I think I was somewhere in the third (the third!) Iron Man movie when I finally wondered “Why am I here?”
If you asked me who my favorite Avenger was, I’d say “Tony Stark”. But I was completely unable to articulate why I liked him. When all was said and done, there wasn’t much about him to like– canonically, he’s an alcoholic playboy, and even the more cleaned-up version Robert Downey, Jr. plays dresses like he has a copy of The Game on his bookshelf.
And yet I had figurines. I had the Essential Iron Man. I even had (when no one was looking) tried on an adult-sized Iron Man mask in a Target toy aisle.
But why do all that, if the character is such an asshole?
***
My love for other hero franchises–such as the Riddick saga–was much easier for me to articulate. Especially the first movie, Pitch Black.
The plot is simple, a sci-fi variation on the “And Then There Were None” style of horror movie. Vin Diesel (lead of many of the Fast and Furious movies and curator of his own Facebook page) plays the gloriously muscled convict Richard B. Riddick, who spends a lot of time in various bondage gear as he’s being transported to an intergalactic prison by a “lawman” called Johns. When the spaceship carrying Riddick crash-lands on a planet with two suns, it leaves only a mismatched group of survivors. When the survivors start to die, they blame all their troubles on Riddick… only to find that the planet is home to all manner of flesh-hungry aliens. And they’re going to need his help.
Fortunately, Riddick–wanted across the galaxy for murder– is scary enough to give even aliens pause. During the entirety of Pitch Black, he’s portrayed as the ultimate survivor, able to perform feats such as dislocating both his shoulders in order to get out of the bonds Johns has put him in. He’s also a perfect Alpha Male, as much of a Gary Stu as Stark or Batman is, though instead of having limitless wealth or engineering genius he has the body of Vin Diesel and the street smarts of someone raised in the penal system. He even has a superpower: special “night shine” eyes that allow him to see in the dark, especially helpful for a planet that that is bathed in darkness for a full month of the year, not to mention populated with beats that want to turn his head into an appetizer. And it’s his eyes that draw one of the survivors–a thirteen-year-old boy named Jack–right to him.
Jack is a boy desperate to be a man, so it’s no surprise that he mimics Riddick’s appearance and swagger despite the disapproval of the other survivors. (Riddick, like a lot of Vin Diesel’s characters, could be the poster boy for the Joys of Manliness, and later in the franchise he is actually dubbed the “Alpha Furyan”.) Even though they’re marooned on a planet filled with head-crunching aliens, Jack plays at being a badass, sneaking up on one of the crewmembers simply for the fun of making him scream. When they rescue another screaming crewmate, you can hear Jack in the background taking credit, trying to puff himself up and seem more important than he is. And when Riddick tells him that to get his magic eyes, “You have to kill a lot of people,” Jack makes it very, very clear that he wants to be a murderer too.
In fact, if you follow the trajectory of the first three movies–and I’m even counting the made-for-DVD anime, Dark Fury–Jack seems destined to become Riddick’s successor. He commits his first murder, joins up with bounty hunters and eventually ends up in Crematoria, one of the worst prisons in the known universe.
***
When it’s revealed in Pitch Black that Jack is a girl, it’s done in the nastiest, most humiliating way possible.
Riddick mentions that the aliens were following the scent of the blood from their wounds, and Jack looks stricken. When one of the crewmembers says that Jack isn’t wounded, Riddick reveals that “she” is on her period, which Riddick smelled out with Hannibal-like precision. To add to the humiliation, Johns yells at Jack to “butch up” and at the others to “stuff a cork in this fucking kid.”
I wince every time I see this scene, (and my repeat viewings of Pitch Black are in the double digits by now), as Jack is betrayed by her own biology. But I also remember how the secondhand embarrassment was mixed with the same kind of pop-eyed thrill I got when I saw that Pepper Pots was finally going to get to wear the Iron Man suit. Jack was a girl– a girl who’d set her sights on following in Riddick’s footsteps. She was going to get the superpower.
For a long time, I searched for clues as to why Jack’s character had been created at all. I found very little, all the more frustrating in that there are so many small things that seem to indicate that Jack was more than someone who was simply putting on pants to get through the day. She tries on Riddick’s goggles the same way kids try on the Iron Man mask in the toy aisle, and memorizes his story about bribing a prison doctor to give him the eye shine the same way she might a treasure map. She doesn’t want to be just any male: she wants to be the Alpha Furyan, the monster that even other monsters are afraid of.
