Abstract
Recently, there has been a public push for the film industry to improve female representation; subsequently, DC and Marvel released female-lead films Wonder Woman and Captain Marvel to critical praise and record box office figures. Strictly looking at industry measures of success (critics’ reviews and box office totals) it would appear that the film industry and moviegoing public are demanding more films with similar female representation. However, public opinion cannot be captured by critical interpretation and viewership alone; it is important to understand how audiences feel after viewing a film and which aspects did or did not resonate with them. With my research, I studied a portion of the discourse spread about these films on the internet to uncover an untold aspect of their public reception. I read and coded meaningful sentiments from the first 250 IMDb user reviews for each film to evaluate audiences’ perspectives on themes. This sentiment speaks to changes within the gender culture of the film industry as well as the viability of future female-lead films. In general, I found that user critics on IMDb were much less welcoming to these films as previous measures of success would indicate and would often express their discontent about similar factors including the film’s representations of feminism, the actress’ behavior both on and offscreen, and how the films compared to previous installments in their respective cinematic universes. I combine these findings with influence from theories about spectatorship, feminism, the superhero genre, paratexts, and convergence culture.