Avery Tries to be a Critic: 'Me and Earl and the Dying Girl'

 One of the perks of dating a film critic--yes, even one who self-identifies as an “online amateur”--is that they are regulars and members at just about every theater within a 20-mile radius of their house, which often results in rewards like free movie tickets. And if you are the girlfriend of said ticket-holder, well, you can guess what that means.

So Ian had free tickets to see this cute little indie movie, Me and Earl and the Dying Girl (you know, the one that indieWIRE was shocked to hear had made less at the box office than Jurassic World?) and being the total sucker for good independent films that I am, I thought maybe it would be a good idea to go see it, so I tagged along. And that turned out to be a very, very good decision. Good enough, in fact, for me to attempt a review. So let’s jump right in. Here are ten reasons to go see Me and Earl and the Dying Girl right now:

1. The Cast
It’s not like the movie is packed with A-list stars. But it’s absolutely perfectly cast. The high-school kids actually look like high-school kids (was that a slam at Glee? why yes, it absolutely was!) and the adults, shocker of shockers, actually act like adults. There’s a few bigger names here and there, most notably Nick Offerman as Greg’s eccentric father, but when it came to casting the two leads they wisely went with actors who were professionals (previous credits of theirs include It’s Kind of A Funny Story, Bates Motel, iCarly and The Quiet Ones) but not huge-name Disney stars. Even better, Earl is played by a virtual unknown--more on him later. I know that casting alone doesn’t make or break a movie. But casting is a huge thing, as I found out the hard way with my first short films, and believe me, in this case, casting kind of did make the movie.

2. Rachel, Earl, and Greg
There are two things that I love about the dynamic between the three title characters: 1) the temptation to downshift into a Hunger Games-style love triangle was deliberately avoided, and 2) the development of the three-way friendship is perfectly natural. It’s not like Juno--much as I loved that movie, don’t get me wrong--where the three leading teenagers are so quirky and so ridiculous that they couldn’t possibly be friends with anyone but each other. Rachel is shown to have a social life outside her new friends, at least pre-cancer, and it’s established early on that Greg’s main flaw is that he tries far too hard to be an everyman. The characterization is spot-on, no one is allowed to be a flat stereotype, and at no point does the film fall back on the reasoning “well, look how not-mainstream they are, you HAVE to like them”--a hell of an accomplishment, considering that hipster has basically become the new cool.

3. The cancer storyline
I won’t spoil how things end for the “dying girl,” but I will say that I loved the way the film treated cancer. Again, it’s very easy to use illness as a plot device or--even worse--an obvious grab for an Oscar. But Alonso Gomez-Rejon, God bless the man, does not fall into that trap. In addition to a powerful, realistic portrayal of the way illness affects the loved ones of the afflicted, he opts out of showing Rachel in treatment, so we don’t see her puking from the chemotherapy or recovering from surgery. She is treated with dignity by the filmmakers, if not her classmates, who shower her with cards, flowers, and repeated choruses of “God has a plan!” In one memorable scene Greg, aided by a Wolverine poster, advises Rachel on how to respond to people who define her by her disease. It’s one of the best scenes in the film because it establishes early on that this is not just a “dying girl.” This is a person. And because the filmmakers treat her as such, so do we.

4. High school
High school stories have been beaten into atoms by the movie industry, ranging from the unrealistically upbeat to the unrealistically cynical to the outright insane. But Me and Earl and the Dying Girl portrays high school so achingly realistically that it doesn’t feel cliche at all. A stoner and a goth kid swear revenge on Greg after he accidentally incriminates them…only for one of them to forget the whole thing, and the other to attempt a truly pathetic follow-up months later. In another movie this would be a major plot point. In this one, it’s played out as a way to increase Greg’s sense of detachment from an environment that everyone around him takes extremely seriously. He doesn’t want to go to prom, or play football, or be popular. He just wants out. Even better: while everyone else views college as an escape, Greg accurately points out that it’s just another four years of school. Not too many high-school-centered flicks do that. This one, much to my excitement, actually does.

