Do we hate Harry Potter and Twilight?

[Hermiod]

The question being asked was if any men liked shows/movies because of their female leads. I was using Angel as an example in that I stopped caring as much about the show when their main female lead died. I didn't care that much about Angel, Gunn, Wesley, or Lorne. I liked the show primarily because of Cordelia's character (and yes, I even liked her on Buffy). I only started caring about the show again when Cordy came back in "You're Welcome" and then later when they killed Fred. Episodes focusing on the male characters I really didn't care as much about. Hell, I was more interested in Darla's character back in Season 2 than I was about anyone else in the cast.

With the exception of outrageously bad "The Girl in Question", "You're Welcome" is to Angel's fifth season what Dollhouse's "Man on the Street" is to its first - the point where the show's overall quality suddenly shifts up a notch or twelve.

I like female characters. I dislike the absence of female characters. Male characters, more often than not, don't interest me as much.

I like female characters too, when they're not Mary Sues. My point is that not being one is an increasingly rare trait.

I can do without the random acts of casual violence as well.

 

[Bob The Skutter]

I'm sorry - what attitude are you assigning to me? And what does it have to do with there being more stories/ show/movies with male protagonists? Because if you actually do a full on survey of tv and books (possibly not movies) you'll find that there are as many or more stories with female protagonists out there as there are stories with male protagonists. Check out your average fantasy shelf at a bookstore - probably 60% female protagonists.

The attitude I'm assigning to you is the one you've assigned yourself, men prefer stories about men, women about women.
It seems execs do exactly the same thing "Who is this story aimed at? Is the main character relatable to that audience?"

Until recently that audience was male, 18-34, so most of the stories told were about male protagonists , written by men for men. Occasionally you'd get a story with a female lead but they'd still be written by men for men so the characters would be unbelievable and that is why they failed, not because men couldn't relate to the woman in the lead.

Now that has started to change, you get more stuff made for women, and teenagers, but it doesn't change the fact that most of it isn't well written, and tends to be stereotypical rubbish because it's what women and teenagers "like".

If a show/book/movie is well written people will watch and like the characters regardless of whether they are of the same gender.

 

[Kegg]

Well, in many of them I have no choice but to strongly identify with the male characters because the female characters are nonexistent or wildly underwritten.

Right, but take, say, Blade Runner. I don't identify with anyone in Blade Runner, strongly or otherwise. It's a very detached viewing experience. The same is basically true of Alien, actually, though I like that film a lot more and think Ripley is a more interesting lead than Deckard.

As for critical acclaim, I could argue a pretty strong bias in literary criticism against stories with female concerns, which are often labeled melodrama and forgotten. Heat is a good example - it was nothing but melodrama, and yet did garner critical acclaim. If anyone can tell me how it was deserving of critical acclaim and was not melodrama, I'd be grateful.

Eh. I'm still of a mind that surely good female melodramas get positive reviews?

There are female reviewers and there has been an influence of feminism on film criticism, including IIRC a reappraisal of the melodrama, so I'm not sure why this would still be (considered to be) seen so monolithically.

I'm not saying dismissing melodramas would go away; but that there'd be more debate on the subject. If a rather great female melodrama came out and had the male critics uncomfortably squirming that they don't get it, surely there would be an aggressive defence of some kind?

Both Twilights films, however, have met with largely below-par reviews - the second much more so than the first, it should be fairly said. That half-interests me because the female screenwriter, Melissa Rosenberg, works on Dexter, a series with a male protagonist who I strongly identify with (while we're counting) and she's really very good at that. Rather excellent, in fact. One digresses.

But it's also a bit hypocritical of "society" (not necessairly these specific mothers/families) considering how much flack Harry Potter has taken for various reasons up-to and including things like Satanism or anti-Christian sentiment but here we have novels where a teenage girl falls in love with an undead monster and eventually becomes one herself.

Seems a bit of a double standard to me.

Eh? The only reason I know about Twilight and know as much as I do is the huge Internet backlash over its breakout success. Much like Eragon that's the first context I've ever heard of it.

