Five years ago today, the world was introduced to Katniss Everdeen.
Actually, that's not entirely true. Katniss technically debuted with the first installment of the three-part novel series in September, 2008, but it wasn't until she was brought to life by Jennifer Lawrence that society at large started their obsession. To most people, Katniss is JLaw, so it only makes sense to talk about the series on the actress' terms.
It was only half a decade ago, but March, 2012 was a lifetime ago as far as the movie industry is concerned. The first Hunger Games hit theaters before #AskHerMore, before the Gender pay gap was even publicly recognized, before Patricia Arquette gave her groundbreaking Oscars speech, before Lawrence herself wrote that much-talked-about open letter.
When Hunger Games came to life on the big screen, the idea that a single movie could reset the course of an entire genre of female-led franchises was still a twinkle in someone's eye. Yet, five years later, it has made a huge impact.
It's worth starting at The Hunger Games' opening weekend. In short, it was the third best in box office history. It wildly surpassed its pesky YA predecessor (yes, Twilight) and surprised even the most informed critics and industry insiders to garner a whopping $155 million in the first three days. The film's opening weekend fell short only to The Dark Knight and the final Harry Potter installment.
Suffice it to say, the movie's success proved to studios and would-be filmmakers that putting a woman in charge of a huge blockbuster movie pays off both culturally and financially. The film hit theaters several months after Bridesmaids took over the nation (make that the world), but there's something wholly more difficult about convincing the powers that be of a woman's ability to front action flicks.
Perhaps the most obvious lasting legacy of that fateful first flick is the career of one Jennifer Lawrence. Sure, she broke out onto the scene a couple years earlier with Winter's Bone, and even received an Oscar nomination for the role, but The Hunger Games put her on the map as a bona fide star. With the notoriety and praise that the franchise brought to her, Lawrence became a regular in starring roles, her ensemble cast (and lower pay) days fully behind her.
But plenty of The Hunger Games cinematic predecessors have the flick to thank for their success, as well—and even their entire existence. It's a sad fact that Hollywood studio executives love a test case. Gambles or experiments can be costly, so they'd rather wait and see how a guinea pig flick fares before going out on a limb for their own version.
As Bridesmaids director Paul Feig explained to E! News last year on the eve of that film's own five-year anniversary, there was a fair amount of tension surrounding the female-centric comedy's release. "The industry was hyper-focused on whether it was going to do well," he said. "Writers I know were inspired by the movie and were pitching similar things, and all the executives said they had to wait to see how Bridesmaids did."
The same goes for Katniss and her band of rebels, and they paved the way for a host of girl power films.
The debut of Pitch Perfect was well under way when Hunger Games stole the show, but it's (probably) not a coincidence that The Bellas gained such a cult following just a few months after Katniss. The correlation of Elizabeth Banks going from the Effie Trinket standout star to eventually directing Pitch's sequel shouldn't be ignored, either. The first installment, which was a veritable steal to make, garnered a surprising (and awesome) $113 million at the box office. Sure, there were men among the cast, but we're pretty sure none of those theatergoers were turning out to see anyone but Anna Kendrick and her fellow ladies.
Next came what can aptly be describe as the Spring of Women. The first half of 2015 was an incredible time for female-led flicks—that it came in just the amount of time it would take to conceptualize, write and produce a new movie, post-Hunger Games, well, that's probably not a coincidence. This period was marked with the follow-up to Pitch Perfect, which made $70 million during its first weekend in theaters and quickly crossed the coveted $100 million mark, and the kickoff to the Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy.
On the outset, a slightly sexist and often times unsettling romantic drama about BDSM might not exactly scream feminism! But, debatable content aside, Dakota Johnson is the face of this movie. Her talent carries the entire thing, and it was her character that most audience members came to see. Audience members who are, it's worth pointing out, almost entirely women. To greenlight a franchise like Fifty Shades is to acknowledge that the female population is one worth hedging your bets on. We don't have to explain how well that turned out.
Last but not least was Mad Max: Fury Road, which is undoubtedly the most badass of this gender-centric genre. Charlize Theron is anything but a Hollywood newcomer, yet the fact that a major studio entrusted the actress and a team of relative ingénues (Zoe Kravitz, Rosie Huntington-Whitely and Riley Keough among them) to carry a raucous, terrifying, intense, ugly, dirty movie should not be discounted. That the film garnered bunches of cash and six Academy Awards is merely icing on the cake, and the proof in the pudding.
But that's not the end of it. Hollywood has also taken up the habit of not only creating new movies for and about women, but redoing existing flicks. It all started with Ghostbusters, of course, which was as much an action film as it was a comedy, and soon audiences will be able to watch the Oceans storyline acted out by the likes of Sandra Bullock, Rihanna, Cate Blanchett, Anne Hathaway and Sarah Paulson.
There is still quite a long way to go before anything close to gender parity is achieved, but what fun would the work be if you didn't stop and celebrate the milestones every once in a while?