ginormica

Had a total moment while watching Monsters vs. Aliens. As gentle giantess Ginormica shoved her size-SUV feet into car rollerskates and prepared to zip through the streets of San Francisco, the thoughts, they started to pile up, falling like anvils.

Thought-anvil #1: This movie is about Ginormica. She’s got a bunch of funny dudes around her, but it’s essentially a female superhero origin story.

Thought-anvil #2: Holy shit, a female superhero origin story.

Thought-anvil #3: FUCK YEAH.

Thought-anvil #4: I probably should not have said that out loud in a theater full of children.

Thought-anvil #5: You know…animated movies are doing a pretty kick-ass job with the female protagonists lately.

Thought-anvil #6: Oh! Oh! These are the geek-centric movies fronted by ladies! This is where it’s at! BIG DAMN HEROINES.

Monsters vs. Aliens is messy around the edges — it’s not as elegant a creation as, say, Wall-E or Coraline — but amidst all the gee-whiz-style fun, there’s something sneakily awesome going on. The set-up is the kind we’re used to seeing in a different genre altogether: standard-issue rom-coms. Meek woman (not living up to her potential, obvs!) is set to marry clearly-wrong-for-her guy. But then, rather than getting saved by totally-right-for-her-guy, she gets hits by a radioactive meteor and morphs into a giant with blazing white hair. That’s pretty cool, right there. The fact that Monsters vs. Aliens continues to be about Susan-now-Ginormica all the way through — and the back-and-forth between wanting to be rid of her new superhero status, then accepting it, then prizing it about all else, and so on — is really cool. And though this is all fairly broadly sketched (and amusingly underscored by Seth Rogen’s ever-present chuckle — “HUH HUH HUH”), the general Superhero Struggle themes still come through — enough so that it reminded me a bit of the Jennifer Walters/She-Hulk dilemma as depicted by Dan Slott during his run on the Shulkie book.

The flick hasn’t really been promoted as being about “OMG a LADYHERO” and Ginormica’s ladyness isn’t really a story point. It’s all just sort of…there. This is how you do it. Live action flicks could take a few cues.

And, as I mentioned above, animated movies have really been kicking geek live action ass when it comes to big-time female characters. Coraline — bold, moody, inquisitive — was another great one. EVE was as important to Wall-E as Wall-E. This is all very pleasing to me.

While I don’t want to have to completely retreat to animated fare for my Big Damn (Movie) Heroines, I’m glad that these films are giving me gals I can root for, positioned front and center. Because even though we geeks love complaining, sometimes it’s nice to see something that just makes you go FUCK YEAH.