Just adding to what I said earlier.
[...snipped] To sum up: Female leads in action movies are fine if the franchise started with a female lead. (Personally, I really enjoyed the Resident Evil series as a guilty pleasure.) But taking a traditionally male-led franchise and injecting female leads ruins continuity. It also smacks of bending to a feminist Hollywood agenda, for those who want to push the political aspect. But personally I think it's just a question of continuity for most people.
By the way, I'm guessing there probably wasn't any Hollywood feminist agenda,
per se, in the reworking of Fury Road and The Force Awakens in particular.
Prior to Fury Road in 2015, the Mad Max franchise only consisted of three films, and it died a rather freakish death with the final film (Thunderdome) in 1985 and was largely forgotten for 30 years. In taking a fresh look at at the franchise for purposes of making Fury Road, they were probably looking at ways to jump-start the franchise and take it new places, especially given that they couldn't use Gibson in his signature role. The lead faces were going to be new anyway; might as well try to broaden appeal by bringing in Charlize Theron. (Actually they tried to do something similar in Thunderdome in 1985 by bringing in Tina Turner in a supporting role.)
The same with Star Wars, I expect. The franchise had been wildly successful, but the last films got mixed reviews from loyal fans. Disney acquired the franchise after a hiatus of seven years and I expect they were looking at ways to reboot the franchise and appeal to a broader audience (rather than trying to impose a political agenda on an old geek franchise). Disney is liberal; the company was an early supporter of gay rights. But ultimately it also has to be profitable.
To sum up: Both franchises were moribund and in new hands: They were ripe for a re-boot and a search for new audiences and fresh appeal. It was natural that their old formulas got tweaked a bit to take them into the modern age. Naturally, old diehard fans would end up bitching about continuity issues. But at the same time, the companies producing the films have to look at profitability. With an old moribund franchise, that usually means taking the franchise in new directions.
They say everything's political. But not always.
[ETA:] Oh, and another film in the Resident Evil franchise is scheduled to come out in 2017. Maybe this one will actually break the 50% mark on RottenTomatoes.com