Let me start off by saying the new Avengers movie is amazing. The jokes are hilarious, and the action sequences are incredible as always. It was a two-and-a-half-hour movie, but unlike other movies that length, I was never bored. As usual, the women in the movie don’t get enough credit. Now, Avengers is better than a lot of other movies—action movies especially—and maybe that’s because Joss Whedon is incredible. Whedon created Buffy the Vampire Slayer (which you should probably watch like right now), and has said previously that the thing he hears most frequently in interviews is, “Why do you write such strong women characters?” His response, he says, is usually something along the lines of “Why don’t you ask all the other male writers why they’re not,” or “Because you’re still asking me that question (check out the awesome acceptance speech where he talks about it here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/28/joss-whedon-equality-now-acceptance-speech_n_4169800.html)
So, thanks to the incredible human that Whedon is, we have powerful characters in The Avengers like Natasha Romanoff (Black Widow/Scarlett Johansson), Agent Maria Hill (Cobie Smulders), and the recent addition of Wanda Maximof, also known as one half of the Maximoff twins or Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olson).
Let’s start with Scarlet Witch. I really liked this character. Without giving too much away, let’s just say she develops a lot over the course of the movie and you really get to see her use her powers. Plus, I kind of love this part where she tells her brother (Quicksilver/Pietro Maximof/Aaron Taylor-Johnson) what to do and then proceeds to kick butt. Overall I definitely approve of Scarlet Witch. My only complaint was that I want to see more of her!
Next we have Agent Hill. She is subtly one of the coolest characters. She’s brilliant and you definitely don’t want to mess with her. She kind of just sits in the background constantly saving the Avengers’ butts. We do NOT giver her enough credit. What’s great about her in this movie is she’s in it way more than the last so you really get to see how central she is to the Avenger’s success. Without her, the Avengers would totally be screwed.
Finally, we’ve got Natasha Romanoff (Black Widow/Scarlett Johansson). She is absolutely incredible in this one. Yes, she was pretty fierce in the first Avengers movie but here we get to learn more about Nat’s assassin background, and it is heartbreaking. Personally, I thought she was a more prominent character in this film as opposed to the last one and I’m not complaining. Beyond getting to see a more emotional side, her action scenes were just as cool as the boys. Cap is my favorite Avenger because I think his hand-to-hand combat is way cool, but in this move, Nat got to do a lot of that too (spoiler alert: she even got to use Cap’s shield a couple times.) Johansson did not disappoint in this one.
So, with all these great female characters in The Avengers, why does the press and merchandise surrounding them still suck?
I don’t know if you’ve heard, but the lack of Black Widow merchandise available is so bad that Mark Ruffalo called out Marvel (http://www.ign.com/articles/2015/04/30/mark-ruffalo-wants-marvel-to-make-more-black-widow-merchandise).
Most of the merchandise for this movie with the full group on it excludes Black Widow entirely and while you can find stuff with her on it, it’s only for girls. And good luck finding ANYTHING with Scarlet Witch. So what gives? Why are we assuming that boys are the only ones watching superhero movies and why do we assume that boys wouldn’t wear a shirt with black widow on it?
Let’s talk about those offensive Black Widow comments made by Jeremy Renner and Chris Evans: http://www.people.com/article/chris-evans-jeremy-renner-avengers-black-widow-slut-comments-apologies.
Of course, it was absolutely tasteless of them to call her these things, but why are we even talking about it in the first place? I wonder if a ridiculous question didn’t deserve a ridiculous answer. Again, I don’t want to defend the comments because they were definitely not OK but really? That’s how you start their interview? Asking how they feel about Black Widow not wanting to hook up with their characters anymore? C’mon. Why do we care? Why don’t we talk about her powerful character especially given that we learn a lot about her in this movie? Can we really only see the female character—powerful as they may be—in terms of her romantic relationships? We see this time and time again. Take Katniss. Team Peeta, team Gayle. Who cares? That’s not remotely the plot of the movie. Yes. Renner and Evans definitely could’ve handled the situation in a less disgusting way, but they’re not as used to answering those sexist questions as female actors.
Speaking of sexist questions, I really love the interview of Scarlett Johansson and Mark Ruffalo where Ruffalo answers all the questions Scarlett usually gets: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9sEkdJrIRM.
I love this because Mark Ruffalo is awesome and super feminist and he is a great sport about it. It also points out how dumb the questions female actors are asked.
Overall, I would give The Avengers: Age of Ultron two thumbs up. The guys were great as always and the girls were great (as always) and we got to see a deeper side of them (along with seeing more of them). However, I’m wondering if the main problem now lies outside the actual film. I came into writing this thinking I could talk about how they weren’t portrayed as strong as the boys but I feel like in most ways they were in this one (thank you Joss). However, Googling the movie comes up with plenty of articles where there are problems of sexism in merchandise and interviews. Yes there are other problems I didn’t address (like costumes) and nothing’s going to change overnight. However, when it comes to the women of Marvel, I definitely see progress being made since they joined the Whedonverse and that makes me hopeful that eventually we’ll stop asking about female characters’ love lives while asking the boys about their fight scenes. Check out the women of The Avengers: Age of Ultron (and the boys too) in theaters now!