Just
looking at those two posters, I'm sure you could guess which of them
was targeted to men and women even if you'd been living under a rock
this past decade and had never heard of either franchise. The concepts
of the "Guy Movie" vs. the "Chick Flick" aren't anything new, and
neither are the stereotypes associated with each, nor the equally generalized question "How can you guys/girls LIKE those stupid mindless action/sappy romance movies?!" And while trying to answer that question is impossible (since it's a fallacy to start with), it does beg the further question of what men and women actually think, in general terms, of the movies that are targeted towards them.Now, I don't think there's some magic formula that can recognize taste in film, but box office tracking can tell us what a film's demographics were on opening weekend, so we can get an idea of what kinds of movies people are actually seeing.
What were the most popular male/female oriented movies?
To keep it simple, I'm sticking to films from 2011 for this sample. These were the top ten 2011 films according to the US Box Office whose opening weekend audience was heavily skewed towards one gender:
MALE
1) Transformers: Dark of the Moon - US Box Office $352 million (62% male)
2) Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol - US Box Office $209 million (61% male)
3) Thor - US Box Office $181 million (63% male)
4) Captain America: The First Avenger - US Box Office $177 million (64% male)
5) Green Lantern - US Box Office $117 million (64% male)
6) The Green Hornet - US Box Office $99 million (61% male)
7) Real Steel - US Box Office $86 million (66% male)
8) Battle: Los Angeles - US Box Office $84 million (68% male)
9) Immortals - US Box Office $84 million (60% male)
10) Sucker Punch -US Box Office $36 million (64% male)
FEMALE
1) The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1 - $281 million (80% female)
2) The Help - $170 million (74% female)
3) Bridesmaids - $169 million (67% female)
4) Bad Teacher - $100 million (63% female)
5) Crazy, Stupid, Love. - $84 million (64% female)
6) Justin Bieber: Never Say Never - $73 million (84% female)
7) Dolphin Tale - $72 million (66% female)
8) No Strings Attached - $71 million (70% female)
9) Water for Elephants - $59 million (70% female)
10) The Lincoln Lawyer - $58 million (63% female)
For the most part, I don't think anyone is surprised by which films show up in these lists. A few points do stand out, though. As a whole there are definitely more female-oriented films produced per year than male-oriented. The guy films died off pretty quickly after the top ten, and there were only 18 in total, compared to 27 movies on the female side. And while it's nearly impossible to find a film that skews 70% or more to the men, they were all over the place on the women's side.
Which films were better?
Obviously, "better" is the most subjective term anyone can use to describe a film, so none of this should be taken as gospel. But by comparing a film's critical consensus to how much its target audience enjoyed it, we can get an idea of it.
Critical consensus of men's and women's films can be judged by its Metacritic score, which compiles critical ratings into an overall score out of 100.
METACRITIC SCORES - MALE
1) Transformers - 42
2) Mission: Impossible - 73
3) Thor - 57
4) Captain America - 66
5) Green Lantern - 39
6) The Green Hornet - 39
7) Real Steel - 56
8) Battle: Los Angeles - 37
9) Immortals - 46
10) Sucker Punch - 33
AVERAGE METACRITIC SCORE - 48.8
METACRITIC SCORES - FEMALE
1) Twilight - 45
2) The Help - 62
3) Bridesmaids - 75
4) Bad Teacher - 47
5) Crazy Stupid Love - 68
6) Justin Bieber - 52
7) Dolphin Tale - 64
8) No Strings Attached - 50
9) Water for Elephants - 52
10) The Lincoln Lawyer - 63
AVERAGE METACRITIC SCORE - 57.8
Judging how well a film's target audience actually liked it, on the other hand, is a trickier manner. IMDB scores are handy because they can be broken down into demographics, but aren't really representative of the filmgoing audience as a whole. So I'm listing each movie's IMDB score from it's target gender along side the movie's CinemaScore, which is a grading method taken from samples of a movie's opening day audience.
AUDIENCE SCORES - MALE
1) Transformers - IMDB Score 6.4, CinemaScore A
2) Mission: Impossible - IMDB Score 7.7, CinemaScore A-
3) Thor - IMDB Score 7.0, CinemaScore B+
4) Captain America - IMDB Score 6.8, CinemaScore A-
5) Green Lantern - IMDB Score 6.0, CinemaScore B
6) The Green Hornet - IMDB Score 6.0, CinemaScore B+
7) Real Steel - IMDB Score 7.3, CinemaScore A-
8) Battle: Los Angeles - IMDB Score 5.9, CinemaScore B
9) Immortals - IMDB Score 6.3, CinemaScore B
10) Sucker Punch - IMDB Score 6.1, CinemaScore B-
AVERAGE IMDB SCORE - 6.54
AVERAGE CINEMASCORE - B+
AUDIENCE SCORES - FEMALE
1) Twilight - IMDB Score 6.3, CinemaScore B+
2) The Help - IMDB Score 8.5, CinemaScore A+
3) Bridesmaids - IMDB Score 7.2, CinemaScore B+
4) Bad Teacher - IMDB Score 5.8, CinemaScore C+
5) Crazy Stupid Love - IMDB Score 7.8, CinemaScore B+
6) Justin Bieber - IMDB Score 3.1, CinemaScore A
7) Dolphin Tale - IMDB Score 7.5, CinemaScore A+
8) No Strings Attached - IMDB Score 6.4, CinemaScore B
9) Water for Elephants - IMDB Score 7.5, CinemaScore A-
10) The Lincoln Lawyer - IMDB Score 7.5, CinemaScore A-
AVERAGE IMDB SCORE - 6.76
AVERAGE CINEMASCORE - A-
What can we conclude from all this?
Well, what we can conclude is that men and women have pretty darn similar tastes in film when it comes right down to it. Imagine that. Judging from 2011 the women's movies had a slightly higher average quality than the men's, but not to any significant degree.
Of course, it's often not seen that way. Perception is everything, and I think a lot of misconceptions about men's and (especially) women's tastes in film boil down to a few things. At the heart if it, like so many things in Hollywood, it comes down to money.
Movies targeting men are far more expensive than those targeting women.
Now, that's not exactly breaking news, but the difference might actually be higher than you realize. The average budget of the top ten male films of 2011 was $126 million. For female films? $39 million. Take away Twilight and you're down to $28 million. And that greatly effects how the perception of things, even if the actual reactions aren't that different.
Compare the two following films:
Green Lantern
- Budget $200 million, US Box Office $117 million
- MetaCritic Score - 39
- IMDB Score 6.0, CinemaScore B
- Budget $25 million, US Box Office $71 million
- MetaCritic Score 50
- IMDB Score 6.4, CinemaScore B
The lower budget of women's films also leads to one other obvious conclusion, that because of that, there are more films produced for them each year. And because they're cheaper to make, even the ones that don't earn much money can be seen as successes, and therefore representative of women's taste in film.
Using two female-targeted movies for one last comparison:
Something Borrowed
- Budget $35 million, US Box Office $39 million
- MetaCritic Score 36
- IMDB Score 6.2, CinemaScore B
- Budget $50 million, US Box Office $84 million
- MetaCritic Score 68
- IMDB Score 7.8, CinemaScore B+
That's about as much statistics as I can stuff into this and still make it readable, so I'll leave off there and let them be interpreted in whichever fashion you choose.
