My issues are not with how she was drawn in the original, but with how she’s written. Pamela Anderson’s Barb Wire was better written, and that’s a low bar.

Is this website run by retard feminists or something? The only good thing about this movie are Sydney Sweeney and her boobs

How is that a bad thing?

The difference, I’d say, is how the political aspect keeps the “girlboss” phenomenon and the “pose novels” from being recognized as bad stories. For several years at least, any pointing out of these issues is dismissed as misogyny, even when it’s actual misogyny to defend them. For example, propping up Ghostbusters 2016 with the claim that it’s a good movie for women implies that women are terrible at comedy and that such is the best they can do.

Really, girlbosses are probably a lot older than that. Lola Bunny in Space Jam doesn’t serve any purpose to, for example, help the team train as a mentor or anything like that. She just does a joke when called doll that was old and tired even when she did it, and was sadly done better by Pamela Anderson when Barb Wire was called Babe. At least then, the villains were able to use it against her when she loses her temper, making it a genuine character flaw.

She-Hulk likewise showed us that they have no interest or intention of doing a genuinely good job and would rather outright mock the fanbase.

An overcorrection should itself course correct over time, but this has only gotten worse over the decades.

I have two suggestions for this thought.

In earlier films, “damsel in distress” was common. A female character would make stupid mistakes she rightfully shouldn’t be making (such as tripping for no reason) so the male hero would look good rescuing her. That, or a female character would get brutally maimed or killed just to tick off the male hero. Viewers considered that attitude sexist and unfair; if you mistreat the characters that half of your audience identifies with, don’t be surprised when they don’t want to read your comic books anymore.

The “girlboss” phenomenon is a bit of an overcorrection. Now, it’s sexist to even suggest that a female character is capable of making honest mistakes, or excuses are made for her when she acts like a jerk. This is about as accurate as looking at a heavily made-up, airbrushed and photoshopped model on the cover of a fashion magazine and trying to sell it to teenagers as being the baseline normal for beauty. People eventually begin to feel inadequate because they can’t reach an impossible and unattainable standard, even though they’re repeatedly told that this is what ordinary people look like. Ironically, this makes female characters far less admirable. The viewers don’t admire her because they know she’s being artificially propped-up, and her greatest victories are often unearned.

The “Mary Sue” phenomenon is even older and more primal than that. I read once about how before H.G. Wells was a famous author, he wrote what he called a “pose novel”. It was basically a story where the main character was an avatar of himself, except better in every way. His teenage self loved it, but his adult self hated it, and he threw the whole manuscript into the fireplace where it belonged. He went on to say he wasn’t the first to write a “pose novel”; if authors weren’t writing pose novels, then Jane Eyre wouldn’t have been written, either. Teenagers are naturally narcissistic as they form their identities. They want to think of themselves as the center of their universe and more special than everyone else. Adults eventually outgrow this kind of thinking, but it seems we’re living in an age of prolonged adolescence. Today’s storytellers and filmmakers don’t seem to learn the lesson that they don’t have to be the center of the universe to make a positive impact on it. It’s why we get lazy stories where the heroes win not because of their strength or virtue, but because the universe configures itself to ensure that the heroes win.

It’s not radical progressivism; it’s just immaturity and small-mindedness.

Mary Sue-ness predates this millennium.

Do a comparison on Pamela Anderson’s movie Barb Wire and Space Jam’s Lola Bunny.

As bad as Barb Wire was, being called “babe” was actually a character flaw, where the villains knew that calling her “babe” would outrage her and could get her to make mistakes as a result.

By contrast, calling Lola Bunny “doll” just means that she’ll handily get the better of whoever said it to her and is little more than a distraction. You could get away with it as comedy if it was funny, but it’s not.

Hollywood doesn’t want to write women as nuanced human beings with flaws and limitations, because they see that as being contrary to the “girl power” mentality of just doing everything effortlessly and never being challenged.

True strength and courage are overcoming true challenges, which is why I claim that Hollywood does see women as inferior.

However, it didn’t used to be so ubiquitous. Even well-written stories involving female characters are often remade in the modern day with this kind of treatment.

Or worse, like when Sam Wilson sided with a terrorist over a senator whose only crime (for which he needed to “do better”) was wanting to give people back the stuff that was taken while they were Snapped.

They needed to have another villain shoot Flag Smasher because Sam Wilson wasn’t willing to fight back.

Somehow this is the guy that they expect us to be hyped over with the in name only “Captain America” movie.