Bechdel Test Movie List

One of the main characters, Mindy (a.k.a. the superhero Hit-Girl) has a lengthy plot where she's both trying to live a "normal" life and fit in with the girls at her school, and trying to live up to her perceived responsibility as a superhero. In the former plotline, she repeatedly talks to her female classmates about various non-boy things (makeovers, clothes, the varsity dance team, her social failings, what horrible vapid people they are, her revenge on them). In the latter, she goes up against a lady supervillain who's easily the strongest and scariest character in the film, though their conversation doesn't go much past one-liners and threats.

This is the weirdest Bechdel Test pass I've seen this year. If you remove Mindy/Hit Girl from the story, the gender tropes are really gross. But with Mindy it's a vulgar Hannah/Mean Girls riff.

For the kind of movie this is, it deserves props for handling Mindy's coming of age stuff as well as it did. She feels like a far better realized character than Kick Ass himself.

I really thought this movie gave mixed signals about teenage girls. On one hand, Mindy is a bad-ass, superior, not just in strength, to Kick-Ass and her plot line examines feelings of outsiderness as a teen. On the other, her teenage antagonist, the popular pretty girl who randomly does a super sexualised dance in front of the class in the gym, is 'evil' because she has become image-obsessed and shallow etc etc etc... But the movie doesn't take a look at what made her that way (social pressure, institutionalised sexism), it just looks at all her perfect hair and make-up and says 'EVIL SLUT PRETTY GIRL'

so idk.

In my reading, the movie is extremely meta and the Mean Girls situation is just one aspect of it. Otherwise, the coming to age trope being aplied on a female character while the title character is male is very welcome in my opnion