5. The movie parodies
So one of the plot points of Me and Earl and the Dying Girl revolves around the deliberately bad parodies that Greg and Earl make as homages to classic films. And for real, that alone was worth the price of admission. Admittedly some of them were so out there they’d only make a film student laugh (Sockwork Orange was my favorite--okay, I’m actually a huge dork, there we go, I admitted it, everyone happy now?) but if you’ve heard of literally any of the movies they parody in this film, you will laugh. Hard. And that brings us to…

6. The perfect split of comedy and drama
I’m so sick of filmmakers who act like a happy ending--or even the slightest bit of optimism--is poison for realism, when in reality, humor is one of the fastest ways to add realism to your movie, especially--for the love of God pay attention, indie filmmakers--if your movie is about teenagers. When I was in high school, there were days where I wanted to just crawl into my closet and disappear. (Though I don’t know where my logic was there. Maybe I’d just read The Chronicles of Narnia too many times.) And sure, movies do a great job of portraying that. Love us some audience tears, we filmmakers do. But there were also days when I laughed so hard I almost threw up, and there are so many teen dramas that forget to add that little bit of hope. Me and Earl and the Dying Girl walks the fine line between humor and sadness. And the result is truly amazing.

7. It’s not an action movie
Now don’t get me wrong, I like a good action movie just as much as the next moviegoer, as my unreasonable devotion to Chris Nolan demonstrates. And I think we’ve already established that I have nothing against blockbusters; in fact, I kind of love them. But you don’t have to be a film student to notice that summer is kind of the reigning season for blockbusters, and if you aren’t pumped up for Jurassic Park or Ant-Man or Terminator: Genysis, you’re out of luck. So if you don’t care to watch people get eaten by dinosaurs or see another unlikely superhero dramatically save an entire city single-handedly, here’s a movie you’ll love. If you are an action-film-addict, go see it anyway--you never know, you might love it too. And if you’re a no-preference dork like me who will see just about anything if the trailer looks good enough…what the hell are you waiting for?

8. Accurate portrayal of the artistic process
Okay, okay, this is a selfish one, but I really, really hate how often movies give the impression that the BEST IDEA EVER will come to you in a flash, or how someone miraculously comes up with the most perfect screenplay/film/song/poem/monologue in the history of art just in the nick of time. I expected the movie that Greg ends up making for Rachel to be OMG so perfect, but just like Greg himself, it is not. It takes him four months to come up with a movie that any other teenager on the face of the earth could dream up, and I thought that was pretty damn cool.

9. Avoid cliches like the plague?
Okay, the ending is predictably sappy and the message of love in the face of death is…well, it’s not exactly groundbreaking. But so many situations that could be predictable in this movie take a pleasantly surprising turn. We expect Greg and Rachel to fall in love; they don’t. We expect Greg to take Rachel to the prom; she doesn’t go. We expect cancer to make Rachel unreasonably profound; it doesn’t. We expect Mr. McCarthy to be the one turn Greg’s life around; he isn’t. We expect Greg and Earl, and Greg and Rachel, to have on-the-nose make-up scenes after their respective fights; they don’t. We expect Rachel to die--and no, I’m not going to spoil that part for you. Go see the damn movie. The point is, there’s a lot about the film that doesn’t meet expectations. And in that case, that’s a good thing.

10. It’s not Oscar-bait
Or maybe it is. I wasn’t in the heads of the collective filmmakers when they made this thing…but given that it probably started production before Julianne Moore and Eddie Redmayne won big at the Oscars, it’s a good bet. (I know, I know. We all know I hated the outcome of the Oscars this year. Moving on now.) In all seriousness, Me and Earl and the Dying Girl is not a shameless grab for awards. It doesn’t present illness as The Issue Of The Year. It doesn’t make Rachel a martyr or Greg a hero. I loved that, because you can see when you watch the film that no one who was involved in Me and Earl and the Dying Girl thought they were making the next Juno or Little Miss Sunshine. They know this is a niche film, not a phenomenon. But it still has potential, and if I were you, I’d go see it. Right now. 

Seriously. It’s that good.

