Were I not hooked-up, and old enough to be her father, I'd be stalking Alyssa Rosenberg because of the following graff:
There are hundreds of comic-book superheroines in the DC and Marvel Comics universes alone. Female characters play integral roles in almost every superhero team and major comic-book plot. Wonder Woman helps found the Justice League. The Scarlet Witch and the Black Widow are the first of many female members of the Avengers. Susan Storm Richards, the Invisible Woman, is one of the most important members of the Fantastic Four. At their best, a few superheroines transcend their paneled pages and become literary figures. But rather than drawing on extant rich stories about female superheroes, contemporary comic-based movies either downplay their powers and their personalities or rewrite them as trashy high camp.Dude, talk about what a man wants? An encycolpedic knowledge of MU? What else is there? In all seriousness this is a great, great piece. Alyssa chronicles the shoddy treatment superheroines have received on the big screen--when there was any treatment at all. I think Holly Berry may have done more to destroy Superheroines than any single person on the face of the earth. When I was kid Storm was a bad-ass--she beat Scott Summers without her powers. Anybody here remember her taking out N'astirh during Inferno? Moreover, I don't know if any character in the MU evolved more over time. She went from the innocenct, meek African chick to Michelle Obama overnight. OMG. I just realized...Michelle Obama is Storm!! We can come bck to that later.
Anyway, in Halle Berry's hand she was basically reduced to some mealy-mouthed chick whose eyes turned white. In the comic she flew through the air like Neo and relieved whole droughts. In the movie she was decoration. I didn't read DC, but I know there are some folks who are highly peeved about her rendition of Catwoman. What an awful movie. And where the hell is She-Hulk? If they do Justice League are the even gonna bother with Hawkgirl? One of the great things about Bruce Timm's Justice League and Justice League Unlimited was the prominence of female characters. There's even a episode where the whole world is left in the hands of women, and Hawkgirl and Wonder Woman have to grapple with what that means.
Frankly, I don't expect things to get better. Hollywood is doing a so-so job with superheros in movies, period. Under that cloud, I doubt things will get better, in terms of gender.
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
OMG. I just realized...Michelle Obama is Storm!! We can come bck to that later.
Yes, this is why I love your posts. Awesome and insightful analysis, plus total geekiness. A+, and I am going to hold you to coming back to that one later.
I will admit, I am hoping Chris Nolan has Catwoman in the next of his Batman films. I think (hope) he would do a great job.
PS Kind of on the topic, I was thrilled to see a wedding ring on Pepper Potts' hand in the beginning of Iron Man. I immediately realized what that would mean: an assistant to a superhero/powerful man who had her own life and separate existence and priorities outside of the hero. Awesome!!
Halfway through the movie, I got very confused, then saw her left hand again and realized it must have been a mistake. Sigh.
I think there is a great female superhero film to be made in Hollywood.
I'm just not sure when we are going to get it.
On TV, we had Buffy & Alias, which are, basically, female superhero shows that were awesome.
I was mightily disappointed when Joel Silver put the kibosh on Joss Whedon's Wonder Woman project. I think Joss, based on his previous record, would be the man for the job.
I would love to see an adaptation of the Wonder Woman arc from the George Perez reboot in the late 80's.
I love Wasp, She-Hulk, Sue Storm, and the rest but I still think Wonder Woman has the best shot at a good big screen adaptation.
BTW, totally agree with you about Halle Berry. When I first saw the stills from the Catwoman movie, I thought they were a prank.
Remember Helen Slater in Supergirl? Good times.
Part of the problem is that stuff that works for guy superheroes doesn't really work for female superheroes.
Imagine Wolverine. Dark, brooding, tormented, power unimaginable... but imagine a woman in the exact same role (Elektra, maybe?).
What you get is a character that you are much less likely to want to pay 12 bucks to spend 90 minutes with.
Is there a superhero movie, ever, that passes the Bechdel test?
The Catwoman movie is so bad it isn't even good under 'so bad it's good' criteria, which is a crime. (On a slightly related note, I still maintain that Angela Bassett should have been Storm.)
Angela Bassett is fantastic.
I think she is/was, however, too old to play Storm in the X-Men flicks.
Regina King has similar energy and might have been a decent choice, though.
Jaybird -
I wouldn't be less likely to want to spend time with a complex female superhero than a male one. Can you explain what you mean further?
