20th Century
Yes I know I've discussed this before, but in my mind this is the biggest problem in terms of gender representation in mainstream Hollywood product. It's not just a matter of having more male-centric films in the marketplace than female-centric ones by a wide margin, although that is in itself an issue. The secondary problem, arguably a more insidious one, is the rather paltry representation of female characters outside of the so-called "lead role." Okay, you want a Night at the Museum film that focuses on Ben Stiller and his relationship with his son? Fine, that's the artistic choice that was made in 2006 and it's a valid one. But over the last three films, we have seen exactly one major female character in somewhat of a spotlight role each time out. The first film had Carla Gugino as a potential new love interest for Stiller's hapless security guard, the sequel had Amy Adams as Amelia Earhart, while this sequel has Ms. Phillips as a London-based security guard who (judging solely from the trailers) spends most of the movie in a booth-like station.
The only other major female character of note is Sacajawea, played by Mizuo Peck. She was primarily a would-be love interest for Robin Williams's Teddy Roosevelt in the first film, and I can't speak for her role in the sequel as I never saw it, but while she is featured in the trailers as a tag-along (she has not one line in any of the footage), she is not fit to have her own character poster among the seven highlighted men. Again, I don't mean to highlight Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb as being somehow "worse" but am merely using it as an example of what is frusteratingly "normal." I am not the first person to use phrases like "Smurfette Syndrome" or "Minority Feisty" when discussing films, even films technically targeted at very young children (think The LEGO Movie, where only WildStyle got a character poster and no other female character had more than a few lines of dialogue), that have one or two female characters to represent the gender as a whole.
The end result is the same. The target audience, specifically kids who flock to these films, come to see a male-centric world where there is but one or two major female characters who are wholly defined by the fact that they are a girl in a world of boys. Not every kids film does this. While
It's not a hard trick to pull off, but it's a bar that an astonishing number of films, even seemingly gender-neutral family films, fail to clear. Heck, a film like The Amazing Spider-Man 2 was filled with major male characters yet had only two major female characters, a doomed girlfriend and a surrogate mother to the male lead. Heck, the filmmakers even changed a scientist character who in the comics was an African-American female to well, Colm Feore. So yes for the moment I am going to pick on Night at the Museum 3: Secret of the Tomb and the (I presume) good and decent people who made it and marketed it, at least from a marketing perspective.
The finished product may have more viable female characters and it may give Sacajawea more to do than momentarily look tough (how I'm tired of judging the quality of female characters on the basis of "how much they have to do"). But how these films are marketed as arguably as important as how they are made. It's great when Cartoon Network's Young Justice features a deluge of kick-ass female heroes and villains with varying personalities, but much of that is negated when McDonalds puts out male-centric Happy Meal tie-ins, and then the show gets cancelled allegedly because girls don't buy the action figures (never mind that it's really hard to find female action figures in a toy store) anyway. Night at the Museum 3 is filled with male characters who play quirky characters and say funny things. Surely there was room for more than one female character who could say funny things too.
Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb may be another variation of Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, which infamously contained a single female human and single female ape in an otherwise totally male-dominated cast, or it may have more to offer the female gender as a whole beyond barest token representation. But the manner in which films like this, especially films targeting younger moviegoers, darn well matters at least as much as the actual film's respective actual gender demographics. When Fox, and I again emphasize no presumptions of malicious intent nor a delusion that their marketing strategy is out-of-the-ordinary, puts out six male character posters and a single female character poster, the implicit message is that the film has next-to-no female characters and that said character matters only in that she is female.
Okay, for those who came just for the posters, thanks for wading through the lecture and the posters are below.