Harry Potter criticism has nothing on Twilight's; and Harry Potter has met quite arguably with a broader range of acceptance by critics and the nerdy community types. It's also been seen skittishly by those who frown on witchcraft and all that, but to the best of my knowledge they are either uncomfortable with Twilight for similar reasons, or in some cases defend it for its chaste teen romance - or attack it for not being chaste enough. I know too much about Twilight criticism at this point, seriously, there's too much of it.

Point is, society is doing a number on these books, and internet culture has developed a whole subculture just based around anti-Twilightism. Harry Potter haters wish they could be this big.

 

[Hermiod]

If a rather great female melodrama came out and had the male critics uncomfortably squirming that they don't get it, surely there would be an aggressive defence of some kind?

I don't see where this huge list of films that are made with a view to entertain solely men has come from.

There's no male equivalent of the romantic comedy genre, no specific type of film that a woman would only ever go to see in order to get something from their partner in return.

The Dark Knight, for example, wasn't made to put women off. They might not have enjoyed it as much as men did. On the other hand, the same year we had Sex and the City and Mamma Mia, neither of which your average man would go to see either on his own or with a group of male friends. There's nothing about your average summer blockbuster that says "Women! Don't watch me!"

Very rarely is a movie made with a view to be profitable solely from the sale of tickets to men. Well, not unless the title of that movie ends in "2", stars someone currently contracted to WWE and is planned to go straight to DVD.

As I said last time the subject of Twilight came up, there is no equivalent for men. There is no entertainment product on a similar scale of popularity that is purposefully designed to appeal solely to men and exclude women. As I also said, even pornography isn't!

There are actresses (Sarah Jessica Parker and Jennifer Aniston to use the most obvious examples), and even some actors (yes, Matthew McConaughey, I'm looking at you) who rarely, if ever, travel beyond that genre too.

 

[SeerSGB]

The BS in all this is had a man wrote the story, the exact same damn book, he'd be neutered for being misogynist asshole who probably was a closest pedophile. Given that a woman wrote it, it's romantic, a fairy tale.

 

[Hermiod]

The BS in all this is had a man wrote the story, the exact same damn book, he'd be neutered for being misogynist asshole who probably was a closest pedophile. Given that a woman wrote it, it's romantic, a fairy tale.

And, as has been previously pointed out, if we had "Twilight Dads" they'd all be in jail on child pornography charges.

That's okay, though, because it's not rape when it's an adult woman and a teenage boy.

 

[Trekker4747]

The BS in all this is had a man wrote the story, the exact same damn book, he'd be neutered for being misogynist asshole who probably was a closest pedophile. Given that a woman wrote it, it's romantic, a fairy tale.

And, as has been previously pointed out, if we had "Twilight Dads" they'd all be in jail on child pornography charges.

That's okay, though, because it's not rape when it's an adult woman and a teenage boy.

That's one of the more fucked-up things I have ever read.

 

[Bob The Skutter]

The BS in all this is had a man wrote the story, the exact same damn book, he'd be neutered for being misogynist asshole who probably was a closest pedophile. Given that a woman wrote it, it's romantic, a fairy tale.

And, as has been previously pointed out, if we had "Twilight Dads" they'd all be in jail on child pornography charges.

That's okay, though, because it's not rape when it's an adult woman and a teenage boy.

That's one of the more fucked-up things I have ever read.

WTF? So getting a teenage boy to tattoo himself and sneak around with a mobile phone for her to contact him is fine, but a guy "is just out for sex" and that makes it worse? Aren't The Observer and The Guardian usually the sensible papers?

 

[Lapis Exilis]

I'm sorry - what attitude are you assigning to me? And what does it have to do with there being more stories/ show/movies with male protagonists? Because if you actually do a full on survey of tv and books (possibly not movies) you'll find that there are as many or more stories with female protagonists out there as there are stories with male protagonists. Check out your average fantasy shelf at a bookstore - probably 60% female protagonists.

The attitude I'm assigning to you is the one you've assigned yourself, men prefer stories about men, women about women.
It seems execs do exactly the same thing "Who is this story aimed at? Is the main character relatable to that audience?"

I think you jumped from a couple of statements that I made to a full blown theory about what I think about who watches what stories.

