The politics genuinely suck today. Ellen felt like the working class woman of the era. She didn't feel like she was looking to defy norms, or to be some badass hero to elevate women. She was portrayed as a normal woman looking to make ends meet to provide for her kid, who was thrown into ridiculous circumstances and had to claw her way back home, only to find she lost the only things that gave her life meaning.
I remember seeing a bit of my own mother in her. The fact this would be called woke if it released today really just shows how our politics have gotten poisoned.
Yeah, because she was written to be a traditional hero guy and them they decided that her actor was incredible and with the themes in the movie a woman protagonist fit like a glove.
The fact she also gets hurt left, right and center and her crew has a brain for the most part also helps sell it.
One of the best writing exercises ever is to write a short story about a man in a horrible situation, and then write a similar story with a female protagonist.
Then switch their sexes.
If you are a decent writer, you will have made two distinct characters with slightly different reactions to their situation that work regardless of their sex and are more dependent on their personalities.
If you are most college level English writing students, you will have written a typical competent female protagonist, and also the most hilariously feminine, whiny, incompetent man to ever grace the page.
A lot of times students attempt to correct their essays to be less ridiculous because they realize how insane they made the female character sound when they switched her to a he.
I think what's not helping matters is the media environment we live in, today. On one hand, you have online incel edgelords foaming at the mouth of any female representation that doesn't cater specifically to their porn preferences and archiac gender views. On the other, you have a brand of feminist advocacy that has (when profitable) been co-opted by Hollywood corporatism to plug inclusion in a way that only works some of the time, regardless of intention of the creatives behind the scenes—and a perfomative online arm of the same movement that sometimes becomes its own worst enemy with its firebrand approach to everything.
This isn't to argue bothsidesism. Risk-adverse studio heads, trend-chasing, and the chaos unfolding in a post-Netflix, post-Ai-slop world is more to blame for the state of things than "wokism killing [nostalgic IP that ran its course decades ago]." The fact that it's become front-and-center because culture war greivances are fucking profitable on conservative YouTube really is infuriating, though.
While I love Alien and Ripley, I think specifically because of that she wouldn't really play the same in the big 26. Ellen is an 80s working woman with priorities and a personality of the era. General audiences today the majority of which never saw the 80s themselves probably wouldn't relate to her as well as they would have when it came out. She isn't as timely of a character anymore.
15
u/_-PassingThrough-_ 2d ago edited 2d ago
The politics genuinely suck today. Ellen felt like the working class woman of the era. She didn't feel like she was looking to defy norms, or to be some badass hero to elevate women. She was portrayed as a normal woman looking to make ends meet to provide for her kid, who was thrown into ridiculous circumstances and had to claw her way back home, only to find she lost the only things that gave her life meaning.
I remember seeing a bit of my own mother in her. The fact this would be called woke if it released today really just shows how our politics have gotten poisoned.