Where it all came from

Maybe it's the fact that I'm now a college graduate that's got me feeling so nostalgic, but for some reason I can't stop thinking about what I used to do, the things I used to write about, and how they compare to the films that I make and the scripts I want to write now. And I don't mean the stuff I made my first year in a high-school-level film arts program. I mean that back when I was ten years old I would make up "scripts" using the text function of Microsoft Paint, and I would laugh myself stupid over my own cleverness. Every single script, I shit you not, revolved around my pet rabbit, Sassy, asking for someone to feed her, and some bunch of crap going down that prevented us from actually feeding her. It was stupid. It was absolutely, dead-on, flat-out, no-other-way-to-interpret-it ridiculous.

And my mother, God love her, encouraged me to do it every step of the way.

When I was very, very little--I mean, too young to write much beyond my own first name--I would dictate stories to her. These were often less than one notebook page and were stories about characters that I knew from TV shows, movies, or the thousand and one picture books that had accumulated since my first birthday. Stories like "Mickey and Minnie's Day Off," or "Do-Good Dog Eats Too Much Junk Food," or "Donkey Dan Cleans His Room." I didn't know then that I was essentially writing fanfiction (I told you I was a born geek, didn't I?), and my mom didn't let me in on that secret just yet. Instead, she wrote down the stories that I told her, and then hand me the notebook so I could illustrate them. She never told me "This is a waste of time" or "If you want to do this, learn to write, I'm too busy." Later, when I got older and learned to type, she patiently sat next to me while I wrote version after version of "The Nutcracker" and "Once Upon A Clothesline," both of which were plays that we had seen in local high schools. I must've been about eight then--maybe younger, I don't know. My dad would act them out with me, sometimes videotaping, mostly not. We still have those tapes somewhere, and I'm sure if you dug through the hard drive of that old computer, all those "Nutcracker" word documents would still be there.

I remember being eleven years old and deciding, out of the blue, that I was going to write a book series. You see, back in those days I loved The Baby-Sitters Club series (I know, I know) and by that point I had a grasp on that "original characters" concept. So I decided, why not? I could write about ten and eleven-year-olds; I knew that age demographic well enough, didn't I? That was when my mom finally decided that it was time for me to learn how to write. "Beginning, middle, and end," she'd repeat over and over. "Conflict and resolution. That is what will make people want to read your stories." I'd e-mail her word documents with seven-or-eight-chapter stories that I'd written in one or two days, and she would send them back with comments typed in red. "You can't just sit down and write a book series," she told me one day, and I responded, with all my fifth-grade innocence, "Well, why not?" Later she told me that was the moment she knew that I was going to be a writer.

Whenever I wrote papers for school, she insisted on reading them first and giving me feedback. At the time I hated her for it. I'd write what I thought was a perfectly good essay, and she would tear it apart. One day she told me, exasperated, "You write better than anyone I know. You're just not applying yourself." I wrote the essay because I had to, but afterwards I hid in my room and cried. When you're a kid, after all, you can't tell the difference between healthy criticism, of which I had plenty, and real disdain for your writing.

Meanwhile, I fell in love with my dad's camcorder. I started making tapes on my own, which I called The Avery Udell TV Show. It was awful, it was stupid, and it was my favorite thing to do. Every single one of these shows was improvised; the thought of filming one of my scripts never crossed my mind until the day my dad suggested, "Hey, why don't we think about what we're filming before we film it?" There was a novel idea. I started doing re-takes, but still didn't edit--that would come later. I figured out how to dub music over the tapes and began making fake music videos. When I look back on this, I can't help but laugh because most of my music videos told better, more concise stories than my "TV shows."

