Have you ever been in the middle of watching a movie or television show with the bad guy going after one of the female characters (sometimes the lead) and it’s the dumbest chase scene ever? If they have a weapon, they throw it at the bad guy. (And miss by a mile.) Or they meekly go along with what the guy says and must be rescued. Any defense class instructor will tell you to do something, even if it’s the wrong thing in a situation like this. The possibility of survival is better than certain death.

In 1997 we got Alien with Sigourney Weaver, one badass female. Since then, Hollywood went back to its old tropes. Recently, it’s been trying (and usually failing) to make strong female characters. The Charlies Angels fiasco comes to mind with massive misunderstandings about what a true strong female character is.

From what I understand about 1997 Alien, the original script was written without placing a gender on any of the characters. I wish I could remember where I read that, but it was probably off an Alien -Sigourney Weaver Facebook page or Stuff you didn’t know about said movie video.

Perhaps more movies scripts need to be written without assigning gender to the characters. This would ensure genuine female characters on the screen instead of mindless princesses that need to be rescued, or the unrealistic superwoman, but-this-isn’t-a-superhero-movie fiasco.

I’ve posted before about the fact that if you can’t flip the gender of your character without making things weird, you’re probably writing a bad stereotype.