Something happened over the weekend, and we’re not just talking about Comic-Con 2014. Suddenly, and with plenty of warning that studios had been ignoring for decades, female action heroes were taking center stage. Lucy opened at the top of the box office, a sci-fi action-thriller starring Scarlett Johansson handily besting the more conventionally macho Hercules, proving that audiences don’t have an instinctive predilection towards male-centric genre movies after all. Meanwhile, a new image of Gal Gadot as a very impressive Wonder Woman made waves across the internet, and a new adaptation of the female superhero movie Painkiller Jane got the green light, and directed by two women no less.
Here at CraveOnline we really, REALLY hope this is the start of a new trend, opening up genres that traditionally marginalized more than half of the population of the planet Earth to new perspectives and new dramatic possibilities. The Hunger Games was not a fluke. Divergent might very well have heralded a new era. Maleficent was not the exception to the rule that blockbusters had to be about men’s issues. Our heroes can now be women, and if Hollywood is smart they will start looking to existing properties with female heroes in the lead to usher in a new generation of action movies. (And if they’re particularly smart they’ll start inventing some female-driven genres films all on their own.)
Related: The Best Movie Ever: Female Action Heroes
If it sounds like we’re getting ahead of ourselves, it’s because we think there are limitless possibilities if we’re right, and that’s a thrilling notion. So we’re going to help Hollywood along by suggesting ten female superhero comics that are ripe for adaptation. Some are household names, others are relatively obscure because there simply aren’t enough high-profile female heroes in any medium. But these are the properties that get us excited here at CraveOnline, and we really hope the film industry will agree with us, so we’re going to explain why each of these 10 Female Superhero Movies We Want could make a great blockbuster via old-fashioned studio loglines and even make a few casting suggestions to help them along.
Did we miss your favorites? Do you have better ideas for casting? Let us know in the comments below, because after last weekend your voices might actually be heard, loud and clear, by executives who had been balking for decades. Stick it to the man!
Slideshow: 10 Female Superhero Movies We Want
William Bibbiani is the editor of CraveOnline’s Film Channel and the host of The B-Movies Podcast and The Blue Movies Podcast. Follow him on Twitter at @WilliamBibbiani.
10 Female Superhero Movies We Want
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Captain Marvel
The Pitch: "It's Marvel's Superwoman!"
Suggested Casting: Emily Blunt (Edge of Tomorrow)
A former soldier turned superhero, trying to live up to an overpowering legacy of heroism, Carol Danvers fights to save the Marvel Universe and inspires others to follow her lead, like Ms. Marvel, comics' first Muslim superhero (with her own comic book, that is). She's not just a female superhero, she's the female superhero... at least in the Marvel Universe.
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Manhunter
The Pitch: "It's Death Wish in Gotham City!"
Suggested Casting: Eva Green (300: Rise of an Empire)
A District Attorney who's sick of supervillains escaping the legal system, Kate Spencer raids an evidence locker full of high-tech criminal weapons and turns them against their former owners. A darker superhero story in which the heroine is arguably as bad as the bad guys she fights.
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Black Cat
The Pitch: "It's Ocean's Eleven but with just one woman!"
Suggested Casting: Felicity Jones (The Amazing Spider-Man 2)
An expert cat burglar who gets in over her head and runs afoul of superheroes and supervillains alike, Felicia Hardy always lands on her feet, but the fall could be exciting as hell.
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Stargirl
The Pitch: "It's Eight Simple Rules for Being a Teenaged Superhero!"
Suggested Casting: Elle Fanning (Super 8)
A teenaged superhero with an overprotective father who dons a powerful exo-skeleton to protect her from herself. Stargirl represents the way every teenager views their relationship with their parents, but with superpowers and fight scenes.
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Motormouth
The Pitch: "It's Scott Pilgrim meets Looper!"
Suggested Casting: Juno Temple (The Dark Knight Rises)
A charismatic but bratty street urchin gets high-tech brain implants that allow her to travel between dimensions, becoming the ultimate rebel escapist fantasy. Yes, she's a little obscure, but if we're going to start making female superhero movies, we're going to have to move past the A-listers sooner than later.
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Witchblade
The Pitch: "It's Dirty Harry meets Constantine!"
Suggested Casting: Amy Seimetz (Upstream Color)
A hardened police detective comes into possession of a magical gauntlet that bestows her with great powers but puts her in the crosshairs of every magical villain on the planet. Witchblade got her own TV series in the early 2000s, but it kinda sucked. A movie with a proper special effects budget and a cleverer blend of cop drama and supernatural thrills would make Witchblade stand out from the pack.
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Supergirl
The Pitch: "It's Man of Steel but better!"
Suggested Casting: Bella Thorne (Blended)
Superman arrived on Earth as an infant, and grew up as one of us. Supergirl arrives as a teenager and genuinely feels strange in this strange land. An outsider version of an otherwise inclusive fantasy, an alienation saga about learning to be selfless at a time when everyone thinks the world revolves around them, and potentially 100% better than the original Supergirl movie everyone despises so much.
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She Hulk
The Pitch: "It's John Grisham meets the Marvel Universe!"
Suggested Casting: Aubrey Plaza (Safety Not Guaranteed)
An emergency blood transfusion from her cousin Bruce bestows mild-mannered lawyer Jennifer Walters with a more diluted version of his powers, granting her slightly less strength but the ability to retain her own personality while hulking out. When she isn't fighting crime, she's navigating a new world of criminal law, opened up by the unpredictable effect of superpowered beings on a legal system that wasn't designed with them in mind. Just make her client one of The Avengers, and watch the She-Hulk movie make a mint.
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Birds of Prey
The Pitch: "It's Charlie's Angels but it's actually good!"
Suggested Casting: Lake Bell (In a World) as Oracle, Cody Horn (End of Watch) as Black Canary, Jena Malone (The Hunger Games: Catching Fire) as Huntress
Every team of heroes has a token female. The Birds of Prey chuck that paradigm out the window with a cast of all-female superheroes who band together to save Gotham City. It's the world of Batman but with a fresh new team dynamic and a lot less sulking. And it's gotta be better than that WB series, right?
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Black Widow
The Pitch: "It's Captain America: The Winter Solder, without the Captain America!"
Suggested Casting: Scarlett Johansson (duh)
Hasn't the time just come? Black Widow has proven herself a valuable player in the Marvel Cinematic Universe in three movies already, and now that Scarlett Johansson can open an action movie all by her lonesome, it's time Marvel paid heed and gave Black Widow her own solo adventure. Send her on a solo mission to correct the wrongs of her past to which the previous films so often alluded. Cast Hawkeye as her sidekick if it makes the nervous executives happy.