Perhaps, I thought, Jack’s character was a subtle statement about gender to go along with the other subversions in the Pitch Black story. After all, writer David Twohy turns a common horror trope on its head by having a black Muslim man be one of the final three who escapes the dark planet. The pilot Fry is a fully realized character, and when she is jerked out of cryo-sleep she leaps into her uniform without the act of getting dressed being remotely sexualized (unlike a more recent sci-fi blockbuster I could name).
But Jack’s story doesn’t seem to be a nod to queerdom, trans masculinity, or anything else. She is just an accident, born of Twohy being stuck for a “secret” for Jack and then being inspired once the casting took place.
In the sequel–Chronicles of Riddick, set five years after the events in Pitch Black–we learn that Jack never gets the power to see in the dark. Instead of a shaved head and goggles, she has waist-length hair and a belly-baring shirt. She tells Riddick that she has renamed herself Kyra, and further embraces her femininity by using her body to lure her fellow prisoners close enough to stab them. There’s even an aborted “love” scene between her and Riddick, where he literally lifts her up using a hand between her legs, and she returns the favor by cutting his face with a razor blade held sensuously between her lips. She has, in short, become every Strong Female Character ever made, and at the end of the movie she dies to inspire Riddick’s character development.
Five years later, watching Iron Man 3, I realized that Pepper Potts only gets to wear the suit for a moment, and felt the same crushing disappointment. I would feel that same disappointment over and over again, in different genres and under different writers, as female characters went through magnificent arcs that seemed to build towards them taking on the roles of their male counterparts, only to have the rug ripped out from under them. And just like with Jack/Kyra, I found myself searching for answers, only to find none. If Robin can become Nightwing, if Sean Boswell can learn to Tokyo drift, then why can’t River Song retain her powers and become the doctor we all hoped she’d be? Why does Mako Mori pass out at the final moment of heroism, when before she reacted to stress by almost blowing up the Shatterdome? We’re told that Kyra/Jack simply couldn’t find another surgeon, that there was only a single nameless person who could give her the superpower and now that they were gone, there was nothing left for her.
***
I watch action movies (and fantasy movies thinly disguised as action movies) for the same reason the basement dwelling fanboys do (in an odd twist of fate, I do currently live in a basement.) I fork over the $14 charge to see The Wolverine in IMAX so I can get a taste of what it’s like to have the power to survive anything. I sit through every Iron Man movie to better imagine what it’s like to fly in a machine that’s an extension of my body. I want to own the fucking Batmobile. I want to be the girl monster, “huge and whole,” because that is always the most fun thing to be.
Imagine what it would be like if Jack got her eye shine. If her years in Crematoria—a prison worse than any Riddick had ever been in– shaped her to be a bigger monster than even he was.
***
In the beginning, Riddick himself was conceived as a woman named Taras Krieg. Perhaps, in another universe, Gwendoline Christie wears the goggles, but in the real world, I’m getting tired of waiting.
A little while ago, I watched a video of a fandom discussion where people asked themselves what they’d do if they met Iron Man.
Knock him out, I mentally advised the girls in the audience. Then steal the suit for yourself.
Tags: erica stratton, feminism, iron man, movies, riddick
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I need to rewatch Pitch Black, I don’t remember any of this!
Haha, my default answer to “why are there never any kick ass women in sci-fi!?” is now to just stroke their hair and tell them to play Mass Effect (you can skip the first one if you want). I know there’s a dude on the cover. There really shouldn’t be.
A default answer I see a lot is folks pointing to Ellen Ripley, as if she alone makes up for the hundreds of lackluster sci-fi stories with one dimensional female characters.
True. Battlestar Gallactica was pretty good. THE SARAH CONNOR CHRONICLES. Continuum is also really great. They’re out there, but they’re still the minority.
Ahh, I haven’t seen either of those! I really should catch up. I think the Star Trek series generally do an okay job, but it could be so much better. (I haven’t seen Into Darkness, but I’m thinking of TNG/Voyager/DS9.)
There’s Firefly too, but I feel conflicted about River Tam and Joss Whedon’s fondness for tiny people who are strangely great at the martial arts.
