Jennifer Lawrence has caught fire after commenting on action films with female leads – in an interview with Variety namely the star claims that The Hunger Games-films were the first films in this genre to feature a woman in the lead role.
It was when Jennifer Lawrence was interviewed in Variety recently as she made a comment regarding female leads in action films:
“I remember when I did The Hunger Gamesno one had ever had a female lead in an action movie because it wouldn’t work — because we’d been told that both girls and boys can identify with a male lead, but boys can’t identify with a female lead,” she said, and continued:
“It makes me so happy every time I see a movie come out that completely overturns every single one of those perceptions, and proves that it’s just a lie created to keep certain people away from movies. To keep people in the same positions they’ve always been in.”
“We were told girls and boys could both identify with a male lead, but boys cannot identify with a female lead,” Jennifer Lawrence says of taking on the role of Katniss in #TheHungerGames. https://t.co/TqYPwDLCC4 pic.twitter.com/1qyqqkh8aX
— Variety (@Variety) December 7, 2022
Criticized on social media
Since the interview was published, Lawrence has been heavily criticized on social media. Most of the criticism is that the Hunger Games films were far from the first action films with a female lead.
Among the action heroines that have been mentioned in the debate is Sigourney Weaver’s character Ellen Ripley in Alienfilms (the first of which came out in 1979), Angelina Jolie’s Lara Croft in Lara Croft: Tomb Raider from 2001, and Uma Thurman’s character “The Bride” in Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill from 2003.
Hey #JenniferLawrence I’m just gonna leave this here. #StrongWomanLead pic.twitter.com/4TuTRXis2O
— Lee Rhapsody (@LeeRhapsody) December 8, 2022
However, some have reacted to the hateful tone the debate has taken following the statement – with several Twitter users calling the actress an “idiot”, “stupid”, and “ignorant”.
“Oh good, Jennifer Lawrence said something off the cuff, let’s have three days of misogyny as a reward,” tweeted writer-director Jessica Ellis.
Oh good Jennifer Lawrence said something offhand, let’s have three days of misogyny as a treat
— Jessica Ellis (@baddestmamajama) December 8, 2022
Others, such as film and television producer Franklin Leonard, argue that Lawrence has a point:
“It’s not true that no one has ever had a woman in an action movie before Jennifer Lawrence in The Hunger Games“, he writes and continues:
“It’s absolutely true that Hollywood had and has a real bias against action movies starring women because of this ridiculous notion of who identifies with whom.”
It is untrue that no one had ever put a woman in an action movie before Jennifer Lawrence in Hunger Games.
It is absolutely true that Hollywood had and has a real bias against women driven action movies because of this ridiculous belief about who identifies with whom. https://t.co/TDmQjsre2T
— Franklin Leonard (@franklinleonard) December 7, 2022
