Consider this your daily dose of “Are you fucking kidding me?!” In an interview with Uproxx, “Iron Man 3” director Shane Black revealed a surprising truth about why Rebecca Hall’s character, Maya Hansen, and female super-soldier Brandt (Stéphanie Szostak) were tragically underdeveloped and ignored in the 2013 film. The answer? Toys.
As Black explained, “Szostak’s character was bigger at one point and we reduced it. Rebecca Hall’s character was bigger at one point and we reduced it…All I’ll say is this, on the record: There was an early draft of ‘Iron Man 3’ where we had an inkling of a problem. Which is that we had a female character who was the villain in the draft. We had finished the script and we were given a no-holds-barred memo saying that cannot stand and we’ve changed our minds because, after consulting, we’ve decided that toy won’t sell as well if it’s a female.”
So you heard it from the director himself, folks. According to Black, Marvel Corporate forced him to change the script because they feared they wouldn’t be able to sell toys of a female villain.
“In the earlier draft, the woman was essentially Killian — and they didn’t want a female Killian, they wanted a male Killian. I liked the idea, like ‘Remington Steele,’ you think it’s the man but at the end, the woman has been running the whole show. They just said, ‘no way.’”
All because of toys.
This isn’t the first time that toys have caused a problem for women in big-budget, comic book, or genre films. As a detailed io9 piece reported, Marvel has a notoriously bad track record when it comes to the toys of its female characters. Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow character was missing from a good number of “Avengers: Age of Ultron” playsets. Then, Zoe Saldana’s character Gamora from “Guardians of the Galaxy” was missing from toy sets and T-shirts. (Because, ya know, T-shirts are for boys.)
As io9 said, “By largely keeping these female characters away from the bulk of the merchandise, these companies are essentially advocating that sure, there’s cool female characters in these things, but they’re really for boys, — and boys don’t want girl figures or t-shirts with them on. You liked that movie? Well, it wasn’t really for you. You’re not going to be represented here. And although to some that might be superficial in the face of actual representation in the media itself, fans, and especially young kids, latch on to this sort of thing.Toys are an important part of incorporating role models into a child’s life, and it’s imaginably difficult to do that with Marvel’s female heroes when it’s a struggle to find them in the merchandise that’s being aimed almost solely at the boys instead. By leaving these female characters out, you’re leaving out a whole chunk of the audience.”
Avengers set – no Black Widow Guardians set – no Gamora Star Wars – no Rey. She's THE MAIN CHARACTER. #WheresReypic.twitter.com/TvYUeiA49o
The issue came up again when Daisy Ridley’s Rey character from “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” also lacked a significant number of toys, with Disney opting instead to include unnamed Stormtroopers or an alien that didn’t even make it into the movie in their playsets. The problem was raised on Twitter, where young girls and their parents repeatedly asked #WheresRey, shortly after having had to ask #WheresBlackWidow and #WheresGamora.
So now we’ve actually reached the point in filmmaking where not only are a movie’s toy lines excluding their female characters, even when they are the main character, but now toy sales are dictating the actual storylines and scripts of the tent pole movies that are given the largest budgets in all of Hollywood. That affects representation on an unprecedented level. Before, we just thought that the women were being left out of the toys, but when in realty, there are instances where toys are the reason why women are being left out of the movie altogether. All because the men in the big offices think that boys won’t play with action figures that are female. Maybe because they wouldn’t when they were kids.
Let’s reiterate the facts folks: Sexism is taught. People aren’t born sexist — they are raised to be. So when you give boys toys and T-shirts that lack female representation, you’re telling them that women don’t deserve to be represented in the culture. When you remove women from the movies they go see, you’re telling them that women can’t be heroes, only victims. When you don’t allow female villains on screen, you’re teaching them that women don’t come in as many equal versions as men do.
But give them a female action figure at an early age before all of that bullshit has been implanted in their heads, and not only will they play with the damn thing, but they might just grow up thinking women are equal to men. Take them to see movies with women saving the world, and they’ll want a T-shirt with her picture on it. Girls are expected to embrace male heroes, male villains, and male-skewed movies, books, and culture all of their lives. Could you imagine a girl’s Harry Potter toy set or T-shirt that didn't include Harry freaking Potter?
It’s not hard to teach young boys that women and men should be given equal representation in life and in the arts. Action figures might just be a great place to start, and giving your son or nephew or grandson a Rey, Gamora, or Black Widow toy will help teach him that women and men deserve equality. And maybe he’ll grow up to help change the world.
What a marvel that would be.