(Dark, brooding, tormented, power unimaginable - I put that all under "complex"; maybe I'm wrong on that.)
Oh, and, we'll see what Watchmen does to the female characters...
Jaybird, what exactly is your argument? That movie audiences don't want to see broody heroes with tits? That women have to be less masculine as superheroes? I'm confused.
I think my argument is that society takes the attitude "you'd be a lot cuter if you smiled once in a while" when it comes to movies they want to see.
This is not me saying "yay, hurray, this is how it ought to be" but "movies about broody women will make less money than movies about broody men if teenage boys are the target audience".
Barack has got to be Cyclops then. He keeps it all in.
I don't have the time to track it down right now but I do remember discussion of a she-hulk movie with eva mendes at one point.
I always thought Angela Basset would have been a better Storm than Hally Barry was.
I think the issue is that the money people aren't convinced that men will pay to see a movie with a woman as lead, especially if it's a comic movie. It's part of the whole "women will see a man-movie, but men won't see a woman-movie" phenomenon, but it's writ especially large when you get into the testosterone jungle that is comic movies. I was completely surprised when an Elektra movie got made--though I wasn't surprised that it was such a piece of crap--and I think that the failures of both Elektra and Catwoman have effectively set back superhero movies with female leads for the near future, because it's easier to blame it on the concept than on the crappiness of the individual product.
And mark me down for another who was always in favor of Angela Bassett over Halle Berry as Storm. She was certainly not too old for that role.
I think Thandie Newton or Liya Kebede, the model(http://www.liyakebede.com/) would have been a better Storm.
I actually think Jada Pinkett would have been a better storm and she is a munchkin.
I almost agree with you about Halle, but I think Jessica Alba as Sue Storm was waaaayyyy worst.
I look forward to the Michelle O = Storm blog entry.
Wow you are young. I remember when Storm fought Cyclops (mostly for the stupidity of deciding who would be better to lead the team based on a one on one fight that had nothing to do with leadership skill) but I wasn't a kid at the time.
Wasn't the Wasp the first female avenger?
Don't forget Angelina Jolie. I don't care what anyone says, there is still a soft spot in my heart for both Tomb Raiders. Also, one can argue Wanted was a superheroine movie about Jolie's character. Unfortunately, the final reel of Wanted was Super Mario Bros. with guns, but Fox fit the superheroine profile.
I for one would love to see a film about a powerful brooding superheroine with the body of Jackie Warner, but due to the genre's history of recent flops it will be another few years before people attempt vehicles for female stars on the level of Iron Man & Nolan's Batman. The major film financers won't put money on the table for these kinds of movies unless they are virtually assured of success.
And remember, it's not just Catwoman and Electra that have faceplanted. Other movies with female superheroes have flopped too (or had middling success):
Aeon Flux (Charlize Theron)
Ultraviolet (Milla)
Resident Evil 1-3 (also Milla)
Underworld 1-2 (Beckinsale)
Bloodrayne (this doesn't really count because of the Uwe Boll factor)
There's also Kill Bill which was arguably a movie about a female superhero. Serenity could be seen as a movie about a female superhero (River) too. But obviously these aren't the same kind of tentpole superheroine pictures as Iron Man or Batman.
Wasn't the Wasp the first female avenger?
Yeah, I was gonna say.
Not only was she the first female Avenger, but she was one of the founding members. She beat the Black Widow in by a decade.
I would love a She Hulk movie ... can't think off the top of my head who would be the best casting.
I loved the first Underworld. Kate was dark, broody and killed a ton of shit. The minute the movies shifted from showcasing her bad-assness to relationship issues it went in toilet.
I think that Iman 20 years ago is Storm. No one else will ever be her in my mind's eye.
TV is pretty much the best medium for strong female characters right now. And they are all sci-fi. Love it.
Thank you!!! Everytime this summer I was like, I want to see a movie, I wonder what's playing this summer it would be, oh, another movie based on a comic book with no recognizably interesting women character, why bother. And if it wasn't a comic book movie, it was a slacker guy comedy, where the women were the responsible "other".
You'd think that if they were going to be so prolific with these genres they could have at least added to the variety by making one of the main characters female. It's not that difficult to make an interesting woman character. Simply take one of the copious male character leads and don't change anything about him except his gender. Like they did with Starbuck on Battlestar Gallactica, for example.
