Bechdel Test Movie List

Darn this movie was great and has awesome female characters in it. Angel Dust and Teenage warhead are strong, powerful and capable, badassery all around. Sadly it did not pass 2 of the 3 tasks. There could have been a moment between (spolier) Angel Dust and Copycat,but she directs her comment at Arjax. Also she says "thanks" to Warhead but still no exchange.

I got into an argument about this with my friends, because although I loved the movie and the strong women in it, they still did not talk to one another. I could not get my buds to understand how lame that is, especially since Warhead is snarky and could have had a clever even brief banter with Angel Dust.

With that aside, it did pass a common action movie trope where lead women fighters only fight each other (never male leads). (spolier) Angel Dust gets in a great battle with Colossus and would have prevailed if not for Warhead intervening.

"I could not get my buds to understand how lame that is". That's kind of condescending, assuming people who disagree with you don't understand, rather than just disagreeing. I think the Bechdel Test should be seen more as an overview. It doesn't matter if an individual film fails, and it sucks if films stick in a pointless bit of female banter just to get the tick.

^ But it is lame? They didn't mean the movie, they just meant the use of female characters. (However, in my opinion the movie was less than amazing lmao) One of the first things that bothered me about it was that there were three female characters and they all hardly spoke. What a waste.

I rewatched the DVD, and I believe that this is 3/3. There is a scene with Vanessa talking with the (female) oncologist. The are not talking about Wade; no exposition of his character is provided. Instead the conversation is about cancer treatment. We are shown hidden depth in Vanessa both as a person who is connected to a family she loves, as well as a person who was deeply affected by loss in her family. She is strongly implied to be keeping an awareness of new treatment options long after said family member died. It says a lot about her character and makes her out to be much more complicated than one of her profession usually is in Hollywood.

I'm not going to rewatch the movie right this moment but DK, is the oncologist a NAMED character or just a doctor?

The Oncologist does not have a formal personal and family surname in credits, though I'd argue "Oncologist" is a type of character name. She is more than a featured extra at any rate.

You may feel this does not qualify. However I think the Bechtel test is a better social commentary for a slightly lower bar of not expressly requiring a personal name. (This was not a part of the cartoonist's original set of requirements, it was added later). At any rate, some of the best movies do not have a character name for the protagonist- Hero and The Good, Bad, and the Ugly for example.

The "named character" criterion is a proxy for "actual character with backstory and development rather than a background prop". It's not perfect, but it's close enough for most movies.

Hmmm, I don't think it's fair to rate Deadpool. The film is solely meant to be about him and Ajax. It doesn't have major female characters because the film is focus on him and his spat with Ajax, so I don't think it's fair.

It'll obviously fail, because there'd be no point in having women that are important enough to communicate with each other in a conversation, in a deadpool film, because the whole point of him is that he commands the attention.

So I kinda don't think this is a fair one.

I guess I agree with Matt, it's a Deadpool film with a male villain and the movie is about them. Otherwise, it would just be an R-rated X-Men movie.

It makes no real sense to me as to why the female characters need to talk. It's not a way of discerning equality because a film with a female lead and only one other character who is a male would fail. It's a test that automatically assumes you're going to be sexist and doesn't cater for the actual films that care...

Logical with all the inherent sexism of that movie, with all that joke about homosexuality and body shaming of all the characters by the hero.

Matt and Morgan,

The bechdel test isn't necessarily meant to measure whether or not a movie is good or not, but rather to measure trends. It's perfectly fine to have male-centered films like this one. But this test is used to show just how predominant male-centered films are. I think you'd agree a balance would be ideal.

Matt and Morgan,

"there'd be no point in having women that are important enough to communicate with each other in a conversation"
"It makes no real sense to me as to why the female characters need to talk"

Do you even hear yourselves when you say stuff like that? If you see a film about a woman, a film that is focused solely on that woman, would you find it as bizarre if there were two men talking to each other in the film? Why exactly would it be so bad for two female characters to just ACKNOWLEDGE each other in Deadpool for example, especially if they are in the same scene anyway? Nobody's asking for them to have a 20-minute conversation just together, but not one word? You do realize that there are other male characters in Deadpool, other than the two, and I don't see you complaining about them and the screen time they waste when they open their mouths.

While it is a movie about deadpool movie & focused on him, there is no reason female characters can’t talk to each other.