It's certainly true that execs think about audience - so do authors. Because, generally, there is a sort of average audience for various materials. How much that breaks down by gender, or age, or socio-economic level, or a variety of other factors, is debatable from several different perspectives.

Until recently that audience was male, 18-34, so most of the stories told were about male protagonists , written by men for men.

I don't quite follow this statement. Are you saying that until recently the audience for all stories was assumed to be male, 18-34?

Occasionally you'd get a story with a female lead but they'd still be written by men for men so the characters would be unbelievable and that is why they failed, not because men couldn't relate to the woman in the lead.

Now that has started to change, you get more stuff made for women, and teenagers, but it doesn't change the fact that most of it isn't well written, and tends to be stereotypical rubbish because it's what women and teenagers "like".

Again, I'm confused by this statement. Are you saying that material aimed at women and teenagers is more generally bad than material aimed at male audiences?

If a show/book/movie is well written people will watch and like the characters regardless of whether they are of the same gender.

Well-written is subjective. And the idea that people will watch or read well-written stuff is also debatable. After all Moon had a much smaller audience than 2012 this year.

Well, in many of them I have no choice but to strongly identify with the male characters because the female characters are nonexistent or wildly underwritten.

Right, but take, say, Blade Runner. I don't identify with anyone in Blade Runner, strongly or otherwise. It's a very detached viewing experience. The same is basically true of Alien, actually, though I like that film a lot more and think Ripley is a more interesting lead than Deckard.

Fair enough, though I'd say that on average most viewers do enjoy material because they are able to imagine themselves "living" it, as opposed to enjoying it in a more abstract way.

As for critical acclaim, I could argue a pretty strong bias in literary criticism against stories with female concerns, which are often labeled melodrama and forgotten. Heat is a good example - it was nothing but melodrama, and yet did garner critical acclaim. If anyone can tell me how it was deserving of critical acclaim and was not melodrama, I'd be grateful.

Eh. I'm still of a mind that surely good female melodramas get positive reviews?

Sometimes - and of course the bias I'm speaking of is in regards to a larger history of storytelling. That is, there were probably some pretty good stories about women written in 1915 that didn't get much a hearing, or a chance to enter the classics pantheon not because they were really worse than the stuff Fitzgerald was putting out - know what I mean?

There are female reviewers and there has been an influence of feminism on film criticism, including IIRC a reappraisal of the melodrama, so I'm not sure why this would still be (considered to be) seen so monolithically.

I agree - I've been speaking in pretty broad terms. When you break it down to more recent years, the picture changes a good deal.

Both Twilights films, however, have met with largely below-par reviews - the second much more so than the first, it should be fairly said. That half-interests me because the female screenwriter, Melissa Rosenberg, works on Dexter, a series with a male protagonist who I strongly identify with (while we're counting) and she's really very good at that. Rather excellent, in fact. One digresses.

Don't get me wrong - I'm not defending Twilight. In fact, remember my original premise was that Twilight, HP and Star Wars are all fairly mediocre material that have broad appeal.

If a rather great female melodrama came out and had the male critics uncomfortably squirming that they don't get it, surely there would be an aggressive defence of some kind?

I don't see where this huge list of films that are made with a view to entertain solely men has come from.

There's no male equivalent of the romantic comedy genre, no specific type of film that a woman would only ever go to see in order to get something from their partner in return.

The Dark Knight, for example, wasn't made to put women off. They might not have enjoyed it as much as men did. On the other hand, the same year we had Sex and the City and Mamma Mia, neither of which your average man would go to see either on his own or with a group of male friends. There's nothing about your average summer blockbuster that says "Women! Don't watch me!"

See, here's some of what I was trying to get at. You are assuming that movies which are clearly made more to appeal to males, such as The Dark Knight, are somehow normative - that is, you are assuming their appeal is without gender bias, in the way you say rom-coms have a gender bias built in. But I would strongly argue against that. The thing is women have long since learned to enjoy stories that are not aimed specifically at them - so a larger section of women can enjoy action/ adventure/ male wish fulfillment fantasy stories than the section of men who can enjoy romantic comedy/ female fantasy wish fullfillment stories. And, you should know, many, many guys do in fact like rom-coms - they just might not admit it too openly. And why? Because they'll be ridiculed by men and women alike because our society has traditionally (this is changing somewhat) discouraged men from identifying with anything that was culturally defined as feminine. A lot of guys (several in this thread) have stood up and said they don't care if other people will ridicule them - they like what they like, and they have a broad range of tastes. But more guys label certain kinds of stories as "for women", bash them, and stay away from them like the plague.

