Let's talk about this. Because on the one hand, I've written eight screenplays and a novel and every single one of them pass the Bechdel Test. Three of them have women as the main protagonist. The rest of them have women with nearly as much dialogue as the men. I enjoy writing women; I find them to be a lot more interesting than men. At the same time, I don't write "strong" women for the simple reason that "strength", in my understanding of the Human Cosmos, is not a Prime Motivator for women.

There is absolutely an imbalance between male and female characters in cinema. There are a number of valid and invalid reasons for this:

- The magic market is 15-25yo, and that segment is heavily about BOYS asking out GIRLS (VALID)

- 80% of screenwriters are men (INVALID)

- Men are far more likely to get in fights, point guns at each other, and generally provide the materiel for an action/adventure movie (VALID)

- The archetype of civilization still assigns men the role of instigator and women the role of nurturer (VALID)

It really comes down to the fact that what sells right now is big stupid action/adventure films... and men tend to be big stupid action/adventure heroes far more often than women. THAT SAID:

- Angelina Jolie. There's the Tomb Raider franchise, there's Wanted, and there's the fact that Salt was originally a script about a dude.

- Milla Jovovich. Resident Evil. Ultraviolet. Fifth Element. For someone who sings like Tory Amos she kicks a fair amount of ass.

- Natalie Portman. I mean, hell, her first role was as a waif whose family were gunned down by drug dealers who learns to be an assassin and then goes off to finishing school.

(yes, I just enjoy linking to that video for the hell of it)

"Strong female characters" to be sure... but in that genre of films, the men aren't exactly sensitive either. Tony Stark doesn't even shed a tear for the guy who saves his life in the Afghan cave. Sly Stallone famously would "kill you last" if he liked you. It's not exactly a genre for emotional depth.

And sometimes you don't even know the switcheroo happened. Salt, as previously mentioned. Ripley from the Alien franchise was originally written as a man.

I guess what I'm getting at is this: gender politics are complicated and blockbusters are not. If there is going to be ass-kicking (and in modern movies there's likely to be ass-kicking) there likely won't be a whole lot of room for exploring complexity. Combine that with the fact that if a woman has depth enough to not resort to violence, it's logically difficult to put her in a position where her only way out is violence.

So what, exactly, are we supposed to do?