That was the most savage video I have seen in a decade. All of your social commentary was expertly punctuated with truely wicked, wicked humour. Your Diarrhoea really is a breath of fresh air.

They're not encouraging women to see blockbuster movies. They're just discouraging men.

I knew it was all bullshit when the postfeminist harpies thought giving female protagonists all of the qualities that were declared "toxic" when in men was "empowering". Beyond idiotic.

Xena: Warrior Princess did it right. She was strong but also feminine and despite being a girlboss, she had actual character and was written considerably better than anything we get on screen nowadays.

As a woman, this video is 100% accurate. I'm so sick of poorly written Mary Sue's who think putting down an established male character makes them look good.

Back in college I heard a one-line summary of entitled feminism and attempted feminist takeovers of formerly male-dominated things: "You built it, now give us half." Sadly, it seems to have underestimated feminist ambitions.

There’s nothing wrong with strong female characters…as long as they act like women.

Rest assured, as a women, I agree. I was a huge comic book, movie, cartoon, scifi, fantasy, geek for a long time. I hate that Hollywood took something I love and destroyed it for what they think is equality. It's not; it's pandering and dismissive of women, but they can't or won't see that. I neither want, nor need Hollywood's (or comics or novels) identity politics and girl bosses. I don't even buy/watch/read new stuff anymore. Thankfully there are centuries of novels, and decades of films and comics I can indulge in. I don't need Hollywood or it's culture destroying narratives. I can only hope that more and more people start to do the same.

It’s supposed to be made for women, as a woman I avoid those movies like herpes. As a female, the reason why the whole “girlboss” genre chaps my ass so much takes me back to the old workplace graphic of “boss vs leader”. That sums it up 100%. No one likes those bosses, male OR female. They’re unlikable bullies who give you all the blame when things go wrong and take all the credit when things go right. Somehow got in despite lack of experience and training. Love pulling rank on you like a 3yo with a new toy. The only real consistent thing they do all day is point and command. And nobody really likes them, and they’re often too dense to differentiate the fear they instill from the favor they think they have from their subordinates. And they often never know the cheering that comes after they’re ousted. So, as far as “girlboss” films, basically this with a costume and boobs. And the added insult of expecting to like it simply because it has added boobs. I haven’t felt this insulted since Ms. Pac Man 🤭

The Kathleen segment was nuanced and balanced. Well done Echo.

I think Sigourney Weaver's "Ripley" is an example of the hero's archetype. She's a simple everyday person put into extraordinary circumstances and forced to rise to the occasion. She's strong, yet vulnerable, and the viewer can see her character growth. I believe this type of archetype is universal, regardless of gender! Characters like Ripley or John McClane resonate with viewers because they are relatable and represent both the vulnerabilities inherent to the human condition, as well as our immense potential as human beings. They inspire us.

Just the fact that two of the greatest sci-fi franchises ever have female protagonists (Alien, Terminator) should really shut the woke crowd up. But representation was never the point. The point is ideological revenge. Revenge of ugly, unlikeable narcissists.

The descriptions of your poop, pee, and your medications are by leaps and bounds more entertaining than all the girl boss movies put together.

Strong Female Characters are not stoic. They are cynical, misanthropic, spiteful, rude, smug and consistently maintain an angry, constipated demeanour. Stoic is something different.

I watched 7 Samurai for the first time the other night. I still can't shake the memory of the woman carrying her child into enemy territory to save her stubborn old father-in-law from hinself. In the process the mill catches on fire. Her husband & father-in-law don't escape, but she makes it out of the mill clutching her small child in her arms. When the Samurai arrive to assist her, she thrusts her child into their arms with her final breath. They realize she had taken a spear to the back, and are astonished she survived long enough to save her child. They even take a moment to acknowledge how strong she was, just before one of the samurai breaks down crying with the child in his arms. It is in this moment he reveals he was once in this child's very same shoes when he was a little boy. Bandits raided his village & left him orphaned, which is what inspired him to become the 7th Samurai. That entire scene blew me away. Hollywood seriously needs to step up their writing game.

They portray women as ridiculously over-the-top caricature of a man.

