What do you mean he wanted. He’s not even the one who posted the article, most the words you’re using that you are upset about, you introduced here.
I don’t know if that’s a credible complaint. Your link was about the need for the screenwriters to defend using the death of females to motivate both male main characters. That’s a feminist critique, as is the concept of 'fridging (I don’t think Ms. Simone denies her stance as being a feminist one). No fair denying the subtext once it’s spotted.
Personally, I think dead relative(s) in general is pretty played out as a character motivation (right Ubisoft?), but it didn’t occur to me to make my criticism gender-specific, while it clearly was in this case.
Thing is the critique doesn’t have to be inherently gender specific, it’s just that, due to the preopnderance of writers and protagonists, hey tend to be.
It’s no less fridging if it happens to a male child or spouse, but due to reasons that is less common.
It does raise the interesting question of whether women consider violent revenge to be a proper (or credible) motivation for their own actions, were their loved ones murdered in some gruesome fashion. In films like Aliens or Terminator 2, the female-led violence is more maternal or defensive in nature.
Sure. Fridging is a feminist critique. I don’t think anyone denies that. My issue is that @Woodlance then dropped a bunch of unrelated PC terms in an attempt to muddy the waters. There is no unified political agenda here. We were talking about fridging a well-liked character from the first movie. That’s it.
Speaking of the first movie, since she ended up captured, does that warrant the same criticism? I honestly don’t remember a lot of the details now, was there more to her than being a love interest and then someone needing to be rescued?
Sure. You could easily argue that the end of the first movie reduced her to a damsel in distress. I think it gets a pass from most because her story was more about the romance and how she made Wade a better man with their relationship. A dynamic in which she had agency. Plus, her kidnapping wasn’t even a primary motivator. It’s easy to see that Wade would’ve fought Ajax whether or not Ajax snatched Vanessa.
In this movie, she just dies then drops a couple of dream riddles at Wade to provide a motivation for him.
Thanks for the refresher, i can see why the second one looks worse in this regard.
And his is the key differentiator. It’s all about character agency. Which is why when a characters only role in the story is to serve as motivator by being kidnapped or killed, it rings shallow and trite.
Aren’t you talking about the first movie???
This all seems like such a weird complain for DP2 of all movies. It’s not like Vanessa was this super fleshed-out character with tons of motivation and story. She was the literal damsel in distress in the first movie and then gets killed in the first few minutes of the second.
The writers didn’t put a character with tons of potential into the fridge. She was no Wonder Woman.
She was barely more present than The Spaniard’s family in Gladiator.
I thought it was hilarious that people were disappointed at no post-credits scene. In my theater, several people were saying, “AWWWW! What a rip-off!” I mean, we got multiple really good mid-credits scenes; does it really matter where they’re placed???
Funny you should mention that.
In a way, you’re just describing the problem another way.
I don’t think it’s a huge problem in DP2; I see it sort of like the Bechdel test: a useful and sobering perspective on the industry, but not necessarily a useful analysis of an individual movie.
But still, the problem isn’t literally the death of a character or a revenge plot, that’s the symptom that highlights how little attention and agency female characters get in every situation.
So everything you just said applies, in both ways.
It’s not truly necessary that we know the story of every character in a movie. There will be incidental characters, characters who the narrative almost requires we only know insofar as they affect the story or motivation of the primary characters. It’s not always bad or problematic if a character is a barely fleshed out victim, it can just be a focus on the story you want to tell.
But if you start adding it up you might notice trends you’re not happy with across films about the lack of representation in those main characters.
I liked it but it is pretty clear that the whole movie was just a set up for a Shatterstar franchise.
This whole discussion reminds me of a Medium piece Lindsay Ellis linked to the other day, basically linking Deadpool to our culture of violence. What I want to sort of take a side-dive into isn’t the piece itself – honestly I don’t think it’s great – but that the fan reaction to it wasn’t “Hmmm, that piece is wrong because of x-y-z” but complete drooling unhinged rage, as Ellis observed on Twitter:
I’ve written similar pieces myself (the one that sticks out in my mind was about the racial coding in Crackdown) and gotten similar reactions - not so much “you’re wrong”, but “How dare you say out loud that this is even something worth discussing?”
And, well - I sort of do think it’s worth discussing? Cards on the table, I really enjoyed Deadpool 2 and had a blast, but I’d be lying if I didn’t acknowledge that sitting in the theater, just a few days after the latest school shooting, seeing kids in the theater, I didn’t have a few thoughts about “Mmmmmmmmmmmmmaybe this isn’t the best thing?”
So: I don’t love that article because I think it takes (valid!) personal feelings and maybe overgeneralizes them to Universal Politics! But, I also think the relationship between violence in media we consume and our own feelings or politics is totally a reasonable and interesting conversation to have! So let’s have it.
Just got back from the movie. Absolutely loved it. I never in a million years thought that any movie could make me like Shatterstar.
Truly the surprise star of the film.
Is Shatterstar the guy from Mojoworld? So Mojoworld is now part of the X-Men Cinematic Universe??
That’s a the guy, and yep!
side note:
green blood, too!