You've likely heard of superhero fatigue, but I'd like to add another kind of fatigue moviegoers and show-watchers are experiencing; the strong female protagonist. 

It seems lately you can't walk into a theater or turn on a show without the lead character being a woman smarter than everyone else, more skilled than everyone else, or having some advantage that shames everyone around her, especially the men. These characters are usually two-dimensional and about as exciting as watching paint dry. They're infested with groan-inducing one-liners and are supposed to look stoic but just come off looking emotionless and lacking any personality. 

Bizarrely, Hollywood can't stop making these characters even though films that sport these badass female protagonists bomb time after time. What's worse, is that these showrunners and writers will look at the criticism and proclaim that the only reason people don't like these characters is due to something ridiculous like sexism. 

But it's not sexism. In fact, it's not even because the strong female protagonist is necessarily a bad character trope. 

The writers just suck at their jobs. 

There are a myriad of strong female characters throughout cinema, comic books, video games, and novels that a vast number of people of all kinds have fallen in love with. You can probably think of some right off the top of your head right now. 

Recently, I wrote about a strong female protagonist I really liked named Mizu in the Netflix show "Blue Eye Samurai." I liked it so much that I even wrote an article about it where I describe why Mizu is so compelling despite the fact that she's a strong female protagonist: 

But the character I fell in love with the most was actually Mizu, the strong woman protagonist. Mizu might resemble a one-man army sometimes but she is not invincible. She does not look to overpower men twice her size with feats of strength but instead uses her sword fighting skills and agility to her advantage. Mizu takes her fair share of blows and losses, and when faced with an incredibly large opponent, she becomes a glass cannon. She doesn't always win, and sometimes she has to be rescued. 

But what I love most about the character is that despite the stoicism she portrays, the show makes it clear that underneath is a very hurt and damaged woman. Mizu emotional pain is what drives her quest for revenge. She's not some smirking strong woman with nothing in the way of flaws. She's not perfect and she has far more depth than you'd think possible in this day and age.

Mizu has believable motivations, she earns her skills, and she is portrayed as something that modern writers can't seem to get right when it comes to writing strong women...she's human. 

The writers of "Blue Eye Samurai" didn't write Mizu as a strong female protagonist to write about a strong female protagonist. They wrote a story with a compelling character. 

Meanwhile, take any number of the female protagonists Disney has written in the past five years, be it a Marvel, Pixar, or Star Wars character. You probably can't name one you like and that's because none of these characters are relatable, even to women. 

These characters start their journeys as perfect and by the time the journey ends, they're still perfect if not more perfect than they were before. The only obstacle these strong female protagonists have to overcome is their self-doubt. There is no real hero's journey. They're boring. They lack any real humanity. 

Even now, a new director has stepped up to direct the new Star Wars movie named Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy. 

“I’m very thrilled about the project because I think what we are about to create is something very special,” said Obaid-Chinoy according to Bounding Into Comics. “And we’re in 2024 now, and I think it’s about time that we had a woman come forward to shape the story in a galaxy far, far away.”

It's an odd statement to make, seeing as how Star Wars has been dominated by female leads including Rey, Ashoka Tano, and Bo Katan who effectively took over The Mandalorian as the protagonist. But this shouldn't be surprising. By her own admission, Obaid-Chinoy is an activist, not a filmmaker. Everything she creates is for the purpose of activism. 

"Every single piece of work that I have ever created has a piece of activism in it," she says in the interview below.

New Star Wars director Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy admits she's an activist not a trained filmmaker.

"My body of work... has been guided by my activism and every single piece of work I've made has a piece of activism in them."pic.twitter.com/RB73i7wJnD

— MRCTV (@mrctv) January 5, 2024

I don't have to have a crystal ball or a time machine to tell you that this film she's going to create is going to flop and flop hard. Obaid-Chinoy isn't out to write a strong female protagonist, she's out to write feminist propaganda. Like many female protagonists, the message will come before the story and the only people who will enjoy it are those who subscribe to her ideological radicalism, if even they show up. 

She's not writing a story. She's not writing characters. What she's writing is an ideological delivery system. 

She's just creating propaganda. 

Her characters won't be loved. They'll be forgettable and boring. When they fail to impress, she and many others will accuse audiences of hating women. 

We've seen it all before a million times by this point. 

If I was a Hollywood writer, I'd take a break from the strong female character and bring back the strong male protagonist. It's clear that audiences need to be refreshed at this point, but if a writer absolutely has to make a stronger female protagonist, the focus shouldn't be on her strength, stoicism, or skills. It should be on her as a believable human first. 

If they would just do that, then maybe audiences wouldn't be so willing to turn their back on them and these films. 

And they'd get less bad press. A good product is a good product and at RedState, we try to bring news about the rare gems in entertainment today on top of the political news you've come to expect. If you'd like to help us keep going then consider joining our VIP program, which gives you podcasts, videos, and articles not available to non-subs. 

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