Four Swedish cinemas are planning on using the Bechdel test on new films and giving them a rating.
The Bechdel test looks at women and their involvement in a movie, The Telegraph reports. The test is named after Alison Bechdel who came up with the idea in a 1985 comic.
The Bechdel test asks if there are at least two named female characters and if they speak together, and if they do, do they talk about something other than a man. Films that pass this test are given an A rating, while films that don't will remain unrated.
Ellen Tejle, director of independent cinema Bio Rio, said, "The entire 'Lord of the Rings' trilogy, all 'Star Wars' movies, 'The Social Network,' 'Pulp Fiction' and all but one of the 'Harry Potter' movies fail this test."
According to The Independent, Tejle told the Associated Press that "For some people it has been an eye-opener."
The Swedish Film Institute, which finances a lot of movies, has openly supported the test, which has annoyed some. Hynek Pallas, a Swedish film critic, said that the SFI should not "send out signals about what one should or shouldn't include in a movie."
The Bechdel test does not look at the quality of film, nor whether a movie is even sexist or not, just whether a film has those certain requirements in them. The test is more to make people realize how under-represented women are in film.
A 2013 study by Dr. Stacy L. Smith, Marc Choueiti, Elizabeth Scofield and Dr. Katherine Peiper wrote that only 28.4 percent of speaking characters were female in 2012. The numbers dip to 16.7 percent of those working behind the scenes of the top 100 grossing films being women.