by the men in her life the moment they enter it again.
Kiera Knightley is the only female flying the flag in lead roles at the cinemas at the moment. In the romantic comedy Begin Again, she’s plays a heart broken women who finds love with a little help of her music. Predictable perhaps but it’s all the ladies have got.
In reality, women are forcing their way into the foreground by screaming for equality in the workplace, on the street and in the home. We’re in the 21st Century and women are refusing to be mere background figures anymore.
It’s about time Hollywood caught up.
Keira Knightley is one of few female leads in Hollywood this summer