It seems lately you can't walk into a theater or turn on a show without the lead character being a woman smarter than everyone else, more skilled than everyone else, or having some advantage that shames everyone around her, especially the men. These characters are usually two-dimensional and about as exciting as watching paint dry. They're infested with groan-inducing one-liners and are supposed to look stoic but just come off looking emotionless and lacking any personality.
Bizarrely, Hollywood can't stop making these characters even though films that sport these badass female protagonists bomb time after time. What's worse, is that these showrunners and writers will look at the criticism and proclaim that the only reason people don't like these characters is due to something ridiculous like sexism.
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These characters start their journeys as perfect and by the time the journey ends, they're still perfect if not more perfect than they were before. The only obstacle these strong female protagonists have to overcome is their self-doubt. There is no real hero's journey. They're boring. They lack any real humanity.
Even now, a new director has stepped up to direct the new Star Wars movie named Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy.
“I’m very thrilled about the project because I think what we are about to create is something very special,” said Obaid-Chinoy according to
Bounding Into Comics.
“And we’re in 2024 now, and I think it’s about time that we had a woman come forward to shape the story in a galaxy far, far away.”
It's an odd statement to make, seeing as how Star Wars has been dominated by female leads including Rey, Ashoka Tano, and Bo Katan who effectively took over The Mandalorian as the protagonist. But this shouldn't be surprising. By her own admission, Obaid-Chinoy is an activist, not a filmmaker. Everything she creates is for the purpose of activism.
"Every single piece of work that I have ever created has a piece of activism in it," she says in the interview below.
I don't have to have a crystal ball or a time machine to tell you that this film she's going to create is going to flop and flop hard. Obaid-Chinoy isn't out to write a strong female protagonist, she's out to write feminist propaganda. Like many female protagonists, the message will come before the story and the only people who will enjoy it are those who subscribe to her ideological radicalism, if even they show up.
She's not writing a story. She's not writing characters. What she's writing is an ideological delivery system.
She's just creating propaganda.
Her characters won't be loved. They'll be forgettable and boring. When they fail to impress, she and many others will accuse audiences of hating women.
We've seen it all before a million times by this point.