The 2020s have featured a number of intentionally genderflipped films, such as the reboot of Ghostbusters, with mixed (and admittedly largely negative) receptions by audiences and male-dominated online review sites like IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes. We can reasonably guess that films with all-female casts, especially in media properties with nearly-all-male casts, are likely to continue prompting such negative audience reactions, for any number of reasons including simple misogyny, but this writeup is not about that. We are not here to recast The Lord of the Rings with a female Fellowship, even if the plot would be functionally unchanged.

No doubt the reader's mileage will vary on this subject, but here is a list of the top films which I think would have had a far more negative reception, or a functional change to the genre of the film, if the genders of just the lead character (or / and their romantic interest or antagonist) had been flipped to the opposite side of…

The Mouse That Roared: Disney and the End of Innocence is a 1999 English language nonfiction book by Penn State education professor Henry A. Giroux, about the Walt Disney Company. Giroux discusses how Disney's early successes as the definitive "American family friendly" media corporation, its contributions to wartime propaganda, and its appropriation of familiar public domain narratives (such as fairy tales) for films have given it…

In Norse Mythology, found chiefly in Snorri Sturluson's 13th Century Prose Edda, specifically the tale of Þjálfi and Röskva, Hugi is the material personification of the thoughts of the playfully malicious giant Útgarða-Loki (also known as Skrýmir, and not the same person as Loki at all). Hugi takes on the appearance of a runner in a footrace, which the farm boy Þjálfi is challenged to run against him, and even when given the best two out of three opportunities to defeat…