Oct
2nd
2014
Let Her Go Compilation · 7:03pm Oct 2nd, 2014
It's really depressing that Hollywood continues to recycle the trope of the female character in peril who has to be saved from the male villain by the male hero. I'm fine with movie cliches, but not ones which reinforce negative gender stereotypes. (Although, I have to admit that the final clip of the video is the only one to properly use the "let her go" cliche.)
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Bronystories · 677 views
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Well, there is one in GOT, SPOILERS, by Lyssa Tully, Catelyn's sis, is threatening to throw Arya out of the Moon Gate, basically a door leading to open air, and Littlefinger saves her.....and promtly throws Lyssa out the Moon Gate. END SPOILERS
2501769
That's a spoiler box.
Let her go, let her go! We don't care what the people say! They'll still pay to see our movies anyways
Well, most of these are action and horror movies. Most people who go to see action movies are men, so they naturally want to see the man rescue the woman. not really sexist, just knowing what the audience wants to see. There have been some movies to drop this trope—Aliens, The Avengers, the Evil Dead remake—but yeah. Guys want to be able to pretend they are the hero, so the make the hero rescue the good-looking girl from danger.
2501783 One of the worst cliches, aside from "I'll be right back", because that's something people actually say, is two people going off and banging, I mean seriously?!
I'm tickled by how the only movie during the "let the girl go" submontage that referred to the hostage as a woman is Orgazmo. Not the title you'd expect from the movie that gave the hostage a bit more dignity.
Also notable is Thelma & Louise, wherein we have a female hero.
2501781
Oh good, I wasn't the only who thought of that.
2501795
Any soldier can survive any battle in any war, so long as he never shows a picture, or speaks of his family back home.
Good cops are always shot down within two weeks of retirement.
Guns never run out of ammo.
Guns never need to be aimed.
As the difficulty of a shot increases, so too does the good guy's chances of making it.
As the difficulty of a shot decreases, so too does the bad guy's chance of making it. (This is also referred to as the "Stormtrooper Effect.")
Any person can land any plane in any situation with no prior training.
Helicopters start with nothing more than a push of a button.
If someone has more to add feel free.
2501913 if you have a big gun, are not afraid, are the leader of the group, or black, you will be the first to die when the monster shows up.
2502034
The first time the urban legend monster/psycho killer shows up it will actually be one of your asshole friends playing a joke.
I KNEW it was going to end with the Joker!
2502040 the stoner or the crazy guy knows something is up but no one believes them.
2502072 The more bad guys you fight at a time the less likely you are to get hurt.
Trope this. Trope that. Hollywood hit me with wiffle ball bat.
Does it really matter that this over used cliche is in a lot of movies?
No, because 80% of the movies that do use it are terrible.
Who really gives a shit what someone says in a movie?
You know what trope I'm tired of? The whole double standard abuse of a man from a woman.
Now that is something that actually does affect the perspective of others. You see a man hit a woman in a movie, he's the aggressor and she's the victim. Now if you see the opposite in a movie where the girl beats the shit out of the guy, it's funny and viewed as comedy.
And the thing is, these types of situations happen all the time in works of fiction and real life.
So if I'm supposed to care whether or not this 40+ year old movie quote/cliche is still relevant, I'm just not seeing it.
In the literal sense, you mean.
Which negative gender stereotypes would those be? The ones where a normal, untrained woman (or man, for that matter) with a gun to her head can't do anything? Yeah. Fuck those stereotypes.
2502129 all cars explode into a ball of hellfire at any impact.
That's not the only thing that Hollywood recycles.
Hollywood had a period of innovation that's what we called new Hollywood (for 10 years) then it died in 1960 when Steven Spielberg and Georges Lucas decided to make blockbusters movies (not saying that's wrong).
Hollywood don't really explore new themes for there movie thus seeing the same clichés over and over because they don't want to take risks and this is limiting there lose of money.
If you want to know more about scenario construction read "The Hero with a Thousand Face" from Joseph Campbell and also when you've read the book watch the movie "The Last Starfighter" after you've read this book you will be able to predict almost every movie from the 80's.
For me the cliché that exasperate the most is "Only America can solve this" just watch independence day or "every living creature of the universe lands in America first" or "wants to invade earth begins most of the time in America or will land somewhere else and comes to the U.S after".
That and the visualization of data on computers.
2502133
Ma Zibba
2502308
Good question
What kind of stereotype ?
The ones that it's "always the male who save the damsel in distress ?"
2502400 The car always develops an ignition problem as the bad guy is chasing you.
2502786 if the car doesn't have an ignition problem the monster is already in it and will wait until you check the rear view mirror to kill you.
2502830 Or you won't even get to the car because you tripped, especially if you're a woman.
Reality check: Romance novels also frequently show men rescuing women. Because lots of women like to fantasize about being rescued by a sexy man. Certainly more than men like to fantasize about being rescued by a woman.