That is, you say executives make rom coms with an eye towards screaming at men to stay away - but that's ridiculous. Execs want as many butts in seats as possible and could care less what genitalia is attached to said butts. Men choose to stay away from those stories.

 

[Kegg]

Sometimes - and of course the bias I'm speaking of is in regards to a larger history of storytelling. That is, there were probably some pretty good stories about women written in 1915 that didn't get much a hearing, or a chance to enter the classics pantheon not because they were really worse than the stuff Fitzgerald was putting out - know what I mean?

Quite. It's interesting to see what reappraisals since then of otherwise forgotten female authors have stuck.

Don't get me wrong - I'm not defending Twilight. In fact, remember my original premise was that Twilight, HP and Star Wars are all fairly mediocre material that have broad appeal.

True, but Twilight, unlike HP and Star Wars, seems to mix medium-to-poor reviews with its success, while those two franchises are more or less more positively recieved, particularly the early Star Wars films.

It seems to me to be a little more like Transformers in terms of popular reaction; there's a series that is shamelessly male adolescent fantasy and has been critically trashed but also enormously successful financially. Being unfamiliar with Twilight I'll concede that may be an unfair comparison to make, but that is how it looks to this woefully uninformed observer.

I don't see where this huge list of films that are made with a view to entertain solely men has come from.

There's no male equivalent of the romantic comedy genre, no specific type of film that a woman would only ever go to see in order to get something from their partner in return.

Would it be horribly crude and insensitive of me to compare it to regular baseball and Negro Baseball? If so, apologies, but it seems to me to be somewhat the same idea - male fantasies are sufficiently dominant they're both expected to be enjoyed by women and are everywhere. The latter entertainment is a trifle ghettoized.

I was initially sort of startled at how shameless the ads for the new Twilight film were, with the buff, half-naked young men, but on immediate reflection it did occur to me how very, very often I have seen the reverse. I don't know, I get that Hermoid has sincere problems with cinema today from a male perspective, and maybe it's because I'm not much of a man but I've always felt more than adequately pandered to. Even I found the noticeable lack of any real female characters in the Dark Knight at all sort of ridiculous, which is why I do hope the sequel has Catwoman or something.

Of course, the other reason I want Catwoman goes back to me being the adequately pandered-to male, now doesn't it?

 

[Ryan]

The BS in all this is had a man wrote the story, the exact same damn book, he'd be neutered for being misogynist asshole who probably was a closest pedophile. Given that a woman wrote it, it's romantic, a fairy tale.

And, as has been previously pointed out, if we had "Twilight Dads" they'd all be in jail on child pornography charges.

Come on. Let's not pretend there isn't an entire industry built on sexualizing young girls. Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan, and the Olsen Twins practically built their careers on it.

And if you don't think male authors get away with all kinds of deviant writing you're probably not reading much. Stephen King got himself anointed the master of horror doing it.

 

[Hermiod]

See, here's some of what I was trying to get at. You are assuming that movies which are clearly made more to appeal to males, such as The Dark Knight, are somehow normative - that is, you are assuming their appeal is without gender bias, in the way you say rom-coms have a gender bias built in. But I would strongly argue against that. The thing is women have long since learned to enjoy stories that are not aimed specifically at them - so a larger section of women can enjoy action/ adventure/ male wish fulfillment fantasy stories than the section of men who can enjoy romantic comedy/ female fantasy wish fullfillment stories. And, you should know, many, many guys do in fact like rom-coms - they just might not admit it too openly. And why? Because they'll be ridiculed by men and women alike because our society has traditionally (this is changing somewhat) discouraged men from identifying with anything that was culturally defined as feminine. A lot of guys (several in this thread) have stood up and said they don't care if other people will ridicule them - they like what they like, and they have a broad range of tastes. But more guys label certain kinds of stories as "for women", bash them, and stay away from them like the plague.