When I got to high school I wrote fanfiction and, fearing that my parents would find out, never posted it. I wrote about my then-favorite band, the Jonas Brothers. I wrote about Harry Potter. I wrote about Twilight, and--when I got a little older--Red Jumpsuit Apparatus and The Academy Is... and Selena Gomez. I wrote and wrote and wrote, and I often got in trouble for writing too much. "Go outside!" became a frequently-issued suggestion/command in my house, right up there with "Get off the computer!" As I'm sitting here with a laptop writing this now you can rest assured that I did not, in fact, get off the computer. Instead I began showing my parents my stories, and at first they'd laugh (and, honestly, I can't blame them) but then my mom, with her usual sky's-the-limit attitude, pointed out "You know, if you just changed one or two things, this would be a much better story." Whenever and wherever she told me to change something, I always did. And when I got to college, I was thankful for her instruction after reading some of my classmates' papers. There are many things upon which my mom and I still disagree, but the importance of knowing how to write has never been one of them.

When I look back on my childhood, it's not too hard to see why I ended up going to Interlochen. I was always encouraged to be creative. My dad fueled my creativity by acting in every one of my God-awful home movies with me, by dressing up in whatever ridiculous costumes I asked him to wear and improvising rap songs on the spot just to make me laugh, by acting out scenes from Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter to my heart's content, and by taking me to see whatever silly movies I wanted to see. (Dad, if you read this, I'm sorry about Twilight. Really, I am. I hope seeing American Sniper made up for it. I know it didn't, but I'm trying, okay?)  And my mom encouraged me to be creative and productive. It's really to her credit that I know how to write at all; I like to think that at least some of it is innate talent, but I know far better. Without her criticism I might still write like certain fanfics I've seen--all bad punctuation and worse storylines--and for that I am grateful, no matter how painful it was to hear critique at the time.

When I hear my friends talk now I realize just how lucky I am. Some people would've killed to go to Interlochen, but their parents wouldn't have let them because it's "a waste of money" to get an arts-based education. Some of my friends at McDaniel would've killed to major in art, theater or music, but their parents pressured them into psychology, business, or pre-law because it was "more practical" that way. One of my classmates told me she wanted to be a painter, not an art therapist, but her parents convinced her that she'd never make any money and had better do something "real" with her college years.

I know that their parents all meant well and did what they did out of love, but I can't help but feel spoiled sometimes, because my parents chose to show their love in a different way. They told me, from the very beginning, that if writing was my passion I should follow it. To this day my mother actively encourages me to apply for professional writing jobs instead of the "more practical" route of administration or State work - both of which I could, with my background in communications and writing, theoretically do. My parents have always been, and always will be, my biggest fans and greatest supporters. Whether it's patiently hearing out my half-baked screenplay ideas or driving me to workshops with professional filmmakers, they are always there for me in whatever ways I need them to be. They were right there with me when I wrote my first script about feeding my pet rabbit, and they were right there with me when I won Audience Choice at my first-ever film festival. And should a miracle occur and I ever make it to the Oscars, they will be right there with me then, too.

So if anyone out there is wondering what a difference support from your family can make, now you know. 

Let's talk about blockbusters

Okay. So there’s this website I like, indieWIRE. I follow them on Facebook. I read their reviews time to time. Generally I read the site for news. I mean, how else would I know that there’s a documentary about the lost Tim Burton Superman movie coming out this summer? Or pick up some Duplass-approved filmmaking tips? Or discover how much ass Unfriended kicked at the box office? But the thing is, sometimes indieWIRE can get, uh, a little ahead of itself.

Like when they put one of Tim Burton’s most underrated movies on a “you suck” list.

Or when they put up a blog post indiscriminately trashing fan theories, going so far as to imply that anyone who comes up with a fan theory is not a “real fan.”

Or when they trashed the shit out of Jurassic World for no ostensible reason other than that it dared to beat their favorite indies at the box office, then threw in some commments about Mad Max to half-heartedly defend blockbusters as a thing.

That last one was what really got my goat. I mean, a review is one thing. I have immense respect for film critics because I know how unbelievably hard it is to write a film review that adequately represents your love, hatred or indifference to a particular film. So I’m not going to bust anyone for writing an unfavorable review; much as I loved Jurassic World, I know it wasn’t perfect and everyone is allowed their own opinion. But when you post one article after another relentlessly degrading a film and beating the “but it’s a blockbuster!” dead horse, that’s going too far. Especially when your main complaint about the film ties back into the “blockbuster bad/indie good” dichotomy that seems to have infiltrated the minds of generation after generation of film students.

