[Tom4784]

There's been a lot of female led films but a lot of them tend to be focused on the male gaze or oversexualisation of it's lead. Ripley in the Alien films was written without a gender in mind so while that has it's own merits, it also counts against it being an example of a well written female character. Sarah Connor was a lead character but the Terminator films as a whole were vehicles for Arnie.

Alice in the RE films was definitely a character designed to appeal to males rather than females. I can't remember much about the Underworld films apart from Kate Beckinsale running around in a skintight catsuit. Katniss Everdeen's a decent exception.

A lot of the backlash does come from a place of misogyny, I've not watched the newest Ghostbusters film but from what I heard, it wasn't that bad but I remember a lot of the anger towards it began when the cast was announced. I don't think it would have mattered if the film was a masterpiece, the people out to hate it would have hated it regardless of it's quality. Look at The Last Jedi as well, a lot of the hate towards that film was attributed towards the focus on female characters to such a point that a fan edit became popular in which the female characters roles were minimized and it was the male characters that were the focus.

I think a lot of anger over female roles tend to come from the same place, nerd culture.

You see it all the time in gaming, for example. If you ever watch a showcase for video games and a female developer appears, you can guarantee a flood of gross comments about her. If you have a female character that wears sensible clothes, you'll get a bunch of losers screeching that the character not having tits bigger than next week is PC gone mad.

If a girl engages in anything nerdy, you can guarantee it'll put the male nerds backs up.