They stay away from them like the plague because they're invariably awful.

Even The Dark Knight, which is an amazing movie, changed the core characters to appeal to a female audience. You must realise that Batman does not sit around in his penthouse crying about being Batman. He's the god damn Batman!

In the meantime, Wolverine's running around naked. They didn't put that in there for us guys, believe me! Same goes for James Bond too.

That is, you say executives make rom coms with an eye towards screaming at men to stay away - but that's ridiculous. Execs want as many butts in seats as possible and could care less what genitalia is attached to said butts. Men choose to stay away from those stories.

Men make an informed choice to stay away. They know the movies will be awful and will have nothing for them thus they choose not to watch.

They know that in every movie, Jennifer Aniston, Sarah Jessica Parker, Katherine Heigl, Sandra Bullock and Jennifer Lopez will all still be playing the same characters that they've played a million times before so why bother ?

Oh, and as for Transformers - the whole "men don't like movies that suck" thing still appies. Shia LaBeouf needs to play Lion-O, Matt Trakker and Marty McFly now in order to completely ruin all of my childhood memories. There is nothing in those two movies anyone's wish fulfillment except Michael Bay's.

Would it be horribly crude and insensitive of me to compare it to regular baseball and Negro Baseball? If so, apologies, but it seems to me to be somewhat the same idea - male fantasies are sufficiently dominant they're both expected to be enjoyed by women and are everywhere. The latter entertainment is a trifle ghettoized.

They're not the same at all and haven't been since they stopped putting SCHWARZENEGGER at the top of movie posters in the 80's.

The core male characters are now altered to suit female ideals. See the aforementioned Batman, Wolverine and James Bond. A more masculine trio of characters, in their true forms, you will not find, but instead we get them sitting around moping, usually with no clothes on.

I was initially sort of startled at how shameless the ads for the new Twilight film were, with the buff, half-naked young men, but on immediate reflection it did occur to me how very, very often I have seen the reverse. I don't know, I get that Hermoid has sincere problems with cinema today from a male perspective, and maybe it's because I'm not much of a man but I've always felt more than adequately pandered to. Even I found the noticeable lack of any real female characters in the Dark Knight at all sort of ridiculous, which is why I do hope the sequel has Catwoman or something.

Whereas I sincerely hope it does not because she'll be another Lana Lang/Echo Mary Sue and will ruin the movie. Catwoman would be scraping the bottom of the barrel when they don't need to.

It's Hermiod, by the way.

Of course, the other reason I want Catwoman goes back to me being the adequately pandered-to male, now doesn't it?

Why ? You enjoy being beaten up by women half your size ? That's the only pandering you're going to get out of that.

The movie I keep coming back to is Fight Club. It's ten years old now. The movie has two speaking parts for women, only one of which is significant. The movie's (and also the book's) title is perhaps inapproriate as it leads people who have not seen it to think it's some dumb Stallone action movie about people beating each other up. The movie has a great deal to say about what it means to be male, how we as men have been sold this ideal where we buy "things" that we don't need to be complete and the definition of what a man is supposed to look like is set by Calvin Klein's marketing department.

Turn on the TV and you've got Matthew Fox selling moisturiser.

The point is that Fight Club was an intelligent film, not a popcorn blockbuster, that had a message written by a man for men.

Come on. Let's not pretend there isn't an entire industry built on sexualizing young girls. Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan, and the Olsen Twins practically built their careers on it.

Show me one post where I've said that isn't true.

Besides, and I know I'm unusual here, I don't find the same kind of women attractive as the supposedly "average" guy does so you've just listed a bunch of women that draw a big meh from me. I hated school, seeing women dressing and behaving in a way that reminds me of that is not really all that appealing to me.

And if you don't think male authors get away with all kinds of deviant writing you're probably not reading much. Stephen King got himself anointed the master of horror doing it.

I don't read a lot of horror, no, and I don't know a lot about Stephen King's work. From my limited knowledge of his work I don't recall him saying paedophilia is okay, however, but feel free to correct me on that.