To pin a movie’s worth entirely on its financial standing is absolutely ridiculous. I mean it is truly, deeply absurd. This dynamic of popular vs. unpopular has got to stop. It’s why Tim Burton still gets his ass handed to him by critics even when he comes out with the best thing he’s made in almost a decade. It’s why guys like Ethan Hawke put on airs about their films being more “interesting” simply by virtue of their non-blockbuster status. It’s why filmmakers like William Friedkin point fingers at Marvel and other superhero franchises for “ruining” the film industry and insist their work is a hundred times better than any of that useless popular stuff.

And it’s why indieWIRE is sneering at Jurassic World simply for having the gall to gross more than Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, despite the fact that they’re two very different films aimed at very different audiences. It’s become de rigueur for critics and independent or midbudget directors to nail blockbuster films to the wall--whether they’re out of envy or simply different taste is unclear, but I have a pretty good idea. It’s the same reason I used to hate the most popular kid in my high school, simply because everyone liked his movies better than mine. If you’re seriously comparing Me and Earl and the Dying Girl to Jurassic World, well, let me ask you, what are you hoping to accomplish? It’s like comparing Beauty and the Beast to A Clockwork Orange. Both are fine pieces of cinematic artwork, but they are made for completely different audiences. Of course a movie like Jurassic World is going to gross more on its opening weekend than Me and Earl and the Dying Girl; it’s made for a wide audience, whereas Me and Earl and the Dying Girl is made for a niche audience. They are both good movies; why are we pitting them against each other?

Let me be clear: there is always room for different opinions, and there is always room for critique. I’ve got some of my own that would make Roger Ebert whack me with a punishment salmon; I hate Titanic and can’t stand Von Trier, but I love A Clockwork Orange--which scares the pee out of most people--and basically worship Gus Van Sant; I can’t stand Coppola and I think Tim Burton hung the moon. Meanwhile I also think there are some serious issues with the Academy Awards. So yes, it’s a good and wonderful thing to criticize an industry that’s as out of whack as the film industry, and it’s perfectly natural to have different opinions on what constitutes a great movie.

But here’s the thing. Aggressively mocking fan theories, calling directors “failures” for making films that aren’t to your taste, and bemoaning Jurassic World’s impressive turn at the box office doesn’t do a damn thing except make you look like that kid standing on a soapbox in the middle of the schoolyard yelling fight the power! stand up to The Man! popular is not good, go against the grain, be unique! I wouldn’t be so vehement about this, if not for the fact that those people who yell “Be unique!” frequently turn around and lecture the people who dare to have different opinions. It’s like the people who claim feminism is about women’s freedom of choice and then call every woman who chooses to have children instead of a career “unfeminist.” You can’t have it both ways. You can’t say “have your own opinion!” and then nail someone else for, y’know, having an opinion.

About a week after the Oscars I had dinner with a classmate who spent half the meal lamenting the fact that Boyhood didn’t win Best Picture. Now, I think we all know how I feel about Boyhood (and if you forgot, let me remind you that it is hands-down my least favorite Linklater film of all time), but having felt the pain of seeing some of my favorites lose and, in some cases, not even be nominated, I listened to his venting. He called Boyhood a groundbreaking epic, Linklater’s best film, the highlight of 2014 in movies. He said that the film resonated with him on a deeply emotional level--which, knowing what I know about this person’s history, I definitely understood. I may not have liked Boyhood, but I certainly got why he did.

At some point he asked me who I would have seen win Best Picture--a loaded question when aimed at me, considering my taste in movies and my disgust for the pretentious nature of awards shows in general, but I took a whack at it. I answered honestly that I would have loved to see Big Eyes or Guardians of the Galaxy at least make it into the running.

He looked at me like I’d just said Cap’n Crunch was the cure for cancer. He railed on about the glorification of the blockbuster and how all blockbusters were turning into Michael Bay films and, in a Friedkin-approved way, blamed Marvel and DC for the “brain candy” that he insisted had infiltrated every theater from hell to Houston. And Big Eyes, according to him, was no better. It was Tim Burton grasping at straws, trying to prove he had one more bullet in the chamber, but it “wasn’t interesting.” It was “pretty, but there was no real story and no real hero.” He conceded, however, that it was better than the “empty, feel-good fairytale” that was Guardians of the Galaxy.

