Quote Originally Posted by Vivi22 View Post
As far as comics, things are changing for the better. Ms. Marvel and Captain Marvel are both kicking ass now, the new Thor is a woman (not to mention a woman rules over Asgard), the X-Mrn are generally pretty inclusive, though anyone with a healing factor will always suffer.

As for the movies, honestly, I have a hard time seeing the lack of female super heroes getting their own movies as being due to discrimination. At least not within the movie industry itself. Fact is when you make movies based on universes which have had 60+ years of not treating women that well. The reality is that in that time they've done a pretty poor job setting up female heroes to stand on their own. Many simply aren't that well known and the rest still aren't as popular as any of the male characters getting movies. And sadly movies cost a couple hundred million to make these days. It's a troutty reason to be sure, but I honestly think the only reason Marvel can go out on a limb with a Captain Marvel movie is because of the popularity of their movie universe. DC can do the same with Wonder Woman only because she's one of the DC trinity and probably the best known female super hero. These people are running a business and they aren't going to drop millions unless it's a relatively sure thing.

That said I do think things are changing and will change pretty rapidly. Black Widow may not have been in the title, but Winter Soldier was almost as much a movie starring her as Captain America. We've got some very strong female leads in the Marvel cinematic universe, and luckily none of them are actually dead or depowered yet (and Black Widow is made more badass by having no powers and hanging with super soldiers and gods), we're getting two major female hero movies in the coming years, which is also good since they have to plan these things years in advance, and we're getting a Supergirl TV series. That last one is cool, though I'm not sure how they'll handle the Superman question.

Anyway, have things been bad before? Yes. Are they still kind of bad? Yeah. Are they improving quickly? Definitely.
The thing is that everything you just laid out reinforces that it is due to discrimination. The male characters are thrust into the spotlight because they are male. Black Widow is just as popular as the rest of The Avengers and has tons of screen time within the realm of the latest Marvelverse films, so why do Iron Man, Thor, and Captain America all have three movies with a string of past Hulk movies to stand on and she has none?

You're right, Black Widow is badass. She's all over Captain America's story and involved with Iron Man's story, and obviously a key member in The Avengers. And we can go ahead and stretch this to Hawkeye and complain that he's not signed on for his own films, either, but the fact is that his role compared to Natasha's is so far down the line that he just doesn't have enough screen time yet to cut it for his own film. She does. But instead of capitalizing on the success and popularity that Black Widow has, we are instead fed with upcoming releases featuring crappy, (comparatively) obscure superheroes like Ant-man and Shazam.

You're right that these people are running a business and that they aren't going to drop millions unless it's a relatively sure thing. Black Widow should be considered a sure thing in the prime slot for the waging superhero films going on right now. So it does not make sense to me that she has been passed over for crap like that. These people are taking even larger bets putting Ant-Man and Shazam on the screen than they would for a Black Widow film, so why aren't we getting one?