Tessa Thompson has an issue with the way female action stars are being written. The star of the upcoming Thor: Ragnarok had some choice words regarding how women are expected to portray superheroes on screen.
In an interview with the LA Times, Tessa Thompson described the unfair position that essentially states that women heroes need to act a certain way, or can be easily stereotyped. She argues:
“There’s an unfair position that women are sometimes put in, in the context of superhero movies and action movies where at once they have to be very strong and fierce, but also sexy. Obviously, it’s still a superhero movie and so you’ve got to figure out when you need to stand with your hands on your hips and what makes sense. But we wanted to create a character that occupied her own iconography.”
Tessa Thompson went on to take issue with one popular buzzword that describes women. She feels it is a crutch that male screenwriters are leaning on too much, in exchange for meaningful descriptions of their female characters. Tessa Thompson says:
“There’s one word I hate in all scripts in Hollywood at the moment in describing women, and that is the word ‘badass.’ That word has just crept into every script that is pushed around this town now. It’s terrible, because it doesn’t mean anything. It’s a dumb male writer’s way of saying, ‘Ah, uh, she’s like, she, uh, she’s tough.’ Then straight after that it’s like, ‘She’s badass, but she’s got a beauty about her. And she’s sexy. Unconsciously sexy.’”
Thor: Ragnarok stars Chris Hemsworth, Mark Ruffalo, Cate Blanchett, Tom Hiddleston, Tessa Thompson, Idris Elba, Karl Urban, Anthony Hopkins, and Jeff Goldblum. Here’s the official synopsis:
In Marvel Studios’ “Thor: Ragnarok”, Thor is imprisoned on the other side of the universe without his mighty hammer and finds himself in a race against time to get back to Asgard to stop Ragnarok – the destruction of his homeworld and the end of Asgardian civilization – at the hands of an all-powerful new threat, the ruthless Hela. But first he must survive a deadly gladictorial contest that pits him against his former ally and fellow Avenger – the Incredible Hulk!
Stay tuned to Heroic Hollywood for the latest news on Thor: Ragnarok as we learn it.
Source: LA Times