The hardest thing for me to get past in Firefly is that we are asked to believe Simon finds Kaylee sexually attractive.
Not that she isn’t! She’s a damn peach.
wait what? why wouldn’t he?
Everybody knows Simon was in love with River anyway….
Because he so firmly seemed like he didn’t for most of the series?
BECAUSE (and I’m going to get a little gender essentialist here, you guys) Simon was the twinkiest twink who ever twinked his way into Twinks’ Night. His scenes with Jayne were ELECTRIC. And then it’d be time for him to be like “Ah, yes, Kaylee. I…desire you sexually, and definitely do not find your female body mystifying.”
I thought I understood Firefly… then I read this comment. Now I have to watch the whole series again to see the Simon/Jayne sparks fly!
Dude, it’s like watching an old Spencer Tracy/Katharine Hepburn movie. Jayne’s always calling him “pretty hair” or whatever, and Simon’s all “You big strong brute, you.”
There was Farscape’s Aeryn Sun (I loved how Farscape actually subverted traditional gender roles).
But also…it also kind of says something that strong, three-dimensional female characters in Hollywood sci-fi even need to be named. Like, the fact that we can even do a role call at all itself implies that there are so few that they can all be called to mind.
The cancellation of The Sarah Connor Chronicles has been the biggest TV-related disappointment of my life so far.
Yup, me too. There was talk of a movie wrapping things up (UGH IT NEEDS TO BE WRAPPED UP SO BAD), but I guess Fox put the kibosh on that too.
I think we could get it made for $17.5M. Kickstarter?
We reversed the ME3 box art in my household and keep FemShep on the cover.
NICE. I have the trilogy set, it doesn’t let you do that. I am just like, “Who is this imposter?” every time I look at it.
The only problem with Mass Effect is that now I find it difficult when I play other games and I am not FemShep anymore.
@Megano! Jack is definitely a side character in Pitch Black, but since I was watching this as a baby genderqueer, she made a HUGE impression.
UGH that ruined Iron Man 3 for me. Not the fact that she’s barely in the suit, but that at the end, when she (spoiler) gets her own superpower – the first thing they do is take it right back outta her. Tony promises to. And she only gets to be super for ten minutes.
In men it’s a superpower! In women it’s a flaw. gross.
Same. God, I love the Marvel films, but I was so disappointed when Pepper got all of ten minutes to be a superhero. C’moooonn! I wanted me some Rescue! Or at least some more Extremis-related asskicking!
Hmm. I really dislike Pepper Potts so I wasn’t disappointed by that, plus the “superpower” she gets is pretty much definitely going to kill her like it did everyone else that had it, right? so that didn’t register as unfair either. BUT it would be nice if there was a lady character who wasn’t either The Girlfriend (Pepper) or her superpower was Being Sexy (Black Widow)
It probably goes without saying that I enjoyed this article.
Do not aspire to be the Doctor’s ‘companion’.
Steal your own damn TARDIS.
Oh, you guys, the latest Riddick movie and Starbuck and the ever-disgusting phrase “balls-deep.” It hurt my heart so badly.
I am guilty of saying this all the time. It makes me strangely gleeful, partially because it is so tasteless, but mostly because I have no balls. It is a paradox! The depth cannot be measured! I like to think Zeno would be proud.
It was more the Riddick-is-so-badass-that-the-lesbian-character-just-HAS-to-get-fucked-by-him-like-it’s-a-fucking-James-Bond-novel thing than the utterance of “balls-deep” that put me off of the latest Riddick, but the use of that particular phrase to set up the scenario didn’t help. It’s a bit different if you’re not talking about literally shoving a dick into somebody else’s orifice, I feel.
UGH I have NEVER heard that phrase used in a way that wasn’t awful.
It crushed me too. I expected something more mindlessly sexist and was horrified that they now seemed to be *actively trying* to treat their female characters worse than in the other two movies.
I kind of loved the latest Riddick, being inclined to yell “two great gays who gay great together,” but yes to all of the above. This relates strongly to today’s twitterstorm about Grand Theft Auto V, about all media consumption, about limited audiences and overspecialized demographics and how _big_ the big markets are and how _stupid_ they have to be.
I’m gonna go re-watch Thor and see the grandmother god stab that one Jotun again, now.
“two great gays who gay great together”
Wait who’s the other gay? Is Riddick gay and I missed it?
