While it’s very easy to step back decades and criticise the past, measuring 1977 up to the expectations of 2018, it’s certainly a striking statistic to see that A New Hope gave 15% of its screen time to female characters, as opposed to 43% for The Last Jedi.
A remarkable increase for sure, and Professor Becca Harrison looks at the whys and wherefores, breaking each film (Solo: A Star Wars Story not yet included) down into percentages.
Harrison told Mashable the idea for ranking the movies came when she was doing a research project looking at how the Star Wars franchise has used coding and software in the development of the movie. “As part of that I’ve been thinking about how gender and race play a part in who gets to make the films and what they look like,” Harrison said. She was also inspired by the man who edited out all the women characters in The Last Jedi due to the film “having so many women characters.” “So, I was partly inspired by the angry guys who hate Star Wars being about women!”
I have FINALLY ranked all of #StarWars based on screen time for women. This is now canon. Don’t @ me.
43% Last Jedi
37% Force Awakens
35% Rogue One
23% Return of the Jedi
22% Empire Strikes Back
20% Phantom Menace
18% Attack of the Clones
17% Revenge of the Sith
15% A New Hope— Becca Harrison (@BeccaEHarrison) May 28, 2018
Per a blog post in which she explains her methodology, Harrison analysed “rough cuts of the remastered trilogy, and prequels, sequels, and spin-offs.”“I’ve edited the men out of the films as much as possible,” she explained. “But there are still sequences that need refining and further edits, so, if anything, the percentages of women’s screen time will likely go down as I trim excess male dialogue and reaction shots for a final cut.”