If you have the balls to call women out as well, and tell them to stop fantasizing about being rescued, then I'm okay with that.
Or maybe it's okay to let people be people... just a thought.
If we counted the number of times a male action hero saved a woman, and the number of times a female action hero saved a man, first in Hollywood films, and then in news stories, which would be more balanced: Hollywood, or reality? I don't know the answer, and I don't think anyone else does either.
2502772
Is that a question or a statement? I honestly can't tell.
If it was a statement, think about it this way. Most of the movies that will use that trope have male heroes. Who, other than the hero, is going to save a hostage? Do you want there to be a random woman that pops up for no reason other than to save the hostage?
2502918 if you are a teen having sex, you and your partner will be killed before either of you can get close to finishing.
2502133
I was actually meaning that the phrase was used properly for comedic effect.
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2502964 You're right, from now on men should only be concerned with rescuing other men and have women only rescue women. #sarcasm,
2502308
It's more of, why is the woman always the victim/prize to be won? I swear, our movies haven't evolved beyond prehistoric times, where the man who is stronger than his opponents earns the right to procreate. That's all I see with this trope. A caveman clubbing a woman over the head and dragging her off by her hair until another caveman comes by to fight for the chance to mate with the female.
2502964
Fifty Shades of Grey is also really popular smut with women. There are certainly women who enjoy the fantasy of being rescued by a knight in shining armor. Sometimes, the things we like aren't the things we need. More movies need to take people out of their comfort zones; away from the familiar and cause moments of introspection. Instead of being journeys of discovery, too many movies are rituals in reassurance.
My question is, are these women given character development? Do they play a prominent role in the film? Or are they just a trophy for the hero?
Another annoying trope is the competent female character who suddenly becomes helpless in the third act so the male hero has someone to save. They can kick but during the first two-thirds of the film, but can't free themselves in the finale because the script demands that they be rescued.
2502980
I think the question is, why is it that the woman is always the one being saved? Aren't their plenty of sons, brothers, or male friends for the male hero to rescue? Can't a love interest be included without being put in peril?
The formula is shaken on occasion, but not often enough.
2502993
Because it was interpreted in the literal sense as a form of sadistic wordplay. Therefore, delivering a comedic effect. It's really a pun when you think about it.
I knew what you meant all along. I was just trying to add a little humor to how serious the Joker twisted Batman's demands.
2503007
I don't watch many action movies, so I don't know. Though I think character development and playing a prominent role is not enough for what you want--their personalities and their actions should add something to the story (and not just to the the plot). Juliet in Romeo and Juliet has character development, but Romeo never notices; he just keeps talking about how pretty she is, IIRC.
The trope I don't like is where the hero says "Let her go!" to some villain who's already proven to be murderous and sadistic, but doesn't have a gun or anything useful. Hey, I worked hard to get that girl! Of course I'm not going to let her go!
2502980
It's a question, sorry for my unclearness.
Well a sidekick or something like that, the hero is not forced to be alone, a scenario can always be molded to have some form of originality.
2503009
Indeed.
2502998
I've got a phrase for that:
"You should never take the audience for idiots but you should not forget that they are"
Why ?
Because it's unfortunately true in most of the cases.
Hollywood wants 3 things.
1:That the audience is satisfied.
2:That the audience will come back.
3:Money.
So how to attract people massively again and again and again, well simply do the same wining formula change one or two things and voila you have a new movie.
And by repeating this processus they convinces the next generations.
I don't know if Hollywood or other producer do this on purpose (I think not) but eating the clones of clones of clones of an apple begins to tastes fruitless (for me).
Well from what I see Humanity hasn't really changed, our methods have changed for sure.
I mean now we don't conquer countries or lands, now we battle whit commercials, ideologies, now we conquer the basic average human whit those kinds of methods.
And I'm not talking about all the methods who were developed in cold war who had to show who had the biggest.
In some video games (FPS ones mostly) some researches where made to know how much time the flash from a shooting weapon had to stay on screen (in millisecond) for the human brain to processes it positively, to bring more pleasure in the gameplay.
We can say that now we conquer hearts, yeah nooo... we conquer minds that haven't think or don't know much.
In my entourage unfortunately people are ok whit this because they didn't think of it or because they didn't have the time to think about it or simply because there eduction is really shitty and they still think that the earth and human kind is the middle of the universe.
The problem is by doing this we don't create new content no evolution of minds or not a lot and in the end our world will be like in demolition man.
Thankfully there's the internet, imagine if you could only rely on what Hollywood, tv, journalism, or library wants you to know.
2503007
Does the movie "Alien" is in that category ?
I don't really remember the movie.
