Why we need more diverse superheroes

Unpopular opinion: I didn’t love The Avengers. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a ton of fun and—as an avid reader of comics—the fact that it even exists is very exciting. As a story, however, it ends up feeling more like an episode of a Saturday morning cartoon then a two-hour film. For some, that’s enough—this shot alone was probably enough to sell them on the entire experience. The Avengers, however, highlights one of the major problems with Hollywood’s big budget superhero fare—a lack of diverse stars. You might point out that there is a woman represented in the team in Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow, but her bland design and lack of super-human abilities makes her (and Hawkeye, for that matter) amount to little more than a sidekick. I’m talking about center-stage, muscle-bound titans; why do they always have to be white guys?

We have yet to see a female-led superhero film—despite the fact that Warner Brothers owns the rights to the most famous of them all—and the only minority heroes to star in their own movies have been Spawn (who is behind a mask for most of his screen time), Blade, and Hancock (who hardly counts as a real superhero). There is a bit more diversity when you look at ensemble casts like in the X-Men films, but no independently operating, iconic costumed heroes like Captain America or Superman has been of the black, Asian, Latino (and so on) persuasion. So why is it that we haven’t seen more non-straight/white/male super-leads? Well, because it’s perceived “financial viability”, or lack thereof.

Studios don’t believe that they can make large enough returns on big budget movies without a grizzled white guy at its core; Just look at the new Godzilla. One of the major flaws with the film is that the main character, Ford, seems to have been shoved into the script just so the star can be a young soldier with a nuclear family, rather then a middle-aged Japanese scientist. I guarantee Ford (played by Aaron Tyler Johnson) wasn’t in the first draft of the screenplay, and that Dr. Serizowa (played by Ken Watanabe) was the driving force of the plot. This mindset, which led to the insertion of an unneeded and uninteresting character, is completely flawed because people bought tickets to see the GIANT LIZARD, not an emotionless soldier with a broadly Chicago accent. The fact that he is white or a man is obviously not what makes him boring, but the fact that he feels out of place in the movie exposes the inherent problem.

The logic that was applied to Godzilla has also stunted the development of Wonder Woman into a possible franchise, despite the fact that she is already a major pop culture icon. Warner Brothers has had over thirty years to get the character into cinemas, and are now hesitantly doing so in Batman v. Superman in a very small way. A solo film, however, has yet to be announced. In an interview with Hollywood Reporter, the president of DC Entertainment said that, “we are still trying right now, but she’s tricky”. In a world where we‘ve already had eight Batman films, and six Superman movies, it’s inexcusable that we haven’t had at least one Wonder Woman movie.

Female and minority leads in big budget movies obviously aren’t toxic at the box office—f The Hunger Games series has already pulled in over a billion and a half dollars worldwide—the problem is Holywood’s perception of movie-going audiences. The conviction is that the people who go to see superhero movies are predominantly young white males, therefore the main character must reflect that. This assumes, however, that this specific audience would only see the film if the main character is—again—a young white guy. They are not. They are there to see people fly around and punch things. A Wonder Woman movie, if done right, would probably crack the billion dollar mark. Want to know why? Because women are dying to see themselves represented prominently in films that aren’t romantic comedies. Making a female-led superhero film wouldn’t alienate audiences, it would simply add a new demographic to the audience; the same could be said of having any minority lead. All people want is to have a fun time at the movies.

This may seem like a bit of a fallacy—the white male demographic isn’t going to see a romantic film just because it has a white male lead—but that’s because there is no demand for more white male leads (there’s plenty). There is a demand for more diversity from other demographics. Because women and minorities are underrepresented in media, or relegated to specific roles and stereotypes, there is a desire to break out of the confines of that box. Many black moviegoers who don’t usually go see superhero films would undoubtedly go see a Black Panther movie because it is, in many ways, an event. The first black superhero in his own one hundred and fifty million dollar (plus) blockbuster? Why would you want to miss that? Given that the film is good, you can combine both the new demographic—who is stepping outside their genre-preference to support a lead that reflects their life experience—with the one that just wants to see people running around in costumes fighting crime.

Everyone wants to be represented by art and media. The studios are simply dumb to not take advantage of this demand, as they could be involving so many commonly untapped audiences in the comic-book movie fun. Hopefully a Wonder Woman—Ms. Marvel, Black Panther, Static, etc.—movie is on the horizon. Superheroes are comments on the human experience, so to achieve a full spectrum of understanding, they should reflect everyone.