This is the age of the Avengers. And all of us, boys and girls, are just living in it.
Yes, even before “Age of Ultron” opened in China on May 12 — where, if there’s any justice, it will pass “Transformers: Age of Extinction” as the all-time box office leader there — it was just shy of the $1 billion mark.
The opening weekend fell short of only the first Avengers movie’s record.
Yet despite its enormous success, detractors online were quick to point out the 900-pound Hulk in the room.
Even Mark Ruffalo, who plays the grumpy green giant himself, posed the question on Twitter to Marvel on behalf of his daughters.
Where’s Natasha?
Ruffalo’s daughters were disappointed at the lack of Avengers merchandise featuring Black Widow. And they’re not alone.
On opening weekend, Target ran a one-page ad (pictured) that was nothing but Avengers stuff. Toys, bedding, DVDs. Black Widow appeared once — and even that was on the DVD cover of “Iron Man 2,” where she’s a supporting character, and not on the DVD sleeve of “The Avengers,” where she’s a full-fledged member of the team.
Ultron, the villain of the piece, had more presence than the most prominent female hero in the Marvel cinematic universe.
Daily Dot reporter Aja Romano pointed out May 11 that Black Widow was replaced in toy versions of one of her signature scenes from “Ultron” — where she drops out of a Quinjet on a motorcycle — by Hasbro and Mattel with, respectively, motorcycle-riding Captain America and Iron Man, who doesn’t need anything other than his iron suit to get anywhere in the world.
Now, you might be thinking, “Is this really the beachhead upon which to base a discussion over gender representation?” Maybe. It may not be the ground we chose, but it’s the ground we’re on.
Remember, toys are often the first point, as a culture, at which we divert the behavioral paths of boys and girls and the first time they may notice the “difference.”
To combat that, one group, Let Toys Be Toys, wants toy makers and book publishers to stop marketing products to either only boys or only girls.
But there’s an awful lot to fight against.
Let’s go back to Target and its Commemorative Collection line of “Star Wars” action figures, sets of four to six figures tied to the first six films.
There are two Luke Skywalkers. He’s the hero, not bad. There are three stormtroopers and two battle droids, so, yes, bad guys are present in number.
But completely absent is Princess Leia. Sure, Padme is there once from the first three films. But that’s all.
In the “Empire Strikes Back” collection, you can get Bossk and IG-88. Now, if you’re not a major fan of the movies, you probably just went, “Who?” They’re bounty hunters, one of which is a robot, who both go unnamed in the movie and aren’t listed in the film’s credits.
Sure, they have larger roles in the expanded universe and the “Clone Wars” and “Rebels” cartoons. But these sets are tied to the movies, and without Leia, there would arguably be no franchise to commemorate.
So why is gender equity in toy representation important? It’s a question of imagination and, ultimately, aspiration.
If young girls can see themselves as a prominent part of the superhero and fantasy landscape, then maybe they’ll see themselves playing a prominent role in their future. If young boys can see women in the same light, maybe gender division will wane.
And that representation, both in quantity and quality of roles everywhere, is incredibly important.
In March, The Upshot, a data research project of The New York Times, reported that among the companies on Standard & Poor’s 1500 Composite Index, there are more CEOs named John than there are female CEOs put together. And if you add just three more names — Robert, William and James — you get a 4-to-1 ratio of men by those names leading corporations as opposed to women.
That’s for just four names versus every female name in existence. Expand that and you get numbers like we see in the legal profession.
Jayne Rizzo Reardon, Illinois Supreme Court Commission on Professionalism executive director, listed in a March column U.S. Census Bureau data that showed women in the legal profession earn 52.6 cents for every dollar a man makes. That’s 26.2 cents less than all professions as a whole and the worst gender pay gap of any profession surveyed.
In 2015, women have moved to the local head of firms such as Mayer, Brown LLP, Krieg, DeVault LLP and Schiff, Hardin LLP. But, as we reported in February, women make up less than 20 percent of equity partners in the Am Law 200, according to the National Association of Women Lawyers’ annual National Survey on Retention and Promotion of Women in Law Firms.
And, as you’ll see in the June issue of Chicago Lawyer magazine, of the 100 Illinois firms that responded to our yearly law firm survey, just nine list a woman as managing partner.
If we’re going to get more female representation, let alone leadership, in all professions, starting early on would be a great jumping off point for change.
“Age of Ultron” was review-proof, if not critic-proof. It was going to make gobs of money.
Marvel’s parent company is Disney, which also owns the Star Wars franchise and occasionally gets knocked for its portrayal of its princess heroines. This could have been the undeniable toy juggernaut’s moment to say, “We’re going all in, playing to the crowd who loved ‘Frozen’ and putting Black Widow on everything.”
That didn’t happen.
In truth, “Ultron” barely passes the Bechdel Test — a quick litmus created by cartoonist Alison Bechdel that judges a film based on three points: (1) Having two named female characters (2) who talk to each other (3) about something other than a man.
The first Avengers film fails on the last two points. There’s debate on whether the second misses as well despite having six female characters. Four of six Star Wars films also don’t pass.
Even the performance of DC Comics, the domain of Wonder Woman, can best be described in a meme. In the first panel, Jonathan Kent tells Superman the world isn’t ready for a Wonder Woman movie, a reference to DC execs saying her history is “complicated” or “tricky.” That’s followed by Marvel pointing out a character from its hugely successful “Guardians of the Galaxy” and saying, “Here’s a talking raccoon with a machine gun.”
A Wonder Woman TV show failed to get off the ground. Its prospective star, Adrianne Palicki, moved nicely into Marvel’s universe in ABC’s “Agents of Shield.”
Wonder Woman is maybe the female hero of all comic universes. But in the cinematic universe, she’s not there, and girls are still holding out for their hero.