2502991 Or immediately following.
250382 someone will always split from the group, Despite knowing that there is a killer/monster on the loose, to check something out.
I misread the title as 'Let It Go compilation'.
2503009 But if the formula is shaken enough, it's no longer a formula.
*skips ahead to last clip*gocurrycracker.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/cm-23138-050624abe3a9e6.jpeg
2502998
I'm honestly not sure how you get "strongest man wins woman and woman is just passed around as a prize" from this trope. I mean...I could understand how you get it from action movies in general (although, I would argue that it is more of a "the good guy always gets the girl", or if you want to give it as negative a connotation as possible: "if you are the good guy, you deserve to have a woman fall in love with you"), but not from the "Let Her Go" trope by itself.
However, as to the assessment of stories being unchanging from the times of cavemen, I would say that's relatively accurate. The types of flicks that will use this trope are the functional equivalent of a caveman sitting around the campfire telling all his caveman buddies how he beat up 15 sabre-toothed tigers with his bare hands. And how that hot cavewoman from 2 caves over totally wants to bear his children now. And you want to know why that is? Because in 10,000 years, what the average human wants out of life on the basest level hasn't changed. And unless we use eugenics to unnaturally speed evolution, I sincerely doubt we will undergo major change even given another 10,000 years. And that assumes that it would be a good idea to influence something so necessary to a species as their reproductive instinct.
2503009
Pragmatically, it makes the most sense to threaten the love interest. Unless you know a lot about your target, you don't know whether or not they hate their family. This also assumes that the family is going to be available for the threatening. Add in the fact that generally speaking, a woman is more likely to be weaker and less likely to be experienced at fighting, and that makes your chances of succeeding much better with the love interest than the male family members. Of course, that's only from an in-universe perspective.
As to why the actual writer would decide to do this? Well, I would imagine that most of the reasoning is laziness. But on reasons as to why it would make logical sense: the reason to do this is to provoke an emotional response. As mentioned above, if you use family members, you don't know what the person's relationship with their family is, however you can be fairly certain that most people are going to be or want to be in a relationship (and according to a quick search, in the U.S. 3.8% identified as LGBT, so that leaves 96.2% as heterosexual).
2503310
[insert overused quote about nothing being original here]
2503007
While this was in response to another commenter, I'll go ahead and respond to this:
Except that would be contrary to the purpose of action flicks. Action flicks aren't there to make you think deep thoughts, they are the junk food of the movie industry. They're there to be cheap wish fulfillment. Unfortunately, I can't agree with your implication that if we had fewer action flicks, we would have more movies that would cause introspection. There are very few people that can actually create movies that cause moments of introspection. Assuming that for whatever reason everyone that was currently making "junk food movies" started attempting to make the types of films that at least attempt to cause introspection, we would simply have a bunch of pretentious movies that are the equivalent of the director/writer jerking off in your face. Movies that act as if they have a deep message, but they really don't.
Now, let me be clear, I personally think that the trope is tired. It's nice to see it subverted, but honestly, I tend to enjoy movies that don't employ the trope at all more than those that do. (Unless of course, it is employed/subverted in a way that I find funny.) It appears that you dislike the trope far more than I do, and that's perfectly fine.
The point that I'm trying to make is that if you are sexist, you are going to interpret the scene in a way that will reinforce your sexist beliefs ("Look at that weak, helpless woman. All women must be protected by men."). If you aren't sexist, you aren't going to interpret in a way that will enforce sexist beliefs ("Look at that person who has a gun to their head and as such can't do anything."). Conversely, if you have a female hero, this isn't going to convince a sexist person that their beliefs are wrong.
While the trope can certainly be employed in a way that is undeniably sexist, the trope isn't in and of itself sexist.
tl;dr The trope may be overused, but it isn't inherently sexist.
2505062
The exception confirms the rule.
2505134
I will concede that point. I don't want action movies to be something that they aren't.
Seeing a hero say "Let her go" to the villain doesn't send me into a white-hot rage. It just reminds me how many films lack sufficient individuality.
Regarding other loved ones in place of a love interest, I see no reason why they couldn't be used instead. The script needs to convey why a certain person is important to a character. They share moments. That way, when the person is put in peril, you want to see the hero rescue them. In too many action movies, the love interest is more like a prop.
Thanks for your detailed feedback! It was quite insightful.
2505561 No, the pattern itself displays the trend, not the statistical outliers. We determine if the set of data is showing correlation in spite of possible outliers by summary statistics and the t-test. But now we're touching on a whole other breed of tripe and bile, statistics.
- Mark Twain, attributed
2505574
Yup, absolutely no reason not to use the other loved ones, it's just the writers choosing the lazy route. And whether you use the love interest or not (at this point, preferably not, so we can have further variety in our hostages), it will be a better movie if you develop the characters better.