When he was done venting I gently pointed out that Guardians was a big hit with kids and asked him if maybe, just maybe, Guardians of the Galaxy could have resonated emotionally with someone else the way Boyhood resonated with him. To his credit, he actually paused and considered that for a moment, before shaking his head and concluding, “No. It could have, if it hadn’t been just another franchise money-grab. Like, if they’d done it right. But they didn’t, they just made another blockbuster out of it.” I’m not exaggerating when I say that he said “blockbuster” like a curse word.

Once again, he is entitled to his opinion. If he didn’t like Guardians, that’s just fine. But his whole argument was built on the idea that because it was made by a major studio, because it was made to appeal to a wide audience, Guardians of the Galaxy was inherently  “mindless entertainment.” I can’t speak for everyone who saw it, but I cried watching Guardians. There were so many little moments, character quirks that might’ve gone unnoticed, that made me look at Peter Quill and think “oh my God, that’s me.” It was funny, it kept me guessing, and it made me do something I’ve never done before: go back and see it two more times. Not even the Harry Potter films enticed me to do that. My mom, who never watches Marvel movies, watched Guardians with me and enjoyed it. So maybe it’s no Rear Window, but I will defend Guardians of the Galaxy as one of the better films in the Marvel canon.

But to my friend, there can be no gray area on this issue. He complained bitterly about Big Hero 6 taking Best Animated over The Tale of Princess Kayuga. He laughed outright when I suggested Lego Movie should have won. (“It was a shameless marketing ploy for LEGO. How could anyone take that movie seriously?”) He rolled his eyes at the idea of Sebastian Stan getting a nomination for Best Supporting Actor. (“What did he do, stand there and scowl? I could have done that.”) But he hated that Boyhood lost above all, even to Birdman, a movie that he admitted was “way, way better than if American Sniper would’ve won.” If you’re seeing a theme here, well spotted. Anything that made big money at the box office was automatically poison. And anything that originated overseas or in someone’s basement was wronged if it didn’t win.

To someone like me, who loves many different kinds of movies, the kind of dork who can happily watch Django Unchained back-to-back with Home Alone 2, this black-and-white presentation of one type of cinema being inherently better than the other is confusing and even harmful. I’ve been shamed for liking certain films and I’ve seen others get the same treatment. It’s worse when you’re in film school, but I can’t imagine it’s easy for people who are actually in the industry. It’s the dichotomy that Tim Burton explored in Big Eyes: either you can be loved by audiences and hated by critics, or loved by critics and ignored by audiences; it’s nearly impossible to be both. And I can’t understand why. Art is and always has been subjective, but why do we turn it into a battlefield when it doesn’t have to be? Or as one astute Facebook commenter said on an article about Claire’s heels and whether or not they represent sexism in Jurassic World, “Can’t we just enjoy the movie and stop bitching at each other?”

So by all means continue to critique films and the film industry--after all, discourse is one of the things that makes pop culture so dynamic--but for the love of God, I beg you, have better criticism for a movie than “it’s a blockbuster.”

The problem with "Strong Female Characters"

Recently I was asked by a friend, in the middle of one of my many gushing rants about Gillian Flynn and why she might actually be God, what I saw in the violent, bordering-on-revenge-porn piece of insanity that is Gone Girl. Well, I’ll tell you why I love Gone Girl. It’s because the way that women are portrayed in the media is deeply, intensely messed up.

Look, I’m not gonna be one of those girls. You know, a “Tumblr feminist” who would rather scream and call people “literally scum” for not believing that gender is a social construct or that cultural appropriation is a thing - mainly because as a non-transgender, white girl, I really have no business poking my nose into either of those topics - than actually educate people on why our media, despite recent improvements, is still kind of a mess. I’m not going to go that far. Let someone else do that.

