Yesterday I wrote that the under-performing of George Miller‘s Furiosa is due to a lack of an unequivocal, no-substitutions Mad Max character in the lead as opposed to a second-banana girlboss figure.

Charlize Theron‘s Furiosa in 2015’s Mad Max: Fury Road was a formidable, enraged, go-for-broke protagonist, but she wasn’t the lead — Tom Hardy was.

No matter how you slice it Anya Taylor Joy faced a daunting challenge — trying to carry a major action franchise flick when she’s not playing an actual, historically verified lead but a strong supporting character.

The failure of Furiosa was due, I wrote, to “the absence of Mad Max and his being replaced by a girlboss, and a story about a girlboss out for vengeance upon Chris Hemworth’s Dementus — essentially a feminist woke plot (i.e., you go get the evil bad guy, girl). Action bros have never felt much passion or enthusiasm for proverbial girlboss characters.”

The biggest exception to the girlboss rule, of course, is Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley in the first two Alien movies. She was unquestionably the lead in both and decisively kicked ass…no question about that.

If you were a senior production exec in a position to make greenlight calls, what would your attitude be about new potential girlboss action projects? Would you be indifferent about what happened to Furiosa last weekend or would you be saying “hmmm…I don’t know”?