so in iron man 2
a little boy in an iron man helmet tries to shoot one of the rampaging suits with his lil toy flight stabilizers
in spider-man 2
a little boy puts on his spiderman suit and stands up against the rhino
that’s great for all the little boys in the theater, but you know what I want?
i want a little girl to help the heroes
i want a six-year old redhead to kick nat’s gun to her
i want a twelve-year old with braces and a lisp to shake cap back to consciousness
i want a nine-year old latina girl to take clint by the hand and walk him down unfamiliar streets back to the main fight
i want a sixteen-year old black girl to kick an enemy in the back of the knees to save sam wilson
because girls are sitting in that audience too
and they deserve to see that
Try Spider-Man 2 (the other one). No, really!
Peter Parker sans spider-powers runs into a burning building to save a little Asian girl. As soon as Peter gets into trouble, the little girl tries to pull him to safety. Some combination of the two of them gets him out of the fire. (Here’s the scene!)
In the very next scene, Peter is full of angst that he wasn’t able to save everyone in the fire, and is staring gloomily out of his window. Ursula, the shy and awkward daughter of the building’s landlord, knocks on his door and offers him some chocolate cake. Peter accepts, they eat together, that’s…pretty much it. But after that, his mood seems to improve.
If you’re wondering what those two scenes have in common, it’s that they were promptly written off as silly or unnecessary. (How can a small child help pull a grown man to safety? Why does the action stop for five minutes while Peter talks to some ugly girl?) But in 2004 I was, like the OP says, the girl sitting in the audience, and I felt a) utterly delighted and b) like I belonged. So if someone could do that for today’s girls, that’d be great.