Anyways, I hope they do a better job next summer. There's only so much identifying with the all male cast in a movie a woman can take. After a while you start buying into the sterotype that women in fact are not quite all the way human, in that they don't experience the same array of emotions, especially darker emotions, to the same level as do men. And then, because you are fully human and do experience the whole variety of human emotions, you forget you are a woman.
I agree with the comments about casting Angela Bassett as Storm - she has the right physical presence for the role, which is always part of the game. I've never bought into Halle Berry in the role. As written by Claremont in the books back in the day, Storm had an authority that's never made it into the films. All the worse for the films.
There's certainly plenty of interesting female characters to mine in the MU. An Ant-Man film is starting production soon, but I think they are going with the Scott Lang version, not the sometimes stable Hank Pym, so that might eliminate the Wasp in that film.
Soon we will get a film version of Millar and Romita's Kick-Ass, so we will certainly get an interesting female character, but with that disturbing Leon vibe.
Rebecca Romjin's Mystique stole the show for the females in the X-Men movies, but of course she wasn't a hero, but rather a femme fatale, a role that Hollywood has a longer history of working with.
For that reason, an Emma Frost would probably appear sooner than a She-Hulk or Wasp.
On the other hand, I thought Anna Paquin's "young, vulnerable" Rogue was good, but speaking of dark, brooding female roles . . . I think a movie that followed Rogue's trajectory would be pretty awesome and would have a LOT of grist for an actress to chew. The physical isolation; the dark deeds done; the mental thefts of whole personalities and the resulting disintegration of her identity. Finish with a chaser of redemption story, which Hollywood loves. I'd actually like to see Paquin try the full story.
cminus -
They may be Avengers at different times, but Wasp and Black Widow were introduced to the MU just a few years apart. You can find BW in those early Iron Man stories, when she was still a KGB spy. Like here, when she's Hawkeye's love interest long before he became an Avenger.
I'm such a geek. And Scott Tipton is such a great resource for comics history.
@Jaybird First, why don't you tell us what YOU want to see. Second, there are just as many teenage girls as boys, probably more. Third, I male, though not teenaged. I love stories where women are authentic heroes. And dammit, we've seen plenty of films that have that, and they sell.
Alyssa rightly pointed out that the third X-Men movie killed any heroism in both Dark Phoenix and Rogue. Only Wolverine got to be a hero, and it was lame-ass as hell. About the best any woman got in that movie was Kitty Pride outsmarting Juggernaut.
Being a hero isn't about being powerful, it's about doing the right thing, even when it's hard.
Do you really think teenaged boys weren't completely crazy about Buffy? Buffy was most definitely NOT all sweetness and light. I have one data point, my son, who at age 14 liked Buffy, and loves to watch superheroes, male or female.
And never mind that, there's a lot more of us that like superhero movies than 14-year-old male idiots. And we want to see some women kick ass and be heroes.
I'd love to see them make a movie out of Powers. Talk about strong, and incredibly dark female protagonists...
I think what always struck me with Storm was that between her and Cyclops, she was the pragmatic leader while Cyke was the idealist who had so heavily bought into Xavier's dream. This seemed like such a subversion of female roles in comics. The women were the caretakers while the men had to make all the tough calls.
When I was kid Storm was a bad-ass--she beat Scott Summers without her powers. Anybody here remember her taking out N'astirh during Inferno?
Dude, way before that, in like her first issue as leader (when Cyclops had left over the whole Dark Phoenix comedown), she totally verbally bitch-slapped Wolverine into line. And the Barry-Windsor Smith-drawn epic Life/Death: goddess loses powers, is badass anyway, finds true love, finds out true love played her, kicks his handsome bronzed ass to the curb?
OMG I just outed myself as maybe your oldest, geekiest, girl-geek reader.
Seriously, I think we may have to look to a Whedon project on this front. His deal with Eliza Dushku as Faith in BTVS is probably still the best dark/conflicted/sexy supergirl yet.
Perhaps not 'super' but Sigorney Weaver in Aliens fit the hero role well. Power confined to her will and bravery rather than ability to shoot lightning bolts or win a hand to hand fight. The french La Femme Nikita had superhero appeal as well. The overly powerful hero, male or female, gets pretty dull pretty fast.
Andreyko's Kate Spencer incarnation of Manhunter has movie potential, working well as a hero who isn't overly powerful or particularly nice and is somehow deeply flawed. In that sense, she's the female Batman, but nastier and with a more complex personal life. I'm not sure it would get a greenlight with bigger "name" draws to be produced instead.
