With Great Power Comes Great Complexity: A Psycholinguistic and Rhetorical Analysis of Gender in Superhero Movies

This study utilizes integrative complexity (IC), a psycholinguistic/rhetorical construct that measures structural nuance in communication, to analyze gender, character role, and critical response in superhero films. Sampled dialogue from superheroes and supervillains across critically acclaimed and critically panned movies was collected/analyzed; while ANOVAs revealed no significant main effects for character role and critical response, a significant main effect for gender was found. As expected, the female characters—both superheroes and supervillains—demonstrated lower IC levels than their male counterparts, indicating that they are less focused/emphasized during creation and are positioned as reactionary/subordinate. Prior research spotlights the shortcomings of gender in superhero cinema, and while some scholars argue for female superheroes’ transgressive potential, these results suggest that potential has not been achieved.