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Culture War Roundup for the week of February 19, 2024

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Do you know what was widely enjoyed by male audiences, with positive reviews, fond memories, and enough cultural cachet to spawn respectful memes and callbacks?

Jean Claude Van Damme movies

This is a vague statement about things from a quarter-century ago which sounds plausible and yet doesn't provide specific examples and so falls apart when you try to think about anything to back it up, a technique mastered by tumblr's Prokopetz.

(Wait... that's David Prokopetz... are you...?)

There is one Van Damme movie that still has any cultural relevance, and it's Street Fighter, and that is mostly because of a exceptional performance by the late Raul Julia. Nobody cares about Timecop, or Bloodsport, or Double something, or whatever else JCVD was up to in the 90s.

Today's equivalent of Van Damme movies are Jason Statham movies, and those are hardly the cultural juggernauts.

But a lot of similarly brainless beat-em-up action movies have been released with women leads over the years, often with better objective craft and quality overall, and male audiences have generally rejected all of them.

Once again, no examples. Let's try to provide some on our own, then.

2016, Ghostbusters - everything I've seen about this one leads me to believe that it's just not an engaging movie, with the plot strung together from unfunny improv sketches. The same would be true for a male-led movie, the level of contemporary standup and sketch comedy is just abysmal, SNL's material is so bad that being worth even a mild chuckle is a once-or-twice-a-year exception.

2017, Atomic Blonde - I'll give the screenwriters one thing, they understood that for the "female James Bond" to make sense the character needs to be at least bi, or otherwise the dynamic falls apart. Other that that and a nice Blue Monday remix, pretty boring movie. The villain had barely any sensible motivation, and the acclaimed oner action scene was a bit of form over function. Want to see a good oner? Watch the first 10 or so minutes of Climax.

2019, Birds of Prey, or a Fantabulous etc. etc. - Well this one was at least engaging. It was, however, absolutely murdered by marketing (title change), and was a followup to a flop, so it was dead on arrival. Again, the villain was a bit of a strawman, but at least there was scenery to chew. If you want female-led movies, I saw Underwater on the same day as this one and I liked it much better.

2019, Captain Marvel - this this the one that's usually talked about, isn't it? And it even made pretty enough money, I think? At that point, the MCU has been running for almost 11years, so people got tired of yet another origin story, an the main character is a flying brick whose only solution to a problem is "moar hand lazers", so the action scenes were so-so. Plus there was a weird undercurrent of... revanchism and spite in the marketing and interviews, so that would be a turnoff for the people who were on the fence (that last point is also true to a lesser degree for Ghostbusters and BoP, and to a greater degree for Battlefield V, a non-movie exmaple).

Black Widow, The Marvels - sorry, we're past the endgame, audiences are tired, everythings flopping now, Ant-Man flopped too.

Charlie's Angels - this one is was just straight up bad.

But all that enumeration in unnecessary in the face of the more important point - if I want to see a female-led and female-centric movie, I can just go see Portrait de la jeune fille en feu (shame that one of the lead actresses has quit acting since), I don't owe it to anyone to watch mediocre derivative capeshit. I don't watch Jason Statham movies either.

As far as I can tell, Captain Marvel only made money because it was sandwiched in between the Infinity War movies. People were hungry for Marvel at that point, the last film ended on a cliffhanger and the excitement was palpable. This was clearly the high point of Marvel's energy in pop culture.

I'm of the opinion that they knew Captain Marvel wasn't going to be very good and sandwiched it where they did to boost the numbers.

Ana de Armas was very well liked in Bond - the rest of the movie was an actual disappointment including Bond himself. Charlize Theron was awesome in Fury Road. Mackenzie Davis and Gabriel Luna were great in Dark Fate. Their scenes shine in comparison to Arnold and Linda who drag down the whole movie to mediocrity. Imagine how much better it would have been without them at all (at least Arnold).

The female equivalent of Jon Bernthal is uncommon to begin with and even more so for someone attractive enough to be a lead. Brie Larson doesn’t come close to convincing at portraying violence. Wonder Woman was successful in spite of Gal Gadot looking out of place in most of the action scenes (the last act being the worst by far).

Fights more often come across as cross fit than people trying to hurt each other and fearing for their lives in turn.

There is one Van Damme movie that still has any cultural relevance, and it's Street Fighter, and that is mostly because of a exceptional performance by the late Raul Julia. Nobody cares about Timecop, or Bloodsport, or Double something, or whatever else JCVD was up to in the 90s.

You have it exactly backwards. Nobody cares about Street Fighter, because it's a bad movie all around. Bloodsport, on the other hand, is a genuine 80s action movie, and while it doesn't reach the heights of Predator, it's still easily his best movie and the one I would watch if I decided to get some JCVD in my life.

Kickboxer is also good, albeit pretty much the same movie.

It would be easier to prove your case by showing hard-boiled or action female-led movies that performed well or are loved. Off the top of my head: Alien, Aliens, Silence of the Lambs, Fargo, Gone Girl, Murder She Said.

I thought Salt was a really good action movie with a female lead. I remember seeing talk of a sequel but it never went anywhere.

I’m not sure how well the movie did in the box office.

I tried to limit myself to the last decade, because that's when the complaining and metacomplaining really started.

The Tomb Raider series weren't cinematic masterpieces, but they did quite well with male audiences. Hunger Games also. Terminator 2. Kill Bill 1&2. Various versions of La Femme Nikita. There's really no need to scrape the bottom of the barrel. Add TV series and there's Alias and Buffy right off the top of my head,