Movie tropes vs. women?

My close, personal friend Luke was watching Stranger Things recently and found himself off-put by the townsfolk's response to Winona Ryder's character, treating her perhaps like a crazy person just because she was saying things that sound crazy. He felt this way, in part, I suspect, because it seemed like lousy trope to him that nobody ever believes the hysterical woman who, it turns out later, knew exactly what was up and tried to warn everyone.  He was looking for more examples of this. I responded thusly.  Like my previous post about a movie trope, you may find it spoilerish.

People mostly humor the moms in The Exorcist and The Orphanage, because they're being paid to do so, but the husband in The Orphanage thinks she's nuts for free. 

Sarah Connor gets locked up for talking about Judgement Day. Everyone assumes the mom in Lights Out is loony and talking to herself instead of a monster. Nobody believes Marcia Gay Harden in The Mist, and they're right not to, although there are dire consequences either way. I'm sure in some Nightmare on Elm St. entries the parents and police and doctors figure these girls will calm down after they get some rest. 

[Guy who posted earlier in the comments] Adam might mean the most recent remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, or could be describing Jolie in Changeling, but in those movies the authorities DO believe the women, they just don't say so because they're in on the conspiracy.

The people around the main character in It Follows don't get what's going on at first, but that's closer to the heart of the trope - it's the same as investigating a weird noise in your basement. WE know that because this is a horror movie, hey don't do that. But, when the movie is over and there's a weird noise in your basement, you're going to go check on the cat or whatever because you think you live in a world without Terminators and creepy psychic children, just like the characters did at the start of most of these movies.

Well, the appearance of realism is half of it. The other half is moving these characters to action once they see that there's no authority figure who's going to act for them. That part applies to most of the above folks, moreso the more that they're protagonists. The cops don't believe Peter Parker in ASM, or the kid in Gremlins, or Cary Grant in North by Northwest, or Liam Neeson in Non-Stop, or Coraline in Coraline. But only some of this group is because they sound crazy. Others are suspected of being drunk!

My point may have been that I think you'll find it happening to a woman in most any horror and/or fantasy where a woman is the lead.

The reason I'm reposting this here is mostly because I thought it might lead to interesting conversation. But also, the silence this post earned me on Facebook got me all paranoid that we weren't really talking about movies and I came across like someone's tone-deaf, racist uncle. Internet!

#2,294: Don't Think Twice

Mechanic: Resurrection - ★★☆☆☆
• I mean, it's dumb, but of course it is.
• Really worrying green screenery in the opening scene.
• Poster correctly identifies the best part of the movie.
• Probably a better Hitman movie than Hitman.

The Sicilian - ★★☆☆☆
Is there another term for 'In Media Res' for when you actually start at the end of things? Or for when nothing really happens in a movie, perhaps to make a point? Or for when a movie's kind of boring?

Some guy in the lobby after was talking up how much he wanted to go watch the hour-longer director's cut, so I understand that others may have experienced the film differently.

Kubo and the Two Strings - ★★★☆☆
Pretty enough to keep you from thinking too closely about the plot. After all, it seems unfair to blame the Macguffin for being useless, but that's why the character doesn't usually get ahold of it so quick.

Don’t Think Twice - ★★★☆☆
I'm glad I saw this, but also a little hung up on what it's got to say. Is the message that teams are an acceptable as a support system? Use groups as a launchpad to your own success? And keep your head down and keep grinding away unless it's your own turn?

As a comic, I thought it was interesting that nothing in this movie seemed in any way aspirational. I don't want to be on that team. They had the vibe of good friends that real life improv teams occasionally project, but folded in on themselves in a way that was unusual to me. To their credit, their improv came from a place of deep confidence and control — a lot of the improv I see feels more driven by fear.

I wondered if the tech shown on screen was meant to indicate the year or the financial situation the characters are living in.

Birbiglia's character is one of those guys that the comedy scene will run out of town on a flurry of facebook posts in a few years.

The Most Overused Superhero Movie Plot

The story of how a superhero gained their super powers might be the most commonly told story in the superhero movie genre, but the most boring story, almost as frequently told, is to do with how a superhero has lost their superpowers.  You know, to prove it's not the powers that make them so super?