Riddick is played by Vin Diesel, who never so much as makes out with Sackoff on-screen. Probably due to his well known inability to have chemistry with female leads other than (arguably) M.Rodriguez.
Despite this, he manages to do everything short of make out with tongues with The Rock in F&F, and as a consequence I have trouble seeing him independently within the <s>Conan</s> Riddick the Space Barbarian series.
Well, speculation about how Diesel personally identifies aside, I did read a great article on Riddick 3 that argues that the “balls deep” comment came about because the writers felt the need to prove that Riddick wasn’t gay just because he wasn’t getting any: http://www.empireonline.com/empireblogs/empire-st…
Personally, I have the headcanon that Riddick may be attracted to women, but he still doesn’t have sex all that often simply because many people aren’t willing to get that close. He also doesn’t want to let anyone that near, and most of his creepy comments in the other movies also seemed designed to threaten or intimidate (He tells a man who he thinks put a price on his head “Your wife’s in the shower…” when he breaks into his house in Chronicles). He does seem to genuinely be into Dame Vaako…
This is just a side note to this terrific essay, but I’d love to see a full-on period version of And Then There Were None, with the awesome addition of flesh-eating aliens. Someone get on that, please.
Did you feel that? Somewhere, Steven Moffat just started drafting a Dr. Who episode centered around this very premise…
oh please god no.
Great commentary on this wonderful/bizarre, often frustrating series! In both Pitch Black and the new Riddick, they spend all this time developing a lovely, unique female character, but by the end I’m just shrieking, “No, no, you’re ruining her! What have you dooooone???” It’s often done with such tonedeaf bravado that it makes me wonder if the previously developed character was just a lucky accident, monkeys on a typewriter kinda thing.
In the new movie, it was just a couple lines/moments, but what makes it most disappointing is that, unlike other movies that are content with being blah or having a blah female character, we have an awesome QUEER lady hero here, so I was expecting more. I really liked a lot of the rest of the movie, and totally would’ve been shouting my praises from the rooftops with reckless abandon if they had edited out literally about three lines.
I was rooting for you, Twohy. We were all rooting for you.
“I was rooting for you, Twohy. We were all rooting for you.” So much this.
Wowwwww wow wow wow yes I love this article. There was something about the movies this summer (Pepper, Uhura and Carol Marcus, Mako) where somewhere around July I just got completely sick of the bait-and-switch. This shit? Is not good enough. Pepper putting on the suit for one scene wasn’t enough; Uhura getting one scene where she’s not Spock’s surrogate mother isn’t enough; tapping in Carol Marcus and then deliberately cutting out Chapel because having sex with Jim Kirk was just too much for all her feelings! NOPE. It’s not enough. Thank you for channeling so much molten geek rage into something so succinct!
This ruled.
I was blown away by Pepper suiting up and saving a PTSD-affected Tony Stark, and I was gleeful that the super power didn’t tragically kill her. It was like crumbs tossed in front of a starving person. I lapped those crumbs up. And I don’t even LIKE Pepper Potts because WHYYYYYYYY is she involved with Tony Stark? It’d be like dating a young, impulsive child who also wants to have sex. Is it the money? Is that the big appeal?
Some ladies are really into that caretaker, pseudo-mothering role? I guess?
Ooooh Tony it’s JUST SO HOT when you get totally drunk and piss all over yourself and then barf into the ficus. Come over here and wipe that sick off your chin and let’s TOTALLY DO IT UNFFFF. so hot. SO HOT.
Yeah, what the heck. “Here is this big ol’ universe where you can have the characters do absolutely anything.” “Awesome! I think I’ll have them preserve the status quo of our own crappy world.”
It’s so rare to have ‘girl w/ male role model’ or ‘boy w/ female role model’, much less ‘girl w/ monster role model’. You’d think the same people that could envision these relationships could envision the future where their characters aren’t completely ruined by cliches.
This was so, so awesome. I was basically making this face 😀 the whole time but also feeling enraged? So maybe this: >:D
Well done, Erica Stratton!
Yeah, I remember rolling my eyes at "Kyra", all the while missing Jack. Glad someone talked about it.
Yes, so very much this.
As an aside, you may want to check out the new Captain Marvel comics; the title character is a female superhero who takes on the role of her male counterpart.