What I am going to say, though, is that the on-screen treatment of women, especially in big blockbuster movies, really, really fries my cheese. And when you throw in the irrational way that people react to women on-screen…whew! Recipe for trouble, right there.

Let’s take a look at Age of Ultron. Okay, we know I wasn’t too impressed with that film, but one thing I didn’t have an issue with was the Banner/Widow romance. Honestly, I wasn’t even really surprised by the whole thing. You’ve got a kick-ass woman surrounded by kick-ass men - possibly the only men on the planet who are even remotely capable of understanding her on an intellectual and emotional level. Of course a romantic subplot will eventually develop. Now, when I initially heard the cast lineup, my first thought was “ohh...Scarlet Witch is gonna fall for an Avenger and switch sides, isn’t she.” So I was actually relieved that they went with Hulk and Black Widow, because Christ, as cheesy as some of that storyline was, it was a hell of a lot less so than where I was afraid the movie would go.

But sweet Jesus did the majority of the internet disagree with me.

Now, I’m not denying that Black Widow has gotten the short end of the stick in this whole scheme. She’s undeniably one of the most badass characters in the Marvel canon (her backstory alone...holy crap!), right up there with Scarlet Witch, Daisy “Agent Skye” Johnson, Moondragon and Peggy Carter. Who...uh...also don’t have their own origin movies, or action figures, or...well, you get the point. So yeah, she’s gotten shunted to the side quite a bit. But let’s not forget that the reason we love her, and the reason we care that she’s gotten backburnered fairly often, is that she’s been given moments to shine in the films. She’s kicked asses and taken names. She’s gotten the team out of some absurdly sticky situations. She’s figured out Loki, discovered Ultron’s location, tamed the Hulk, shut down the Tesseract, and saved the collective asses of the male Avengers several times. And I have no doubt that when Infinity War rolls around, she’ll have her moment wiping the floor with Thanos, just like the rest of them.

But here’s the problem. Black Widow is amazing. She’s whip-smart. She’s a kick-ass fighter. She’s witty, she’s snarky, she’s resourceful, she’s beautiful, and she’s interesting. We want to know more about her, hence our cries for an origin movie. We’re all collectively in love, platonic or otherwise (yeah, yeah, I know, but that’s not objectification, that’s a fact) with Black Widow.

That’s the problem.

She is fucking perfect.

Have you ever freaking noticed that? She’s perfect. And of course she is. She’s perfect in all the right ways, because she has to be, because she is repping every damn woman in the universe.

Think about this for half a second. There’s five guys - eight if you count Falcon, Quicksilver and War Machine - that provide a range of different personalities and backstories that people could identify with on a number of levels. I tease Ian all the time by calling him “Captain America” on account of the fact that he’s pretty much pre-serum Steve Rogers in the flesh. My best guy friends are, respectively, “Hawkeye” (because he’s constantly underestimated but wonderfully hilarious when given the chance) and “Tony Stark” (because he’s a walking pile of unfairly intelligent snark). I once dated a guy who jokingly introduced himself to me as “Bruce Banner - but, y’know, without the rage-beast thing” because he prided himself on his aptitude for science. There’s such a range of qualities there that any of the guys can afford to be imperfect, because their imperfections are a part of their overall character and can be appropriated as part of the thing you identify with. (“Oh my gosh, Hulk has a temper, just like me!” “Iron Man is really smart, but he drinks too much sometimes...and so do I!” “I might be too idealistic, but so is Captain America, and he saved the world!”)

But look at Black Widow. Because she’s virtually the only leading female character in the movie, and arguably the single most popular woman in the franchise, she cannot afford to have those imperfections. Her backstory must have just enough tragedy to be interesting, but not so much that it alienates her from her target audience. And God forbid she not be feminist enough, or she is reduced to “a shell of a superheroine who’s sad she can never be a complete woman.”