• Superman loses his powers in Superman II.
• Spider-Man loses his powers in Spider-Man 2.
• Thor loses his powers in Thor 1.
• Iron Man loses all the suits in Iron Man Three.
• Mystique, Rogue, Magneto, really just a bunch of people 'cure' their powers in X-Men 3.
• Wolverine loses his healing powers in The Wolverine, just enough.
• Professor X loses his powers in Days of Future Past. (and all the other movies?)
• Batman is depowered (so to speak) in The Dark Knight Rises.
  • Twice!
  • And then he quits again!
    • I think he quits in Batman Forever too.
• How about that movie where Nick Cage is an angel?
• Or that movie where Nick Cage is Ghost Rider 2?
• Or Hancock in Hancock?
• Or Men in Black 2?
• Or Austin Powers 2?
• Meteor Man?
• The Power Rangers movie?
• The new TMNT?

This is the dumbest superhero movie plot. It's like if all those horror movies where someone takes ten seconds to go "damn! no cell reception!" so that they can get on with the movie made the next 75 minutes about the characters' journey to discover it was never the phone that made 911 calls, cellular communication was a gift that those characters had, deep inside their hearts all along.

#2,290: Suicide Squad

Lights Out - ★★★½☆
ON'T STARTLE THE WITCH!

I think what appeals to me in a horror movie like this is that the movie magic is a little bit closer to the surface. Maybe it's creepy that the little girl is drawing and her paper disappears when she's not looking, but I have as much fun or more knowing it's just some PA leaning in and taking the paper while the camera's not looking.

I was already into this movie's deep and deliberately worrying frame compositions when suddenly, it seemed to me that this movie might have been shot in the same house as The Selling, and from then on I was searching for shots that could prove it.

Pete's Dragon - ★★★☆☆
Never saw the original, didn't really know what this was about, and it only dimly occurred to me during the trailers preceding this movie that we were about to receive a kids' movie.

It felt like a movie from at least 20 years ago, plus fancy dragon. Pete is always doing something so dangerous that it felt as though the movie could end at almost any time. There's a scene about halfway through that is innocently nerve-racking because the driver of a car just won't look at the road.

This year has been big for protagonists raised in the woods.

Hell or High Water - ★★★★☆
An unexpected late-summer gem. A highlight for the year so far, come ot think of it.

It's just refreshing to get a relatively straight-forward story that can be told with a minimum of visual effects houses' contributions. I, for one, find the practical, animatronic Jeff Bridges much more lifelike than the all-CG version.

Suicide Squad - ★½☆☆☆
I'm not so much angry as disappointed.

Everyone is reacting to this movie in much the way I felt about Guardians of the Galaxy. I mean, Guardians -is- a better movie, but that's a low bar. The movie does everything twice - introduces all the characters twice, sends them on the same mission twice. The mission feels pointless. On the one hand, apparently global destruction has been unleashed, but on the other, the scale of the movie makes it feel like a cut scene you're sitting through for the nth time, in between beating up faceless okay-to-shoot zombie goons.

The plot is weak enough that the movie would probably be better not bothering with it. We need a team that can take down Superman? Okay, but this sure isn't it. Instead of making the whole movie hinged on Waller's clumsy failure to form a super squad, open with a clear goal: Fight Enchantress. Then you can reveal later on how she got to where she is (either a blunder or a deliberate ploy to show how useful this squad could be), and we can be all conflicted about how to feel about Waller and her motives.

I'm not excited about a alternate DVD cut with more of this terrible Joker, but I guess I'd like to see the movie the director was trying to make sometime.
 

#2,286: Star Trek Beyond

The Purge - ★★★☆☆
There are two kinds of movie I used to skip in the theater: big broad blockbuster comedies and a lot of horror stuff. Except, when I end up watching them later, it turns out that I like the horror stuff. Sometimes just to admire the economy of it.

Plus, the premise of this one makes me laugh.

The Infiltrator - ★★★☆☆
Felt to me like a throwback to the kind of movie made in the time this movie takes place. Like a 70s movie about the 70s, made last year. I thought it was pretty tense, just waiting for the shoe to drop. Cranston has a streak going of doing movies with unusual structure. I wonder if he insists on it.

Star Trek V: The Final Frontier - ★★☆☆☆
I was oddly eager to see what is supposedly the worst movie in the series. It didn't seem all that different from Beyond, really. I like how the transporter isn't made of, like, tiny complicated circuit boards and electronics. It seems to be run on gears and pipes and things you need a huge wrench to fix.

I hope they get Ricky Gervais to play Sybok in the remake.

Star Trek Beyond - ★★½☆☆
A little bit boring, but possibly the movie in the reboot series that is most like the original series. Less galaxy-spanning wild action and more talking to people in goofy makeup in small rooms. More broken technology things. More sciencey stuff that doesn't make sense in our world OR theirs. And a thing at the end that's supposed to be really awesome that is really silly.