Your thoughts on Katheleen Kennedy felt very reserved and I really think you showed great restraint in expressing yourself.

The spirit of Plinkett flows through you...

I am a woman and I approve this message. 👍🏼👍🏼

In the last 20 years of television and movie entertainment, the only female lead I liked was the Australian actress Anna Torv who played the Olivia Dunham character in the TV series "Fringe." She was believable and engaging for all the right reasons. Subsequent to that series there has been a dearth of female leads wherein the writers hit all the marks of relating to them. Such a waste.

That you for this, I’m a 63 year old female and I cannot stand what they have done with female roles.

I'm a woman. You know me now. When we asked for "strong" characters it was "strong" as in a strong argument or a strong suit ie well-written, 3 dimensional. Not these unstoppable, flawless, sociopathic behemoths.

It’s so misogynistic for Echo C to put his towering IQ on such an aggressively towering display.

From the moment I first heard the Bechdel Test explained to me, my first thought was "but, if women can't complain about men, they quickly run out of things to say."

You know if you take each of the character’s personality on the thumbnail and shuffle them in the others stories, you’d end up with roughly the same plot outcome. That’s because all of them are shallow cardboard-flavored non-people.

Kathy should've been left to take the coffee orders.

Hi from Brazil! I'm a chicklit book writer and I love watching all kinds of movies. I went to the cinema to watch Titanic, but I also went to see Lord of the Rings and The Matrix. I have photos of my son dressed as Captain America at the premiere of the first Avengers when he was around 5 years old. So much so that the MCU followed his growth until adolescence, but these last films are disappointing. I can't take any more of the plot holes that I can't ignore. After End Game, I only liked Spider-Man and Guardians of the Galaxy. Women like to see complex stories, not Mary Sues. What happens is that it alienates the captive audience (female and male) and does not captivate a new audience. I have my friends as an example, if they don't like hero films, they won't go to the movies (or streaming) to see it just because the heroine is a woman.

the problem isn't the girlboss character as a concept, the problem is the toxic stuff that they declare to hate in men and inject into girlboss characters because it's "empowering".

I hear that the British Army is full of stunning and brave girl bosses. That's going to end well... Oh, and don't hold back on KK, an empowered chick. We need more like her. Said no one.

As a fan of Miss Phryne Fisher, a classic strong female character, I eagerly watched the all-woman written, directed and produced modern adaptation (2019). Then I had the uncomfortable realization: "Oh s**t, this is not very good!" That was a reality check. No amount of having women involvement could make up for the fact that I didn't want to spend my precious time on bad entertainment.

That Kathleen Kennedy origin story is terrifying to imagine.

Strong Characterless Females. That sums it up perfectly. Thanks for this and a few good laughs too.

Echo Plinkett

*Black girl magic* will never not make me laugh, it’s makes me think of a Captain Planet/Sailor Moon style team up like “Black girl magic!” “White girl witchcraft!” “Brown girl sorcery!” “Yellow girl wizardry!”

The Star Trek character Uhura, while ground breaking for the 1960s, was NOT a major character and has no place in a lineup of the series leading characters. And James T. Kirk is THE prime character, making all the rest followers on…

your description of mrs kennesdys parents sad sexual encounter was the funniest thing ive heard yet this year. thank you...

There is a morbid tone to the hopeless parts of this reminiscent of Chris Morris' seminal radio comedy "Blue Jam" and I like it.

Ripley and Sarah drink their coffee and laugh.

I love your work. The sheer density of imagery can be overwhelming. I especially liked the PG backside and great hooters reference.

Frieren the strong lovable character that Hollywood needs to take note

Splendid video :) I always find it so weird, we have worked for decades to overcome all our prejudice and stereotypes and -isms and -phobias - and then certain people in the entertainment industry feel they want to do their damndest to gives us reasons to go back to these ways^^

Almost all horror movies have strong female leads. It's actually overwhelmingly female. You can pretty much name any slasher and it's led by a woman. Nightmare on Elm Street, Halloween, Resident Evil, I know what you did last summer, Hush, Happy Death Day, Pearl, X, Texas Chainsaw, etc. If anyone ever claims men won't watch strong female leads, refer them to horror. Those who claim this obviously are ignorant and have never heard of the final girl, which is a trope for a reason.