 

[Bob The Skutter]

I'm sorry - what attitude are you assigning to me? And what does it have to do with there being more stories/ show/movies with male protagonists? Because if you actually do a full on survey of tv and books (possibly not movies) you'll find that there are as many or more stories with female protagonists out there as there are stories with male protagonists. Check out your average fantasy shelf at a bookstore - probably 60% female protagonists.

The attitude I'm assigning to you is the one you've assigned yourself, men prefer stories about men, women about women.
It seems execs do exactly the same thing "Who is this story aimed at? Is the main character relatable to that audience?"

I think you jumped from a couple of statements that I made to a full blown theory about what I think about who watches what stories.

It's certainly true that execs think about audience - so do authors. Because, generally, there is a sort of average audience for various materials. How much that breaks down by gender, or age, or socio-economic level, or a variety of other factors, is debatable from several different perspectives.



I don't quite follow this statement. Are you saying that until recently the audience for all stories was assumed to be male, 18-34?



Again, I'm confused by this statement. Are you saying that material aimed at women and teenagers is more generally bad than material aimed at male audiences?



Well-written is subjective. And the idea that people will watch or read well-written stuff is also debatable. After all Moon had a much smaller audience than 2012 this year.



Fair enough, though I'd say that on average most viewers do enjoy material because they are able to imagine themselves "living" it, as opposed to enjoying it in a more abstract way.



Sometimes - and of course the bias I'm speaking of is in regards to a larger history of storytelling. That is, there were probably some pretty good stories about women written in 1915 that didn't get much a hearing, or a chance to enter the classics pantheon not because they were really worse than the stuff Fitzgerald was putting out - know what I mean?



I agree - I've been speaking in pretty broad terms. When you break it down to more recent years, the picture changes a good deal.



Don't get me wrong - I'm not defending Twilight. In fact, remember my original premise was that Twilight, HP and Star Wars are all fairly mediocre material that have broad appeal..

I was saying you have the belief that men prefer male, and women female protagonists, and from what you've said I can't see where I'm wrong. I am not saying you have an attitude problem just that is your way of seeing it.

I'm not saying all stories were/are aimed at 18-34 year old males, but a majority were, because that was where the cash was seen as being.

You're right that there are groups of people shows are aimed at and they're tailored to try and attract that group. But I don't buy that they are solely or even mostly the only group who can and do enjoy them. Skins is a British teen drama and a full 50% of its audience is over 35 because it is a well made show.

I'm not saying all stories aimed at female and teen audiences are bad. I watched 3 seasons of Grey's Anatomy, I love Buffy, and enjoy Skins, and probably plenty of other shows aimed at other groups besides my own, but I'm saying a lot of it is stereotypical rubbish that they think a certain group wants. Like the shite that fills the "men's channels".
Granted some people do like those shows but they're hardly good quality.

As for good being subjective, that is true. But I think a lot of the time it comes down to people not stepping out of their comfort zone and trying something new, or simply not knowing about that little indie movie or obscure TV show, rather than the fact they wouldn't like it if they tried it.

And I'm sure there are people who enjoy things because they imagine vicariously living the events that happen, or even because they can be thankful it's not happening to them. But I think the whole thing of needing someone to "relate" to is bullshit.

 

[Aragorn]

Well thanks to Twilight, the young adult series Fallen is now going to be made into a movie(s). Only this time, instead of a vampire and a werewolf batting over an underage teenage girl, it's two fallen emo angels.

 

[Bob The Skutter]

Well thanks to Twilight, the young adult series Fallen is now going to be made into a movie(s). Only this time, instead of a vampire and a werewolf batting over an underage teenage girl, it's two fallen emo angels.

I can't say I've read The Fallen, but I have read Thomas E Sniegoski's Remy Chandler series and I found that to be fairly good.

 

[Traveller]

Ok, is there some female empowerment memo I didn't get? I don't watch "romantic comedy" films that are specially made for us girls, because they bore me to tears, and I greatly enjoy action films with male protagonists. And let me tell you, whatever fantasies I have about the males, it's not about being them!

 

[The Borgified Corpse]

I think it's interesting that most of the "male wish fulfillment fantasies" involve blowing shit up. You'd think that would be a fairly gender neutral fantasy.