That’s my biggest issue, right there. The infertility storyline was met with cries of “but she could be a great example of a woman who doesn’t need children to be complete!” “She doesn’t need kids, why should she want them?” “Oh my God Joss Whedon, how dare Natasha call herself a monster for her infertility, that is misogyny!” And what pisses me off the most about this is that Natasha is not allowed to be a woman who wants kids. She’s not allowed to be happy with the life she has, but feel that there’s something missing. She’s not allowed to be both a badass and have maternal instinct. That’s just not allowed, despite insistences from the same people who protest her storyline that it’s horrible to ask Jennifer Garner if she has trouble balancing work and family. Natasha is not allowed to want a family in addition to a career. No, because Natasha is the sole female lead of the Avengers, she is not allowed the weaknesses of Tony Stark and company, because she must be a role model. She must be perfect, or she is a liability.

And the worst part is, she’s not the only one. Harry Potter’s Hermione Granger gets the same treatment. When I first read the books, Hermione’s imperfections endeared me to her all the more, because it let me believe that even amazing, intelligent women are allowed to make mistakes. In the books, Hermione’s obsession with logic and single-minded pursuit of justice are treated as the pitfalls they are - character qualities that are both a help and a hindrance. She insists on freeing house-elves because she can’t bear the thought of their “enslavement,” never mind that house-elves literally live to look after humans and have no desire to be free. She loses her temper. She can’t hold back the truth (“you have a saving-people thing, Harry”) even at the least-opportune moments. But for all of that she is strong and smart and brave, and she is a wonderful, balanced character.

Not so in the movies. In the movies, Hermione’s physical awkwardness is replaced by Emma Watson’s impeccable beauty. I remember seeing a photograph of Chamber of Secrets-era Emma Watson months before the movie came out: her bushy hair had been tamed to Pantene Pro-V commercial-worthy curls. I cried, because book Hermione had frizzy hair like mine and I had so loved seeing an on-screen girl with imperfect hair. And her makeover was just the tip of the iceberg. She was wise beyond her years. She left the house-elves alone. She came up with ideas that book-Hermione never would’ve thought of - flight-shy Hermione, thinking of jumping on a dragon’s back to escape a collapsing bank? Non-magically-raised Hermione, remembering to use her wand when a murderous plant attacked? Not in the books. But in the movies, she was perfect, to the point where people railed against her for - how dare she? - falling in love with a man who they believed to be beneath her. Which, come on. Of course he was. No one in the movies was good enough for movie-verse Hermione. But because she’s on-screen now, and part of an industry that tragically under-represents realistic women, she has to be Perfect Strong Girl Character, devoid of flaws and shaped into a Perfect Role Model For Young Women.

I could go on and on. Katniss Everdeen, a young, scrawny, wonderfully-flawed character in The Hunger Games, was made over into a self-sacrificing, angelic (but oh-so-tough!) beauty queen for the movies. Elle Woods, in Legally Blonde, is not only gorgeous and quick-thinking, but has an impeccable memory and buckets of self-confidence. Doctor Who’s Rose Tyler? Beautiful, resourceful, witty, athletic, smart, alluring - literally every male character she meets falls in love with her, for God’s sake. Disney’s Mulan? She’s beautiful, athletic, cunning, clever, and just the right amount of awkward to be endearing. Right from the beginning of the movie we’re shown, very clearly, that she is perfect; it’s her environment that’s the problem. Rory Gilmore? Pretty, academically inclined, popular with the boys (see: Rose Tyler), able to win over less-perfect girls like Paris. Notice a theme here? Even if their worlds are imperfect (Mulan, Katniss, Elle) the girls are shining paragons. Feminine but still tough; physically attractive but still smart. They have to be perfect - they’re role models!

So when a thing like Gone Girl comes along, and we’re finally given a complex character who is interesting as all hell - who does some really terrible things, but does them because she believes she’s doing the right thing - who is beautiful and funny and incredibly intelligent, but also happens to be a freaking psychopath - damn right that’s going to resonate with all of us imperfect girls. I think this is also why I loved the women of Tim Burton’s films so much: he understood that no one is perfect, not even token Strong Female Characters. Because at the end of the day, there is not just one archetype out there that every woman can embody. We are not all Supergirls. And that is what I desperately wish Hollywood would realize, and start giving us the heroines that we deserve: not actual heroines, but girls just like us.