2. The Female Writers
The Heat was written by Katie Dippold, a writer and producer on NBC's Parks and Recreations. Bridesmaids was written by Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumlo. Melissa McCarthy herself is writing and starring in an upcoming movie called Tammy. Again, a step in the right direction means that women are just as capable of writing successful movies as men are. The most common complaint about female characters is that men do not know how to write for women, that is why they are often degraded to secondary roles or written in the most extreme stereotypes. Now that isn't to say that all male writers out there are misogynists who only see the value of a female character by how many times she has sex with someone onscreen, that's ridiculous. The problem is that the gender stifles the possibility of a great character. Let's look at the Alien franchise and the face of the franchise: Sigourney Weaver. Her iconic role as Ellen Ripley stands as one of the greatest female characters in modern cinema. However, the character created by Walter Hill and David Giler, was originally conceived as a man. The purpose of changing the character to a woman, according to The Beast Within: The Making of Alien, was to go against the type in the science-fiction genre that was almost exclusive to male characters. Now Ripley as a man could have fulfilled all the same beats that Ripley as a woman did, but what strikes a cord with many fans and critics alike is the unlikely maternal characteristic that stands out in Aliens. Weaver doesn't play this side of Ripley as a dotingly sweet and frantic mother hen, she plays it close to the heart, her nurturing towards Newt doesn't constrict her other characteristics because the mother role is only as important as the survivor role and the soldier role she needs to fill. It is totally possible for a female character to have female qualities while at the same time not lose sight of what her original goals and intentions are in the broader scale of the movie. For a better understanding of comedy let's look at two movies (both high school movies because apparently the only female comedies I can think of are rom-coms): Mean Girls and Easy A. Mean Girls was famously written by Tina Fey just before departing her spot as lead writer on Saturday Night Live and jumping headfirst in to her incredibly successful and hilarious show 30 Rock. One reason that Mean Girls works is that it shows a satirical yet not incredibly exaggerated thought process of how girls work in high school. People relate to the characters there's an understanding and logic to each of the main four girls whether you like them or not. The writing of the movie is strong not just as a passageway into the mind of a teen girl but as a comedy. Honestly Lindsey Lohan is the weak spot in an other wise stellar cast, the jokes are constant and quotable, and it still holds up almost ten years later. This movie isn't just a girl's movie, guys like it too, which is hard to do. Several years later we get a spiritual successor in Easy A, a movie that also has an incredible cast but mostly relies on the impressive acting chops of the lead played by Emma Stone. Her timing, mannerisms, and character development are engaging, one that the audience wants to see succeed and triumph despite her incredibly stupid mistake. In this case, Easy A was written by a man, Bert V. Royal, but that doesn't lessen the quality of the film as a high school movie or a movie led by a female. It simply means that the writer had a vision that went beyond the broader tropes seen in high school movies. He could have made Emma Stone's Olive the "quirky" type in that she's shy, she dresses weird, she has no friends, and she isn't "pretty", but both he and Stone instead make a smart but vulnerable character. These movies, plus The Heat ignore the obvious of their female stereotypes and aim to just make engaging characters. And what a surprise, it turns out that audiences respond to good characters...