Movies have always had problems representing women as actual complex human beings. Writer Kelly Sue DeConnick has noted that a disturbing number of female characters in modern stories fail to pass The Sexy Lamp Test . It's a test that asks, "Can a woman in this story be replaced with a sexy lamp, or is she more than just an attractive prop there for the men to fight over?" But not all weak female characters started off as empty-headed accessories to a male lead's biceps. These fictional ladies were all decidedly less lamp-like in their original form:

6 Kitty Pryde in X-Men: Days of Future Past

20th Century Fox

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Remember in X-Men: Days of Future Past when Kitty Pryde traveled back to the '70s to prevent the mutant apocalypse? You don't? Well, that might be because in the movie version, Kitty Pryde stayed at home while Wolverine did all the heavy lifting. For all of the non-nerds (thanks for stopping by the site in between football games and corvette tuneups, Dirk!), the film was based on a 1981 comic where Kitty was sent back in time by a girl named Rachel Summers to stop a senator's assassination, thus preventing a future where all mutants are hunted down by murderous robots.

Marvel Comics, 20th Century Fox

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In the comic, two brave heroines navigate the chronoverse. In the movie, Hugh Jackman gets a sensual temple massage.

In the movie, Kitty ends up being the one who sends Wolverine back, meaning they took one woman's daring mission to save all mutantkind and replaced it with "girl acts as Wolverine delivery system." Afterwards, he and a bunch of other dudes take care of all the heroics.

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Sorry Kitty, they're called X-"MEN" for a reason. Now phase on back to the kitchen, sweetheart.

Producer Simon Kinburg claimed the reason for Kitty's demotion was because of the way time travel powers work in the movie -- a character's mind travels back in time to possess its younger self, and Kitty wouldn't have been born in the '70s. Right, because you can completely restructure the characters in the story on a whim, but this made-up time travel mechanic is totally immutable. Obviously the real reason for the lead character change-up is that Fox knew a ripped-to-shreds Hugh Jackman would sell more tickets than an intangible Ellen Page. It was both the wrong decision for the story, and one that instantly made them $500 million. The term "Wolverine Publicity" is codified on TV tropes for a reason.