As a woman, I actually mostly prefer male characters. Tbf I like more action movies as opposed to some women, and the male eye candy doesn't hurt either. But I also like women characters who are empathetic, kind, and show strength that isn't always powers-based. Nuance is a thing a lot of movies are missing with female characters. And make women evil more. Not just "misguided and can be drawn back to being good." Take Delilah Briarwood from Vox Machina a few years ago. She was caring and empathetic to her husband while also being a powerful wizard. She didn't use brute strength and was more cunning. But she was still irredeemably evil.

I was thoroughly entertained bro, job well done. New sub.

your genuine and outright hatred for Kathleen Kennedy makes us brothers, without even knowing you.

Echo, you've definitely got a penchant for writing clever, poignant and hilarious videos! Although I've had a disagreement with a few of your takes you never cease to humor me when I watch your bits! Well done, mate ( said by an American from Louisiana)!

Strong Female Character ❌ Strong character that happened to be Female ✅ Everyone loves Sigourney Weaver's Riply

Lewis from RoboCop, the woman from every Power Ranger series, Katara, Toph and the girls in each team Avatar, heck even Kuvira and sparky sparky boom lady is more entertaining that what KK flop out.

Great Tarkovsky quote. You are one of the few UKpostsrs who are consistently worth my time.

There's nothing wrong about the idea of a strong female character. Unless it comes at the expense of literally everything else in your movie/game.

Thing is, they had it right with female characters 20 years ago; Trinity, The Bride, Thelma and Louise etc.

Also, psych and sociology studies show that women may insult alpha (or "traditionally masculine") men when asked, but typically are still more attracted to them than betas.

Even if Kathleen Kennedy wasn't born, they would just pick someone else with the same thinking to be in that spot

I’m a woman and this video was spot on

I wonder if the writers ever looked at their character's comics. Seeing MODOK with a shit-eating grin rather than an evil one made me laugh.

Bet you spelled "Diarrhoea" properly in your script, no leaving out the "O" like some sort of savage...why cant i leave 2 likes?

Great stuff! Greetings from England 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿

I also find it surprising even feminists are tired of this trope

The moral of the story is: Disney please make more womanist, strong, diverse, gender and race swapped female character movies. We all want to enjoy more of these modern, patriarchy challenging pieces of art!

I'm going to share an example, that may or may not be from my childhood, about what Hollywood is getting wrong in marketing Boy Brands to chicks. (I'm a chick.) When I was a kid, I loved cars. I collected every Matchbox car in existence. How did I play with the cars? Did I race them against each other? Crash them? Gear-porn obsess and modify them? Nope. Instead, the cars lived in a garage, had individual personalities based on their appearance, and the emphasis of play was on the vehicular-relational dynamics between the cars. Hollywood could totally bring more chicks into "male genres" by focusing predominantly on... chick-centric behaviors, themes, wish-fulfillment/power fantasies WITHIN those genres. But they don't.

I remember having this discussion with a coworker and she tried to checkmate me by asking me to name 5 strong female characters in shows/movies or games before 2010 so I listed: Ripley, Sarah Connor, Xena, The bride (kill bill), and Mulan. After that I was hit with the "name five more", so I mentioned Elizabeth Swann, Chun Li, Evelyn Carnahan, Samus Aran, and Alice from the resident evil movies (I could've mentioned Jill Valentine but I figured mentioning an original character in the movies was a stronger argument). After that I asked her to name me 3 strong female characters from the 2010s-present that are strong without the need to make men dumber & useless and maybe there are dozens out there, maybe I put her on the spot, but she could only name Rey Skywalker and the Twilight roster which is fair enough but I deliberately chose just one character per franchise (when possible) and well, Rey is only strong because neither star wars rules nor logic apply to her. Hollywood and the videogame industry forgot there's a massive difference between strong, leading characters that happen to be women and strong, leading characters *because* they're women Edit: typo

Looking back Remember the Original He-man in the 80s? It was popular with Boys cuz it had big manly men and very feminine women. So they cancelled the boy brand, brought in She-mirror Ripoff, and the Brand was dead in a year. It was a Failed Experiment 40 years ago!

