Attack Of The 50-Foot Unexpected Feminism
I said on Tumblr that I’d write about Monsters Vs Aliens. So I did!
THIS IS AN AWESOME FILM IN EVERY WAY. Okay, firstly it’s ridiculously adorable, funny and shiny. And secondly, half of the plot is about a woman discovering that she doesn’t need to be married or attached to a man in order to be awesome…and the other half of the plot is about her and her monster friends saving the world. Susan is a terrific role model for little girls, in a film they were actually likely to see!
So Susan is about to marry some high-flying news reporter guy called Derek, who seems fairly okay at first, but then Susan is hit by a meteorite and turns into a giant. She’s recruited into the US army’s secret gang of monsters, and there she realises her full potential- she becomes kinda a big sister figure to the monsters and she saves a whole city with their help. Then the government releases her and she goes to visit Derek, who’s not best pleased to see her and demands to know if she expects him to put his career on hold while “while you try to undo this thing that happened to you, that I had absolutely nothing to do with?” “Yes,” Susan answers, “that’s exactly what I expect.” And I was like HELL TO THE YES.
And then Derek leaves her – “I’m not looking to get married just to live in someone else’s shadow, and you’re casting a pretty big shadow” – and Susan is upset, but then she realises she’s much better off without him. “There was no us, it was just Derek. Why did I have to get hit by a meteor to see that?…I’m never gonna shortchange myself ever again!”
Other movies might have had Susan then fall into the arms of some other guy who was good for her, but this movie has her completely independent. Not that romance isn’t good and female characters shouldn’t find love now and then, but it’s really good to have a movie- a children’s movie!- showing the alternative. By the end of the movie Susan’s flying off into the sunset to save another city, her monster friends and her parents supporting her all the way. (Just for good measure, there’s a moment at the end where the viewer is tricked into thinking Susan’s getting back together with Derek after all, but then she turns the tables and she and her monster friends humiliate him live on air.) Ah, it’s refreshing. And, as mentioned, pretty awesome.
Other good reasons to see it: It just scrapes by the Bechdel test, I think. And it has Hugh Laurie voicing a monster. And Stephen Colbert voicing the US President. And it’s actually totally hilarious. And it’s Dreamworks. GO WATCH IT Y’ALL.