Having female characters does not make you a feminist.

Watch out, I'm about to make another misguided post about feminism and Hollywood gender standards. Also, we might start talking about superheroes and race, because, you know what? When I was a little kid, The Green Lantern was a black dude. I know that the Hal Jordan is the "original" character to hold the title, but John Stewart is the guy I watched on Justice League when I was a wee little nerdling.

SO, LET'S TALK ABOUT SUPERHERO MOVIES.

WHAT DO YOU WANT TO TALK ABOUT, LEEZ?

LET'S TALK ABOUT X-MEN: FIRST CLASS.

So, in general, X-Men as a franchise is pretty good about providing interesting, strong female characters. I mean, this is the series that brought us Rogue and Jean Grey and Storm and Kitty Pryde. Which is nothing to laugh at, because they're badass, but they're not in this movie. First Class has four main female characters, which is already more than most superhero films which will typically just have a love interest (we'll talk about that when we talk about Green Lantern. We're getting there.) And it passes the Bechdel Test, which is something not many superhero movies do.

So, is it feminist?

Let's look at the four female characters we get:

Angel: stripper.
Emma Frost: High-end stripper, like for governors and stuff.
Moira: FBI agent (masquerades as a stripper).
Raven/Mystique: Hero's sister, ends up naked by the end of the movie, may or may not sleep with Magneto, who may or may not grow up to be Sir Ian McKellen, who may or may not have played the character as militantly, metaphorically homosexual. (But probably did.)

So Angel is a stripper who defects to the bad guys at the soonest sign of a fight. She's not a very deep character and that's okay because she's mostly around to wear skimpy outfits and provide a bit of color to our otherwise pretty damn anglo-looking cast.

Emma Frost is a villainess, who runs around in her underwear, who gets chained to a bed, whose main power is turning herself into an incredibly cheesy diamond effect. Frankly I think January Jones is a really boring actress and the character was really flat beyond just hanging out and being eye candy for Kevin Bacon.

Moira... is in her underwear within five minutes of her first appearance. She is reasonably useful in a fight, but she shoots Charles in the spine and she winds up the butt of a joke that seems like it's trying to emulate Mad Men but the rest of the movie is so unapologetically modern that the 1960s setting feels like an afterthought, like they needed a reason to point nukes at each other.

Raven/Mystique is probably the most interesting female character, but she gets reduced as the plot goes on until she is A) naked and B) sleeps with Erik C) to distract from the fact that he and Charles are basically having the most epic bromance since Kirk and Spock. Or something. Actually, why the fuck did she sleep with him? Because he thinks its sexy that she's blue and Hank just rejected her, so her standards are lowered? I mean, not that Erik isn't good looking or anything, but there's something weird going on in the character motivations there and it seems to cheapen the character.

So what have we got here?

• A token.
• Fan service.
• A woman in a man's job, ultimately proven inferior and susceptible to emotions.
• A teenaged girl who isn't making rational decisions because the boy she liked called her ugly.

Bechdel test passing or not, this isn't actually looking all that good. We've basically got a bunch of stereotypes, and they're not really doing anyone any favors except maybe the fanboys. But at the same time, most stories don't work if you just switch the genders, because then they become all about the gender. Like, a story about a prince who goes on a quest during which he learns all kinds of things about himself and at the end rescues a princess can be about all the things he learns along the way. But if you switch it and make it about a princess who rescues a prince, all anyone is going to focus on is that it's now about a girl.

But moving on to Green Lantern.

I am not going to call this a great movie, but it's a fun movie and it was raining today.

Green Lantern has, like, two female characters. Maybe three because they made one of the masters of the universe a woman. I'm going to zero in on the love interest because, let's face it - here is a compelling character setup... who is of absolutely no relevance to the plot past the midpoint.

The character Carroll is a test pilot. The first time we see her, she's chewing out Hal for being late, and she's already suited up and ready to go. Awesome. She puts in some good moves out in the planes, but she doesn't win the day. But that's because this is character setup - Carroll plays by the rules, Hal showboats. Fair enough. And then she's a business genius - awesome! Good for her!

And then she nearly gets crushed by a bandstand, kidnapped by the villain, and is just totally absent from the final conflict. Wow. Did the writers just forget she existed? At least Mary Jane got to dangle over the Hudson. So, basically, this is a character who just kind of became useless and went away. And she had a promising setup, too.

There's kind of this line between "extraneous love interest" and "female character who happens to love," and Caroll hits the "extraneous" side hard. She serves no purpose to the plot. Her role at the beginning could just as well have been played by another male fighter pilot and it wouldn't have made a difference.

At the same time, though, it's stupid to take two characters who for the duration of the film have had little to no chemistry and throw them together for some misdirected moment of character development. Erik and Mystique? I mean I understood why she would go to him, but their conversation felt rushed and didn't come to any kind of character-appropriate conclusion. First he tells her she's too young, then he tells her he prefers her blue, and then he has sex with her. MAGNETO, TAKING ADVANTAGE OF EMOTIONALLY DISTRESSED YOUNG WOMEN SINCE 1962. Congratulations, you're a lech. The logical end to this scene would actually be him talking her out of his bed, instead of her talking him into it, but apparently when a girl sneaks into your bedroom and she's naked and she's blue and she wants someone to tell her she's pretty, the appropriate response is to have sex with her. Yes. Of course. And even though she's had interactions with Erik prior to this and they do have some sexual tension, he's never really built up as a viable romantic rival to Hank and asdfghjk this just really bugs me.

Superheroes and race will have to wait for another day because I wound up having a three-hour discussion about it with Lydia while I was typing up this post and it really does not fit here, but we basically figured out why making Peter Parker in to Peter Park doesn't work but rebuilding Spider-Man from scratch does.