I don’t see how would having a female lead be more inclusive than having a male lead.
This is so dumb it’s not even worth explaining to you.
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My young daughters love Star Wars and Rey has a lot to do with it.
It is not dumb. You just don’t get it, despite being very simple.
If you have a female lead then young females will be able to associate/relate more. If you have a male lead then young males will be able to associate/relate more. Either way you “include” one more than the other.
The point of the thread is that strong female leads have been few and far between, and therefore having one opens up the universe to more people, making it more inclusive.
If you want to pretend that you don’t understand the thread, that’s on you.
Strong female leads have been a staple of Science Fiction/Fantasy for the past 40 years. It might be different in other genres, but not here. It gets me when people say that Rey is something amazing and new.
While this isn’t untrue, sci-fi wasn’t exactly a mainstream genre up until recently because it wasn’t cool to be into those things, even for boys. It’s easy for us to talk about all our favourite sci-fi ladies from back in the day, but shows like BSG, Dr. Who, and Buck Rogers weren’t exactly “cool” (yeah yeah, cool to nerds like us, I know; but I mean to the general public) shows; sure they existed and laid the groundwork for what we have today, but they weren’t exactly popular, and especially not among females. And I’m sure those ladies had plenty of damsel-in-distress, helpless-without-a-man moments. =P
Today, every other show has some sci-fi element, and with things like Star Wars, we actually have cool sci-fi female characters who are just cool characters who happen to be female. Like I said before, that’s what surprised me most about Rey: she wasn’t just a hollow, flag-waving, “LOOK I’M A COOL GIRL but I still need to be rescued by a dude”, girl-power female object character trope. She was just a good character and her being female wasn’t a central aspect or reason of that. That’s what I see as real progress.
For example, Alien (and sequels) was “cool” from the day one even for general public. There are many older people I know who considered Star Wars too nerdy but openly liked Alien. And we all know that Rey is nothing compared to Ripley when it comes to female leads. So yeah, it is like lovelikewinter said, this concept is 40 years old and was already well established.