Powers would make a great movie and Deena Pilgrim a great hero, but I can't imagine Bendis handing over the necessary creative control to any director. Maybe if the dimensions of the dumptruck full of money were big enough...
Because...it would be financial suicide to make a big budget film based on a female superhero from the dc or marvel universe. The primary demographic for these film are young men who are looking for an action film with lots of testonerone. They don't want to see a girl beating up people or fighting. Female leads are good if the main draw is not the lead...like Terminator 2 where the real star was Arnold. Studios already made the mistake thinking the demographic of young men wants to see hot women in action films as superheroes. They don't. That's why they all have failed. She Hulk wouldn't interest enough people to warrant it's production.
I started to add in a note about Jane Espenson, one of the key writers on both Buffy and Battlestar Galactica, and on Ron Moore, to wonder why in recent years television, not film, is currently the best place to find complex, heroic women characters, at least in the genre of adventure.
And then I had a depressing thought that occurred to me the other day.
Is there any risk that Obama, if elected, will end up being our President Roslin? Eg, elected in such difficult times that he's pushed into abandoning nearly all his ideals in the attempt to avert utter defeat?
Holy sh*t! McCain is also so totally Tigh!
Sigh. I watch too much TV.
What *I* want to see?
I'd like to see Terry Gilliam do more work.
I'd like to see Time Bandits 2.
I didn't think that what I wanted to see was particularly interesting... I was just exploring why I think that movies with dark and brooding superheroines don't sell as many tickets as, say, Batman. Or half as many tickets. Or a third.
I think the problem is that She-Hulk -- to many people -- is just a female version of a male character. Sorry.
Halle was atrocious as Storm but the producers somehow thought Storm was the one with the weakest powers in the group? WTF?
The two women that first caught my eyes pre-puberty were Hellcat and Valkyrie in the 1970's Defenders. Valkyrie -- I see now -- is just a female retread of Thor and Hellcat -- hmm. Not sure about her usefulness anymore either.
And how about showing some love for Tigra in the Fantastic Four as drawn by George Perez?
"Barack has got to be Cyclops then. He keeps it all in."
Plus, like Scott, Barack's tall and lanky. The nickname of "slim" fits them both well (when Cyke's draw properly, that is).
What villain would McCain be?
Palin could be the Cheetah. Crazy, mean, and not opposed to skinning something for sport.
J-bird! C'mon man, we've just annotated how all the above-mentioned supergirl pictures had the big problem of s*cking like a Dyson.
Are you saying the fanboys wouldn't come if someone did a movie project with a dark, brooding female lead as good as Scully, Faith 'n Buffy, or Starbuck (the Katie Sackhoff version)?
Also, I would totally go with you to Time Bandits 2. You could have some of my popcorn.
I once asked one of my wife's (female) friends why women didn't seem drawn to female action heroes, like Jennifer Garner's Alias or Uma Thurman's bride in Kill Bill.
The friend told me, "Men like the idea of some fantastical element to make them complex -- like being a billionaire adventurer, or having super powers, or avenging some childhood trauma. Whereas women already see themselves as complex just the way they are. Seeing women as action heroes just seems over the top to us. We prefer relationships from the real world."
One woman's perspective, anyway. That may explain why Alias and Kill Bill only experienced modest commerical success. Women just aren't into it.
So why won't Hollywood make more female-led super-hero flicks? Maybe because women wouldn't pay to see them if Hollywood did.
there are just as many teenage girls as boys, probably more.
Demographic nitpick - teenage males outnumber teenage females. More males are born than females. Females only outnumber males in the overall population because women live longer on average.
@lizkde:
BG fandom is ahead of you, but Barack isn't Laura: www.tighroslin.com/
I'm watching BG on dvd, and not only does Tigh remind me of McCain, but by the end of S2 I find myself thinking "why can't McCain be more restrained, like Tigh?" (I gather that in S3 this won't so much be a problem.)
@JP:
I loved Alias. As does my pre-teen daughter. And the twop reviewer was female. I think it might have had a bigger female than male base. The Bride was way too violent for me, though.
I'm also a fan of Angelina Jolie. And found it interesting that while panning Wanted, just about every reviewer felt obliged to point out that Jolie was indisputably the toughest man in Hollywood just now--no mere Keanu brings testosterone to the screen at that level.