Good Lawd, son, you ripped into Ms. Kennedy! 🤣

You see, as a man you ever search in a wrong place for the female escapist ideal! Wonderwoman, seriously!.. *Lizzy Bennet is the one!* She is beautiful and young, living in a beautiful surroundings, she smater and more moral than the surrounding society, she gets to dance, wear a new lovely dress in every scene, solve the matrimonial problems of her friends and of course gets loved by the handsomest guy around! What else would you need for a perfect escape?!.

Thank you for thinking this & again for saying it.

I see you channeling yours best RedLetterMedia. I enjoyed this video a lot.

You almost got it right when you said they didn't just establish ONE kind of male archetypal lead - they established several. You had your Luke and Frodo, you had your Han and Bond, and then you also had characters who were kind of in-between, like Reeves and Cain as Superman, or even funnymen like Seinfeld. But you failed to stick the landing with women. The exact same variety was true with female leads - they went from femme fatales like Raquel Welch or Farrah Fawcett to survivors and warriors like Xena and Ripley to those that embodied both like Wonder Woman or Bionic Woman or Buffy or Sarah O'Connor. Remember the alien leader Diana from V?This was already happening, and had been evolving and diversifying organically since the 60s and second wave feminism slipped Emma and Barbara into catsuits and Uhura into a tight skirt. As far as representation, no soulless unappealing girlboss ever needed to be created. If they wanted more female leads in movies, all the studio had to do was keep creating appealing female characters that worked for all audiences. For example, if you give an accomplished woman like Lois Lane superpowers, but keep her vulnerable and complex because she has a boyfriend, kids, co-workers and kryptonite, that would be a well-rounded female superhero. (This is, in fact, exactly what we've done with our most popular superheroine, Poderosa.) They almost did that with Melissa Benoist in her 1st and 2nd seasons but then it went off the rails. If they'd continued on that path, we'd have natural gender parity in movies today instead of forced callous and emotionless messaging.

Echo is like that guy in Spongebob who has broken bones and his heart attacks put him to sleep.

What is the "female" hero's journey? Does it actually exist?

The issue is that the demand for "girlbosses" and strong female characters has come at a time when blockbuster film writing is at it's absolute worst. Nothing wrong with female characters but recently we have had a massive problem with being fed these underwritten and deeply unlikable female characters who follow the same basic patterns. Perfect women who's only issue is that they have a man in their way and they don't realise how powerful they really are, wow what a bold refreshing new take.

2:11 - 2:30 wtf? Damn. I don't like Kathleen Kennedy either but you took that to a whole other level. You got a new sub for that one. Laughed so hard i almost pissed myself.

A hero’s journey is more triumphant when overcoming adversity. Girl boss story’s have no arch. There also very condescending to their own audience.

Plenty of women have loved comics including myself my whole life in 35. Along with Lord of the rings

If Galadriel is supposed to be beautiful, why did that get that box-face to portray her? She is NOT "elven beautiful", she's a 4 with all the studio fakeup. Also, she's just a bad actor - or maybe she's not and the part was written so badly that she's actually doing it a favour. Regardless, the show is sofa king terrible.

Hilarious AF and well examined. Thanks dude

The best superhero female protagonist happened long ago, Jane grey, lara croft, Katniss evergreen. There is also Octavia in 100. Also Marvel did a disservice to that kid who got a chance to play her dream role with bad dialogue.

Personally - I've never had much of problem with badass "girl-boss-ish" characters, the problem is ho much they not flaunt the girl-boss characters in such a way to obviously pander to certain demographic. In other words, it's being done specifically to the "yaaaaas Queen" crowd. And these shows and films the past decade or so are so heavy-handed and blatant about it that it's just so effin cringe-inducing! At the end of the day, it's all about the execution. You can have a "girl-boss" sort of character so long as she's well rounded, far more complex than the "I can do everything guys can do, and sometimes I'm even better" - sort of character. And also how believable she is as a character, (within the universe that the story takes place in),, and if she's properly integrated into the story. But alas, they simply aren't the vast majority of the time, and are instead 1-diimensioal walking-cliché Mary Sues!