Now, there are also "male wish fulfillment fantasies" of a romantic nature. Generally, I'd put them into 2 categories:

1.) Alpha male scores every piece of ass in sight. Example: Every single James Bond movie.

2.) Ignored nerd gets together with the hot chick. Examples: Peter/MJ in Spider-Man, Shia LaBeouf/Megan Fox in Transformers.

There are even a few somewhat male-centric romantic comedies out there, like Forgetting Sarah Marshall, The Invention of Lying, & Knocked Up.

 

[Bob The Skutter]

I think it's interesting that most of the "male wish fulfillment fantasies" involve blowing shit up. You'd think that would be a fairly gender neutral fantasy.

Now, there are also "male wish fulfillment fantasies" of a romantic nature. Generally, I'd put them into 2 categories:

1.) Alpha male scores every piece of ass in sight. Example: Every single James Bond movie.

2.) Ignored nerd gets together with the hot chick. Examples: Peter/MJ in Spider-Man, Shia LaBeouf/Megan Fox in Transformers.

There are even a few somewhat male-centric romantic comedies out there, like Forgetting Sarah Marshall, The Invention of Lying, & Knocked Up.

That was a point I was going to make, I don't really want to argue the point with Hermiod, since we've had similar discussions in the past but there are male versions of rom-coms, whether they're "bromance" comedies such as "I love you man" or "The Hangover" or Adam Sandler and Judd Apatow movies.
I do generally enjoy these films, but I also enjoy the occasional "chick flick" rom-com so long as they're well done, even if they do stick to the usual formula.

Oh, and personally I know as many men who went to see Sex and the City and enjoyed it as women.
Mamma Mia! I can't say the same for, but I did see it myself and I didn't really hate it but it's not something I want to see again.

 

[Hermiod]

I think it's interesting that most of the "male wish fulfillment fantasies" involve blowing shit up. You'd think that would be a fairly gender neutral fantasy.

Now, there are also "male wish fulfillment fantasies" of a romantic nature. Generally, I'd put them into 2 categories:

1.) Alpha male scores every piece of ass in sight. Example: Every single James Bond movie.

Yes, let's talk about James "Mr. Redundant" Bond, shall we ?

The Spy Who Loved Me, For Your Eyes Only, Octopussy, Licence to Kill, Tomorrow Never Dies, The World is Not Enough, Die Another Day, Casino Royale, Quantum of Solace.

In each of these movies Bond has had alongside him a female character who has been described during the promotion of the film as his "equal".

If Bond has so many "equals" what is the point of him even being there ? He's clearly a rich man, why not just let all these women do the work for him and have a nice retirement ? The truth is that the only woman that was ever his equal was Tracy Di Vincenzo and not because she could shoot guns or beat up men twice her size.

That, coupled with his recent aversion to wearing shirts, is called pandering to the female audience.

2.) Ignored nerd gets together with the hot chick. Examples: Peter/MJ in Spider-Man, Shia LaBeouf/Megan Fox in Transformers.

I would like to point out here that your average "ignored nerd" does not look like Tobey Maguire or Shia LaBeouf do after the many months they spent with their personal trainers in preparation for these films. I would like to also point out that the Spider-Man films do not accurately represent Peter Parker's ability or success with women.

Male fantasy does not revolve around wanting to be men who are better looking than us who get women we never could.

There are even a few somewhat male-centric romantic comedies out there, like Forgetting Sarah Marshall, The Invention of Lying, & Knocked Up.

Outside of humiliatrix and cuckolding porn, most men don't really fantasise about being cheated on. Just a little FYI there for you.

Oh, and we certainly don't fantasise about being Ricky Gervais either.

Ok, is there some female empowerment memo I didn't get? I don't watch "romantic comedy" films that are specially made for us girls, because they bore me to tears, and I greatly enjoy action films with male protagonists. And let me tell you, whatever fantasies I have about them males, it's not about being them!

Good for you. Doesn't mean Jennifer Aniston's going to stop playing Rachel anytime soon.

 

[Hermiod]

Oh, and personally I know as many men who went to see Sex and the City and enjoyed it as women.

And I thought it was just the cast who were cross dressers.