I think female action heroes are interesting, but Hollywood only lets Jolie be in the male mold of straightup hero, little "she just does this to avenge her dead beloved male" bs required. Then again, I find brooding helluv annoying in either gender, so I am not the target audience.
Continuing my thought on Alias:
One thing that clearly made Alias work for me was that when Sydney would dress up in fancy underwear, turn on some bad guy, then knock him unconscious with her elbow, Vaughn would get turned on. No hint of jealousy--occasionally some aggravation of the "what a jerk--feel free to shoot him" variety, but never "Sweetie! That guy shouldn't look at your cleavage that way! I know it's the mission, but now I'm all pouty...."
It's really rare for Hollywood to let a female lead have that. Look at Kate in Lost--started out as a strong character and potential leader, then from S2 on was a prize, a kid sister who always tagged along and messed things up, a hapless luster-after-Jacker, the go-to gal if you need a kidnap victim to work on one of the men....even my daughter gave up. "Just pick one boyfriend, YEESH!" she yells at the dvd player.
Well, I'd think that Kill Bill Part 1 is probably the best (Western) superheroine movie ever made. Part II suffered from the dark/brooding thing a bit much and Part II was as straightforward and realistic as Part I was over the top... but, anyway, I loved Part I.
Commercially? How did it do?
I'm trying to think of a Superheroine movie that did really well...
Charlie's Angels, maybe?
You've gotta admit: the chicks in Charlie's Angels couldn't stop smiling.
Kill Bill I made $70 mill domestically, $180 mill overseas.
Kill Bill II made $66 mill domestically, $150 mill overseas.
In terms of action blockbusters, very modest totals.
http://www.the-numbers.com/movies/series/KillBill.php
And just anecdotally, I don't know many women who went to see those movies. The demo was dominated by 30-something comic/kung-fu fanboys.
I love seeing women action heroes- Alias, Buffy, Kill Bill, Underworld, the entire run of BSG, loved it all.
No all of those things were moderate to huge, runaway successes. I just don't understand how these shows that run 13 45-minute shows each season can't put together a plausible 2 hour movie. Even Serenity kinda sucked (and I love me some Firefly. LOVE).
Movie producers just aren't wiling to take that kind of perceived risk.
T Harris is suspect now that he says he disliked Serenity. Other than having stupid names, the series and the movie were both killer. (BTW, where is the companion actress these days?) In fact, it may have been the names alone that stopped both these projects. While vaguely aware of them. I hought they were both teen/chick stuff for years and never gave a second look, and I am a pretty huge sci-fi fan. Fortunately my wife thought she was ordering Serendipity, the John Cusack chicky flick, and I was more than pleasantly surprised by space ships, intrigues, explosions and hot women. What's not to like? I will give Harris a pass though, if he was a fan of the series from the beginning, and then waited a long time anticipating the movie, he might very well have been disappointed. However, as a guy who thought he was about to suffer through two hours of Cusack-angst filled chick-flick, I just kept saying, "This is great stuff, how have I never heard of this before?" Then I watched the specials and found out there had been a series.
BTW - I do agree with most of the posters, the treatment of comics has been pretty lackluster. X-men was pretty good generally (except of course Storm). But others have been awful. IMO, for instance, Spiderman sucks. I know I am going to get creamed for this, but there are key elements missing. Where is the funny? Sure Spiderman had some emotional issues, but most of the time he kept them firmly repressed (like the rest of us) and disguised them with punchy sarcasm and humor. He didn't just kick the bad guys butts, he made fun of them while doing so. Spiderman was always part Bugs Bunny. And also the science. My brother, a scientist, always appreciated the fact that Peter Parker was a nerd, not just a geeky kid but a real genius type. In the comics, he designed the web stuff himself. He used his smarts. That element is basically missing as well. What a missed opportunity to get some kids thrilled about science for a change. Oh well. My consolation is that I own Marvel stock, so even when the movie blows, as long as it sells, I still have a bright spot.
I agree the woman super-hero is unfortunately lagging in Hollywood. There is also another untapped aspect of super-herodom, that of the minority super hero. Of course there is the greatness of Spawn, but it would be nice to see a little love for The Green Latern, The Falcon, The Blue Beetle, Luke Cage, Firestorm and everybody's favorite The Brown Hornet...hey-hey-hey!
Gosh, I wasn't going to keep geekily returning to this thread, but....here I am.