I really enjoy legitimate heroic behavior. I like strong, well developed characters and plot arc that require the players to turn to each other and say, "I'm dry of notions, what do we do?" When all the characters are able to call upon each others' strengths and help each other negate their weaknesses to achieve a goal, it is entertaining and empowering to have the group dynamic reinforced. Oh, well damn. I like ripped guys, snappy dialog, and soul. And I like strong male heroes and smart women who have something logical to add to the winning of the day.

Great examples of strong female characters are - Ellen Ripley (who, thanks to her maternal instincts, manage to save Jonesy and Newt and kills a lot of xenomorphs) - Clarice Starling, whose personal vulnerabilities are not a burden, but facing them gives her confidence to find and eliminate the killer.

One of the best female protaganist with strength and growth, is Beatrix Kiddo from Kill Bill. Not only was she badass, she was incredibly vulnerable. She also had a hard journey to achieve her revenge goal. On another note, I really wish Quinton Tarantino would do a horror movie.

If you want real Good Feminist and Girl Boss movies, I suggest watch the films of director Kodi Rama Krishna

"parity" would imply they would continue making male heroes

Subscribing and sharing! Happened to discover this today. Intelligent and funny!

How do you not have more subscribers? Great channel, love it.

A boss should listen to subordinates. This goes for men as well as women. Listening doesn't always mean agreeing but it is so arrogant not to listen.

Fucking awesome.....love your humour and anecdotes

If you want to see a good movie with an example of how to create a female antagonist who does everything you need the antagonist in a crime film to do, with 0% girlboss tropes. Kerry Condon as Dorieann McCann is an all-star level crime drama villain.

I am a woman and I liked this video!! ❤

Its hilarious how they tried so hard and went too far extreme, they don't relaize the "girlboss" is always way more evil than the bad guys, marvel herself killed how many planets full of people?

Also, there are too many female leads in these movies. When it was one or two women compared to many men, then the woman stands a chance of standing out as women who viewers can look up too or remember as iconic, sarah connor, ripley, trinity, princess leah, queen amidala. They are not having to compete with so many other women for the spotlight and as a woman viewer we tend to admire the one woman in the fish bowl of men holding her own. Also, these new women characters have no character, no flaws, no hero’s journey, so what is there to admire or remember their name 20, 30, 40, 50 years later.

I'm a huge anime fan, but I like to vary the type of anime I watch. I love giant robots and samurai, but I also enjoy watching girl shows. While there are some action shows for girls (mostly magical girl anime) most girl anime is slice of life or romance. One thing you notice is that girl anime tends to have a big focus on relationships. Friendships with other girls or romance with a boy. Females tend to me more social than men. So if you want to write a story that will resonate with women, focus on interpersonal relationships and how they develop. As far as the female idealized fantasy goes, look no further than romance stories. Those are prime female fantasies, same as male fantasies are embodied in action movies. Give women a romance story about a quiet girl coming out of her shell and taming a bad boy and you will rake in the pink cash. Look at Twilight and 50 Shades. Everyone mocked them, but they brought in a ton of money. Why? Because they were female fantasies. Look at the legion of romance Jdrama and Kdrama. Look at the mountains of romcoms that used to fill up theaters. None of these appeal to men en masse, but women loved them.

Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant video!

The way I remember it, the newer Battlestar Galactica series managed to pull off so many strong female characters, without falling for all the problems we see recently. I never saw the original, but I think they made some gender- and race-swaps as well, but it weren't obnixious about it. I wonder how audience today would react to that, if it came out today.

"Lah Dolkee Viteh" i died XD

Dakota Johnson is a real one. She warned us that the Spiderwoman movie would be a sh*tshow.

A good way to make female characters is too make them happy to life only for a mystery to unfold their lives

This video added a whole ton to the Echo Chamberlain lore

I no longer watch movies and getting away from Netflix as well.

Black girl magic 😆

Netflix avatar was also ruined by the girl boss disease.