Hollywood has a long history of being dominated by men - from the movies being made, to the stories being told. 1975 was the year that invented the blockbuster, 1999 was the year that redefined special effects, and 2017 was the year that put women front and center.Yes, 2017 was also a complicated year for women. Between the numerous sexual assault scandals that exposed predators like Harvey Weinstein to the fact that over a million protesters felt it necessary to march the streets of Washington in support of basic women's rights, many of the headlines were about women fighting back - and a single year isn't enough to turn around such deeply entrenched gender inequality.Related: Gal Gadot Recalls Special' Moment Learning About Wonder Woman ReviewsBut while women still only make up around 10% of the directors in Hollywood, with female characters only constituting around a third of all speaking roles in movies, last year saw some serious milestones passed. Domestically, the highest-grossing superhero movie of the year was Wonder Woman, which was also the first female-led superhero movie in over a decade, and had one of the top three biggest domestic grosses of the year overall. The other two movies - Beauty and the Beast and Star Wars: The Last Jedi - were also female-led. Money talks in Hollywood, and that kind of success could be a serious force for change in the coming years.Here's a recap of how women seized Hollywood in 2017.

Year of the Wonder Women

Wonder Woman led the charge this summer by breaking several records: becoming the highest-grossing superhero origin story (beating Spider-Man's $403 million by additional $9 million); director Patty Jenkins becoming the highest-paid female director of all time; and star Gal Gadot becoming the highest-grossing actress of 2017. But while Themyscira's Champion holds the official title, she wasn't the only Wonder Woman of 2017.

Take Greta Gerwig, for example. A Golden Globe-nominated actress who has been a kind of indie staple for the past decade, Gerwig wrote and directed Lady Bird in 2017”a movie that not only explores the manic highs and lows of adolescence, but positions the story through a purely female perspective. Stars Saoirse Ronan and Laurie Metcalf are frontrunners in the awards race, both earning nominations in several Lead Actress and Supporting Actress categories, respectively.

However, the most notable success in Lady Bird isn't the female writer/director, the strong female cast, or even its equally powerful and viscerally honest portrayal of mothers and daughters, but the reaction it earned from critics. Following its release, Lady Bird managed to whip up the most consecutive positive reviews on Rotten Tomatoes without a single negative review (164 in total versus Toy Story 2's 163). Lady Bird currently stands strong with an enviable 99 percent score.

Also released last year to critical acclaim, Dee Rees' Mudbound is an epic motion picture getting the small-screen treatment. Based on the novel by Hillary Jordan, Mudbound tells a sweeping story about two families - one white, one black - working on a farm in Mississippi Delta before, during and after WWII. Perhaps best known for her 2011 film Pariah, Rees is an up-and-comer in the directing field, but Mudbound's VOD release has introduced her work to a wider audience than ever before.

With the film releasing on Netflix, Rees has a chance to not only become the first African-American female director nominee at the Academy Awards, but also the first director ever to be nominated for a film released on a streaming service. So far, most of the nominations aimed at the film have been in either acting or adapted screenplay categories (Rees co-adapted the screenplay alongside Virgil Williams), but the Academy is no stranger to last-minute surprises.

Leveling the Playing Field

2017 was a year filled with breaking records in film, but it also showcased some refreshingly defiant female characters - among the best of them, Frances McDormand's Mildred in Three Billboard's Outside Ebbing, Missouri. The meat on this movie's bones isn't easy to swallow, but it's hardly indigestible either. Mildred is a no-holds-barred mother seeking justice for the rape and murder of her teenage daughter. In her garish attempts to get the local police department's attention, she stabs, swears, and spits her way through locals, casting her decency aside in exchange for doing whatever it takes to find her daughter's killer(s).

In June, Sofia Coppola wrote and directed The Beguiled, an adaption of Thomas P. Cullinan's A Painted Devil (she borrowed the title from the 1971 adaptation starring Clint Eastwood), which depicts the members of an all-female boarding school during the Civil War tending to a wounded Union deserter. Where this soldier is under the impression that he holds some kind of masculine power over them, the tables soon turn.

Related: Lady Bird Tops Moonlight to Become A24's Highest Grossing Release

In The Post, Meryl Streep plays Kay Graham - a woman who, as the first female publisher of a US newspaper, had to deal with a parade of men who believed she was unfit for the position. Meanwhile, Margot Robbie portrays figure skater Tonya Harding, a complex and challenging role, in I, Tonya.

These are characters who aren't only driving forces in leveling the scales in what sort of stories Hollywood is willing to tell, but characters who evoke recognition. McDormand, Streep, and Robbie are all frontrunners in the Lead Actress race, with equally game-changing roles and performances, like Sally Hawkins in The Shape of Water and Ronan in Lady Bird, in the race as well.

'Weinstein-gate' and Beyond

Despite glimpses of a more gender-balanced Hollywood on the horizon, 2017 was by no means an auto-fix button for equality. Touching back on Patty Jenkins becoming the highest-paid female director of all time, the process was hardly simple. After Wonder Woman's success, Jenkins' desire for higher pay was an uphill battle; and though it was an uphill battle she ultimately won, it was one that shouldn't have existed in the first place. The deal took over three months before Warner Bros finally confirmed her return for Wonder Woman 2.

On a much broader topic, Hollywood's most notorious story in 2017 was the string of sexual abuse accusations sweeping through the industry. The whole ordeal opened up a floodgate, exposing a number of a celebrities for their sexual misconduct, but most of all allowing victims to finally have a voice; to not feel trapped behind the scenes and helpless in their silence.

Starting with Harvey Weinstein, these revelations echoed a much darker corner of the entertainment industry, harkening all the way back to the film industry's earliest eras; back to the so-called Golden Age of Hollywood, where celebrity status was American royalty and everyone from actors to producers could arguably do no wrong. The whole œcasting couch concept could be passed off as an inside joke, but in truth, it referred to a deep-seated Hollywood tradition that essentially told young aspiring actresses to expect worst case scenarios in pursuit of stardom.

In touching on the successes that women in Hollywood have achieved, it would be a disservice to leave out the destructive abuses that have driven off so much potential talent, and leeched off those who persisted for decades. That said, some good is coming from the bad; individuals who have abused their power have already been blacklisted from the industry, with their reputations destroyed. Unfortunate though it is that this issue has to exist in the first place, 2017 has been a year that turned the tides, even leading to TIME recognizing œThe Silence Breakers, as well as those involved in the #MeToo movement, as a collective Person of the Year. There will always be work to be done, and this sort of past can never be forgiven, but it is, at the very least, a start.

How 2018 Will Pick Up From 2017

While 2017 turned the tides for women in Hollywood, 2018 shows no signs of slowing down. In fact, the future appears brighter than ever. The gender scale is balancing, women are proving through opportunity that they have just as much to offer as men, and any individual who ever took advantage of a burgeoning actress is no doubt shaking in his boots. Last year, seeds were planted, so expect to see budding changes hit the ground running in 2018.

This year, Ava DuVernay directs Oprah Winfrey, Reese Witherspoon, and Mindy Kaling in Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time; Evangeline Lilly shares the title spot with co-star Paul Rudd in Ant-Man and the Wasp; Academy Award-winner Alicia Vikander reboots the Tomb Raider series; Ocean's 8 gives the Ocean's series an all-female spin. Basically, there's reason to hope for a more women-friendly Hollywood from here on out.

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Which female-led movie of 2018 are you looking forward to most? Let us know in the comments!

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