Keith, when I saw your post, I was thinking "Yeah, *Luke Cage*! How awesome could that be--the soundtrack alone!"
So then I checked Wikipedia and found that at one time John Singleton was working on that! But....kinda sounds like it's not happenin. Dam.
There was this time in like 1979 X-Men when Luke and Storm met up in Harlem and fought some drug dealers....
Shut up. Told ya I was old.
I saw Serenity before I saw Firefly, so it didn't grab me the first time around.
The second time around, I was (and remain) too upset that it's the end of the story for these characters. I want more Mal! And Gina Torres kicking more ass! And to see River keep on gaining powers! And I wanted the Agent to come back and be redeemed! And what kind of death was that for our Shepherd? I wanted to know his story!
So yeah, I actually dislike it because it left so much open-ended that doesn't seem like it will be resolved unless I want to buy the comic (which would be ok I guess, but no substitute for a story I began loving as a show). I like the world too much to see it end that way.
I don't get it. Resident Evil made money, and that was a lousy franchise! Why not give Female hero movies a chance?
Ya sure, but if you gave an Olympic pole vaulter some 38DD implants and painted her green, then sprawling suggestively on a bus bench is about all she'd be able to do.
I'm all in favor of a good superheroine movie, but She Hulk seriously looks like an hour and a half of straining to glimpse the camel toe.
If only the camera angle were a little more to the left.
Dude, no hating on She-Hulk. Jennifer Walters rocks! And she'd make for a rockin' movie. She's an accomplished lawyer, so she spends a lot of time saving other superheroes in court, her superpowers have increased her sex drive in a bunch of complicated and interesting ways, and she's got big conflicts with her father over law enforcement issues. Sounds like good stuff to me!
OK you folks know all about the superhero stuff, answer me this: What kind of Kryptonite did someone slip old McCain to turn him into this new bad McCain that all the old pundits are so sad about? Who slipped it to him and how long does it last? (My thought is that old McCain got hit with a big ol' blast of Obamanite and it turned him all upside down!)
"Don't stalk me from thread to thread, Jackass. Have the good sense to take your defeat, use it as a gag, and grow up."
Posted by: Barbelle at September 20, 2008 07:33 PM (qF8q3)
Oh Baby, you know you don't mean that! Why you gotta act this way? Don't you know that when you play hard to get, like this, you're just wasting valuable time, time that we could be spending together, working out our future, teaching the doggies new tricks?
And that's the worst thing. Whenever you get to talking in "that voice" it makes Lassie and Cujo start to whine, and then they try to crawl under the bed, with me. And it's crowded enough under here!
So think it over, baby, come back to us.
I will take your nerdiness, and see you some outright geekiness.
Here's the big problem with Storm, as a character in the books, and as portrayed on the screen. Storm's powers are simply too bad ass. Weather is just too powerful of an element. Honestly - she can shove a lightening bolt up a dude's ass, tear him to shreds with tornado force winds, and beat him to death with bowling ball sized hail all from the comfort of 15,000 feet. Most mutants just don't even stand a chance. Sabretooth? Laughable. Magneto? Maybe, but his fancy pants magnet powers won't be much help under a tidal wave. There is only one MU character that could fu*k with her: Thor. They've teased it a couple times, but the two have never really had it out.
Point being? How do you do justice to her powers in the movie without it being over in like 15 minutes? Magneto and Toad and other weaksauce mutants make trouble. Storm comes along and takes out the entire eastern seaboard just to make sure she doesn't miss them, the end. Not a fun movie.
The key for a good superhero story is to have the power and the character interact in a meaningful way - to have the superpower have psychological weight.
Superman was the outsider, Batman had the intimacy issue, the Hulk had self-control issues. Each is a psychological struggle made literal by a superpower.
For a woman superhero to be compelling, her psychological issues have to tie in to her superpower. And it has to make sense for a female, but also be universal.
Imagine a female superhero who could heal others, but at a cost to herself, and has to deal with the issue that she must reserve some of her power, let some people die, in order to preserve herself. That's a superpower with a strong female psychological undercurrent.
Nice idea, Muzz.
Me (female), I didn't see Kill Bill and the other Hong-Kong imitations because I'd rather watch actual Hong Kong movies. Plenty of female power in _Dragon Inn_. Heck, Hong Kong regularly has middle-aged women who are competent martial artists and also get laid! (_Fong Sai Yuk_, etc). When the hell does the West give me that?