Professor ranks 'Star Wars' movies for female character screen time and the results are very telling

A film studies professor ranked the Star Wars movies based on the screen time of female characters and, well, the results weren’t great.

Dr Rebecca Harrison — a lecturer in Film and Television Studies at the University of Glasgow — undertook the somewhat mammoth task of analysing the screen time of female characters in the Star Wars franchise. Harrison’s findings revealed A New Hope was the worst movie for female character screen time, while The Last Jedi ranked best.

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!”

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.”

“There’s still a lot of work to do.”

Harrison explained that she wanted her definition of “screen time for women” to be consistent, so she’s only included female characters with speaking parts, “because having the ability to say something and contribute to the story— and not serving as a visual object—is important.

“However, if a woman with a speaking part is onscreen and not speaking, and neither is a man, I’ve kept the footage. Consequently, you get a lot of reaction shots of Leia or Jyn not doing much but being the only character in the frame. When men are speaking and a woman is onscreen, I’ve made a value judgement about whether she’s central to the action (or not) at that moment in the story. Sadly, especially in Padmé’s case, she’s quite often just kind of ‘there’. She really does get a rough deal.”

Her research showed that female characters appeared in 43 percent of The Last Jedi, 37 percent of The Force Awakens, 35 percent of Rogue One, and 23 percent of Return of The Jedi.

The worst contenders for female character screen time were A New Hope (in which women featured for a shocking 15 percent of the film), Revenge of the Sith (17 percent), Attack of the Clones (18 percent), and The Phantom Menace (20 percent).

Harrison said the findings reveal a bigger, historic problem with the Star Wars franchise.

“I think the franchise has historically had an enormous gender problem, and a race one, too,” she said. “The fact there are so few women with speaking parts in the original trilogy means Leia has to do all the work (although of course Carrie Fisher is marvellous) and the prequels are actually worse for women than films made in the ’70s and ’80s! […] Leia has far more autonomy than Padmé, for example, which shows progress is slow and not necessarily straightforward.”

Harrison did say, however, that the figures show the Disney-era films are showing signs of progress, and it does look like the movies are inching towards equal screen time for women.

“It’s really important that in the last four films there has been an increase in major speaking parts for women of colour, with Rose Tico [Kelly Marie Tran] in The Last Jedi, and Val [Thandie Newton] and Enfys Nest [Erin Kellyman] in Solo,” said Harrison.

“I hope that trend continues because the Galaxy can’t keep being populated by white women who all look like clones of Leia.”

Harrison said that while things are improving, there’s one thing that’s still notably absent from the movies.

Going forward, she said, the films need to have more female-on-female interaction, which is one of the categories of the Bechdel Test (a test which measures whether movies’ or shows’ portrayals of women is sexist or entrenched in gender stereotypes).

“There need to be more scenes where women get to interact with one another, as currently the only Disney-era film to pass the Bechdel Test with flying colours is The Last Jedi,” said Harrison. “So, things are improving, but there’s still a lot of work to do.”

Hear, hear.