4

The Woman Who's Only An Adventurer Because Her Kids Are Dead

Even in sci-fi movies, women have to face a huge obstacle if they want to get ahead in the world. No, it's not institutionalized sexism or anything like that -- it's their loving (and living) kids. To put it bluntly, the only tried and tested method of getting your heroine moving is to off her offspring.

You probably saw this trope in The Cloverfield Paradox with Ava Hamilton, who loses her two kids in an accident before blasting off into the great void that is the Cloverfield franchise. After entering an alternate dimension where her kids survived, however, we see that she never went into space, because life is an either/or choice. You can either have children or awesome space adventures, not both. If you're a woman, anyway. When Matthew McConaughey or Richard Dreyfuss ditch their kids to explore the cosmos, they're simply badass.

NetflixIf Dreyfuss' character was a woman, a boulder would have fallen on the kids as soon as the spaceship left.

3

The Sexy Woman With The Mind Of A Toddler

Our culture puts a premium on women being both hot and young. It's typical, therefore, that writers can't stop making things weird. Hence "Born Sexy Yesterday."

This is a trope that appears with startling regularity in sci-fi. A loner, antisocial man meets a woman who needs his help, because not only is she involved in some twisted shenanigans, but she's also got the mind/naivety of a toddler -- while being smokin' hot and biologically mature, so it's OK to stare. It's the perfect package for your creepy uncle: a bangin' bod, a dependency complex bordering on psychosis, and, oh right, enough badassitude to kill anyone who gets in her way.

The most famous example of this is Leeloo from The Fifth Element, a lab-grown woman who escapes her confines and lands (literally) in the cab of a flying taxi operated by Space John McClane. They then embark on an adventure packed with shootouts, learning who she is, teaching her social mores, and enthusiastic fucking.

Columbia PicturesHe also gives her some tips on how to make her dye job look more natural.

2

The Woman Who Can't Stop Thinking About Her T&A

It's hard to write about something that you've never lived. Without that experience, there's a big chance your work is going to be at best a surface-level basic-ass reading, or at worst a bizarre pastiche of misunderstandings and just ... wrongness. That's why whenever you read a book written by a male author from a female perspective, the lead character is often so hyper-sexualized and narcissistic that it's a miracle if the first chapter doesn't end with her getting turned on by every inanimate object in a five-mile radius.

You might have recently heard some discussion about this trope, triggered after a male author attempted to position himself as living proof that men are as good as women at writing from a female perspective. His writing soon went viral, although not for the reasons he would have liked. If your heart goes faint, it isn't because all the blood in your body suddenly rushed to your now-engorged junk. It's a sign that you don't have your cringe shields set to "maximum."

J. Beachum

J. Beachum"And don't get me started on my sexy vagina. I definitely know what that looks like."

1

"She's A Strong Female Character!" (Without Any Strength Or Character)

In the early days of the film business, as well as the medium days, and much of the later days, women could play any role they wanted on the big screen, as long as it was "kidnapped," "dead," or "kidnapped then dead." After collectively realizing how much this sucked for at least 50 percent of humanity, screenwriters started creating better-rounded female characters, like Ripley, Princess Leia, or Buffy Summers, to name a few. They could still wind up kidnapped, sure, but they were also badass, intelligent, fearsome, flawed, and integral to the plot -- you know, like the dong-havers were all along.

In recent years, however, the term "strong female character" has become a half-assed shorthand for "girl with guns," and it's pretty sad. The archetype example is Trinity from The Matrix, for the fact that she doesn't really have a role in the movie beyond blowing stuff up and shooting that one guy in the head. In terms of character, she's as deep as a puddle, and just as warm.

Warner Bros. PicturesHer most defining character trait is that she can jump like this.

And there's a lot of characters like her. There's Valka from How To Train Your Dragon 2, Mako Mori from Pacific Rim, Wyldstyle from The Lego Movie, Tauriel from the Hobbit movies, and Pepper Potts and Lois Lane from the MCU and DCEU -- again, to name a few. They're all introduced as being competent, well-rounded badasses in their own right ... and then they drop out in order to let the main dude have his moment. Contrast that with Leia, who makes decisions that move the plot forward and has no need to tell us she's hardcore; she just proves it, one dead slug at a time.

Lucasfilm"RIP Jabba the Hutt -- Drowned in moonlight, strangled by his own bra."

In short: Fewer Trinitys and more Leias, please, Hollywood. (Minus the incest. You can skip that.)

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