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Gender Bendery

Iron Man 3‘s Rebecca Hall Is Sort of Like a “Female Robert Downey Jr.” Go On…

by Rebecca Pahle | 12:10 pm, February 1st, 2013


“We needed a snappy and exciting actor to play the part, and not make it this ‘female scientist who takes off her glasses and suddenly she’s beautiful!’ There’s a certain element about her being the female Robert Downey Jr in a way.” —Director Shane Black on Rebecca Hall, who plays scientist Maya Hansen in Iron Man 3.

(via: ComicBookMovie)

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  • Anonymous

    So, she’s a “billionaire genius playgirl philanthropist” then?

  • Anonymous

    So women who wear glasses and are at work are obviously ugly? Right…

  • http://twitter.com/KatiePunkin Kate Holloway

    I think the point was the director was trying to get rid of the trope that all a nerdy woman in a movie has to do is have a makeover to suddenly become drop dead gorgeous. He wanted to make her more than that cliche, as popularized by “She’s All That.”

    I say this as a woman at work, wearing glasses.

  • Anonymous

    As a glasses-wearing female software engineer, I’d have to say ‘no.’

    But sadly, that *is* how it’s played in many movies. The ‘ugly duckling’ scientist who takes off her glasses and lets her hair down, and suddenly everything goes slow-motion and soft focus as the guy realizes, “Wow, without those glasses, she’s really hot.”

    My joke below aside, I took the quote in the article to mean, “we didn’t want our female scientist character to fall into that. We wanted someone who could bring the same sort of energy and charisma to her role from moment one that RDJ brings to Tony.”

  • Anonymous

    Ahha, that makes a lot of sense! See, I automatically go with the most pessimistic reading of any quote ;)

  • http://twitter.com/KatiePunkin Kate Holloway

    I like to give some creators the benefit of the doubt. As someone with a very well meaning boyfriend who says dumb things and I have to say “I don’t think you meant what you just said” as I’m overly tuned in to what every single word means all the time. Damn you journalism background!!

  • Esperwind

    I can’t even read what the director said, I’m just too excited about Maya Hansen being in the movie. So much for planning to avoid all spoilers!

  • http://www.facebook.com/KozmikPariah Ryan Colson

    Don’t they mean “treacherous female Tony Stark”, since I’m fairly sure they’re gonna stick to the story and near the end you find out she lied about Extremis and such..

  • http://www.facebook.com/KozmikPariah Ryan Colson

    You know he’ll cheat on Pepper with her, then Pepper dies, then you find out Maya was pretty much a villain the whole time.

  • Anonymous

    Okay, but that doesn’t sound anything like canonical Maya Hansen. We’re
    back to another case of “Justin Hammer” and “Obadiah Stane,” I guess.
    Too bad.

  • http://twitter.com/Herostratus356 Herostratus356

    Janet Van Dyne?

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