Joss Whedon "Pissed Off" About Too Few Female Superheroes

Joss Whedon has been pretty open in the past about his desire to have more female superheroes appear in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but rarely has he  been as blunt as he was today in an interview with The Daily Beast. Talking about his new film Much Ado About Nothing, Whedon told a reporter that he's tired of hearing that female superheroes aren't included because they're simply not profitable enough, and that he hopes movies like The Hunger Games will help. "Toymakers will tell you they won't sell enough, and movie people will point to the two terrible superheroine movies that were made and say, You see? It can't be done. It's stupid, and I'm hoping The Hunger Games will lead to a paradigm shift," Whedon said. "It's frustrating to me that I don't see anybody developing one of these movies. It actually pisses me off. My daughter watched The Avengers and was like, 'My favorite characters were the Black Widow and Maria Hill,' and I thought, Yeah, of course they were. I read a beautiful thing Junot Diaz wrote: 'If you want to make a human being into a monster, deny them, at the cultural level, any reflection of themselves.'" Of course, Whedon's take on feminism, as seen through his film and TV work, is alternately celebrated or mocked, depending on whose viewpoint you read. While he's widely credited with giving female characters large, deep parts that aren't scared of making them part of the action, he's also accused of doing so in a way that hypersexualizes and fetishizes the very women he's trying to empower. Whedon will include Scarlet Witch, one of Marvel's most powerful female heroes, in The Avengers 2. The character is also expected to turn up (alongside Kitty Pryde, Rogue, Storm and more) in X-Men: Days of Future Past.