The Company Of Wolves 👍

Now... this is a fairytale, so there's a lot of misogyny and stereotypes that is to be expected about a fairytale. But the heroine is an independent girl who does what she believes to be right and doesn't give a hoot about what people think about her. 

V Bechdel test

I don't know... there were a lot of women talking with each other... but were they talking about men? I kind of think granny warning Red Riding Hood about men isn't what they mean with talking about men... Yeah! They were talking about her sister and the wool shawl!

V Mako Mori Test

V Sexy Lamp Test

V The Crystal Gems Test

This one is trickier... we have the girl, who passes all this. We have her sister... she doesn't really have a character arc. The granny doesn't really either... nor the mother. Or the wolf girl or the witch or... but everyone passes the sexy lamp test. Even the wolf girl. I'm going to give it a pass.

X F-Rating
It IS written - partially - by a woman, and based on a book/story written by a woman, and it features a complex and compelling female character in main role, so - it's not bad. But it is not directed and written by a woman.

V Sphinx Test

Rotten Tomatoes 79%  IMDb 6.7

V The Feldman Score

Though it's tricky... again.
"no female characters were victimized, stereotyped or sexualized". No... I can't say this is true.
"the female characters initiate or reciprocate sexual advances". Ye-es... I think it passes.

X Furiosa Test

As far as I know, no men are whining about this movie :-D

V The Roxane Gay Test


The Maisy Test for sexism in kids' shows

V Gender Balance - Gender Representation:

X The Uphold Test

X The Rees Davies Test

X The White Test

V The Hagen Test

X The Koeze-Dottle Test

V Gender Freedom:

Now - this is a fairytale, so all females wore skirts and all males pants. But - men wore makeup, men were shown being scared. So... uh...

V Molly Haskell

X Gender Bias Without Borders

V The Peirce Test

V The Villarreal Test

V The Landau Test

X The Tauriel Test

O  The Willis Test

It would make a REALLY interesting story genderswapped.

V  the MacGyver Test

The father of the family was shown being tender, loving and caring toward his wife and daughter, without losing any of his manliness or respect he was shown by the villagers. The boy who was in love with the girl was respectful in his courting. So, yes, I think this passes.

V the Raleigh Becket Test

V  Kuku test

O Gender Safety:

Well... there is quite a lot of sex and sexual tension going on, and the main character was 12. I find that totally unacceptable, but on the other hand, she doesn't appear to be so young, and she wasn't touched inappropriately... it was all a lot of implying and so on. They were talking about kissing, and it's OK for 12 years olds to kiss. The only one she actually kissed was the boy who was about the same age. (And, yes, she kissed him.)
Nevertheless... it's very icky watching knowing that she's only 12.

Rosaleen was shown dressed in just a towel... and Micha was shown with bare upper body, with the intention of sexualizing him. So - not a pass. There was no objectification, though. He wasn't presented as just a sex object, to be used.

There's also a scene with a naked werewolf girl. The wolf girl was 26 at the time this movie was filmed. She wasn't naked for sexual purposes, but because she was a wolf in human shape, and wolves don't wear clothes. Duh. Also, her private parts were covered with her hair, so one couldn't see any more than if she had been wearing a swimming suit. It really wasn't sexual in any way, but she was naked.

Age of actors:

Rosaleen was 12
Her sister was 18
Her mother was 53
Her father was 43
Her granny was 59
Micha Bergese, the "Huntsman" (and the Big Bad Wolf of this story) was 39

X Social Justice and Equality:

Again, oh so white. White straight able-bodied. So, no, it doesn't pass this one.

C The Representation Test

X Kent test

XAila test

X The Waithe Test

X The Ko Test

X The Villalobos Test

So... how could this movie be better?

Fix the representation, of course. Get more women in the crew. We need more female script writers. We need more female directors. We need more ethnic and cultural diversity. It's naturally important to keep telling the Anglo-Saxon and European cultural stories, but... er... like... we have that. Come on, not every American movie made need to be about WASPs.

People should ask themselves if the role really must be played by a white person. This was about a girl's dream, so it doesn't need to be historically accurate. This was also a fairytale, which means that it REALLY doesn't need to be historically accurate, or even biologically or scientifically accurate. Take Cinderella (1997) The prince was Asian, his mother was black and father white.
People should ask if the role really must be played by a man or a woman. If the person must be able-bodied. Or straight. Would inclusiveness REALLY take away something from the story?

In this story, nobody's gender, color, culture, ability, weight, form, height or sexuality played any role.
So - why were all white, straight, normal-weighed, normal-height, able-bodied, etc. etc.?
Because discrimination. Laziness. Xenophobia. The casting director couldn't think beyond herself. It happens. But people should start thinking beyond themselves and remember to be inclusive and start casting people who look different. I mean, I wish Hermione had been black. But - Susie Figgs did the casting there, too. Now, there IS a bit more diversity in Harry Potter, but not enough.

Now, not every movie needs to get an F rating or pass the Furiosa test :-D That doesn't say much about if the movie is expressing feminist values or not. It's OK to show skin and sexuality. It's even OK to have sexual abuse in a movie, just as long as it is acknowledged as abuse in the movie. I mean, the victim doesn't even need to get right and compensation for it, just as long as it is not brushed aside as nothing.

But Tauriel test and the "Gender Bias Without Borders"... We need to show our daughters more women who are good at their job and who get acknowledged for it, especially in STEM and other occupations that are sadly lacking women. This is so important, that I wouldn't mind if the "good female STEMician" was mandatory in every movie, even if she was a token character. I think I'm going to start giving gold stars to movies with the "good female STEMician" :-D
This one isn't one.
And it could have been... Just put in some lines in the beginning of the movie showing the mother works in STEM. (Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, if someone doesn't know ;-))

I mean, it would be a bit like the Bechdel test. Bechdel test isn't really measuring feminism, it's just a poor measurement of female representation in movies, but it's purpose is to make people think and see and discuss. And that is what it has done, during the last 30 years since it was coined. And there is a lot of movies where they have inserted two women having a discussion, just to get it pass the Bechdel test. Most of these movies are crap, because that kind of tokenism doesn't work well. But there's a lot of movies that aren't crap, because they wrote in women and gave them good roles, because they were made aware of this incredible imbalance. (I mean... how difficult is it to put in two women talking about something else than men in a movie? Yet there are films, AND A LOT OF FILMS, that don't pass! To me it's about as difficult as to make a movie where nothing is blue. Like, you have to actively write the movie without women in it! Just think about how many movies don't pass the reverse Bechdel test. I think there's 10 movies IN THE WORLD EVER MADE... and about 50% of the movies that don't pass Bechdel test. Think about it a little.