It’s one of the worst action movie clichés: bad guy captures female character and the hero yells at the villain to release the love interest/partner/sister. How much does it happen? Entirely too damn much.
This supercut of mostly male protagonists saying the same three words — there’s one instance of ‘let go of her,’ to shake things up — comes via The Huffington Post. The scenes come from 97 movies and, while that’s a lot, you just know that there are hundreds more of ‘let her go’ moments out there. By my count, there’s one woman saying the three little words in the supercut, which happens at 3:47 in a Thelma & Louise scene. “I’m the one you want!” No, ‘let-her-go’ scenes, you’re really not.
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6 responses to “Hollywood’s Hero Dudes Really Want Them To ‘Let Her Go’”
Uh huh, we are aware that much of modern history was male-dominated. I’m not sure what ridiculing our obvious past actually does at this point besides preach to the converted and i’m also unsure of why actual solutions are being suggested that don’t destroy the concept of provocative, original and insightful storytelling. I mean solutions already exist but no one talks about them.
All we ever talk about is arbitrary inclusion and role-reversal. This isn’t change or progress, it’s just substitution. Clementine is progress, before that, April Ryan was progress, Ellen Ripley was progress. Strong characters and strong storytelling is all we need. Pointing out arbitrary tropes and scenes has no significance to anything whatsoever and isn’t an indightment of the film it’s in. It’s nothing and telling people it’s actually something completely misrepresents the impact and scope of storytelling in film. The way we reach gender equality is through education, especially on representation in media, not pointing our fingers at arbitrary spots saying “tsk, tsk”.
Man, Ellen Ripley though, top character she.
Pacific Rim was great too, no objectification, female characer with a major and climactic role.
New movie idea…
Bad guy kidnaps someone.
Good guy says “meh”.
Makes himself a sandwich.
Credits roll.
There wasn’t much I enjoyed about the rebooted Spiderman movie but I cracked a big smile when the Lizard finds Emma Stone and takes the plot device/gadget from her then gingerly strolls off. The audience (and cleverly, even Emma Stone) are left with a look on their face that says: “wait … isn’t he supposed to take the damsel into his clutches?” But Lizard was all like: “I got my gadget, I’m off to escilate my dastardly plot, what do I need a girl for?”
At the end there’s a link for the Ultimate Charles Bronson movie trailer – it’s epic!!!