Powerful Women and the Men Who Love Them

 

“If this movie doesn’t make money, it reinforces a stereotype in Hollywood that men don’t go see women do action movies.” That was what actress/producer Elizabeth Banks said in response to her film Charlie’s Angels tanking at the box office to the tune of 13 million dollars and change.

Huh? Wait a second. I’m a man, and I have a coffee mug named Ripley.

Ripley was the no-nonsense leader from Aliens. She single-handedly took out a colony of Xenomorphs. She went toe to toe with their queen.

I freaking loved that.

And I’m not alone. Ask any guy to list their favorite action movies and I’ll bet you’ll get votes for films from the Star Wars, Alien, and The Terminator franchises. Several of these contain incredibly strong female main characters — Ellen Ripley, Sarah Connor, Rey, Princess Leia, and Jyn Erso, to name a few.

So Elizabeth Banks is wrong. Men will spend money to see women in action movies, with one caveat: The movies must not suck.

Her logic is based on a misguided perception of misogyny, which is ironic, considering that Banks’ most profitable role to date was in The Hunger Games franchise, a wildly popular series of films with a strong female lead. The later Hunger Games films didn’t do as well as the first two, but that wasn’t because men didn’t want to see strong women; on the contrary, Katniss, the main character, became increasingly unlikable as the story moved on. The Hunger Games franchise went from being a fun action movie to a thoughtful message film filled with pseudo-psychological commentary.

Whatever. I just wanted to see more exploding arrows.

Don’t get me wrong, I love many genres of film. But with an action movie, all I really want to see is, well, some cool action with characters I care about. I want to root for them, and I couldn’t care less whether or not their armor is designed to fit curves.

Here is a shocker: Success at the box office has little to do with the gender of the cast and much more to do with good writing and quality acting. Making a film with all-female leads for the express purpose of making a statement about female empowerment always looks dumb, because it is. The Marvel Cinematic Universe has tons of great female characters, but the girl-power-pander scene in Avengers Endgame was cringe-worthy. So was the record scratch cue up of No Doubt’s I’m Just a Girl playing during Captain Marvel’s main fight scene. Both scenes were overtly in-your-face ways of saying, “See. We’ve got girls. And they’re really tough, too.” The scenes were unnecessary, and they actually served the opposite purpose of marginalizing the characters on multiple levels.

Great action movies don’t beat the protagonist’s gender over our heads. The characters shine because we care about who they are and what they’re going through. Gender may play a significant role in a certain hero’s journey, but that is not why we love them. Case in point: Sarah Connor.

Sarah Connor’s journey began in The Terminator (1984) where she was depicted as the farthest thing from a hero one could draw up. She played the damsel in distress for most of the film; tried to run away, was very much the victim. We watched her evolve as she learned of her importance to future events and went through a little hell before finally stepping up in the movie’s third-act, becoming the unlikely hero. She was feminine, she was frightened by scary things, but she learned how to push past that fear to accomplish the mission.

By the time Terminator 2 came around, Sarah Connor had surpassed Leia Organa as the second most badass woman in film (it’s hard to top Ripley) and we — men who love action movies — adored her. She wasn’t sexy, she wasn’t funny, and she was emotionally unstable. That’s pretty much the archetype of the girl you want to avoid. But Sarah Connor got away with that, because she could pump a 12-gauge pistol-grip shotgun with one arm. She could look a killer cyborg in the eye and tell it to go [expletive] itself. And her motivation wasn’t some modernist notion of social justice girl power. No, she fought for the most basic, the most feminine of all motivations: To protect her offspring.

The most recent film to elicit this kind of reaction to a strong female character was Emily Blunt’s performance in A Quiet Place. That film ended with her character wielding a shotgun as well, but that wasn’t what made her amazing. What impressed guys like me was the way she managed to deliver a baby all by herself, in relative silence, with killer aliens in the next room. That was awesome. Sarah Connor and Ellen Ripley would have given her props for that move.

There is a deleted scene on the Director’s Cut of Aliens where we see Ellen Ripley returning to Earth after being marooned in deep-space cryosleep for fifty-seven years. She discovers that while she was away, her daughter died an old woman, and it’s a loss that ignites her motherly instinct later in the film when she chooses to postpone her own escape to take on that massive colony of acid-spewing Xenomorphs a third time — alone, because all but one of her Marines have been killed — to rescue a little girl.

A little while ago I went with some men to see the latest iteration of Sarah Connor on the big screen in Terminator: Dark Fate. Sarah Connor is now in her sixties, with grey hair and wrinkles that Clint Eastwood would appreciate. Once again, she was awesome. She was tough, vulnerable, made mistakes, and had to swallow her pride a few times. But she could still go toe to toe with a Terminator.

That is the kind of female action hero we want. Not the kind that denies her femininity, but the one who gains power from it.

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  1. Stad Coolidge
    Stad
    @Stad

    DrewInWisconsin, Type Monkey (View Comment):

    Hartmann von Aue (View Comment):
    And it was reassuring to read someone else finally noticing the connection between the death of Ellen Ripley’s daughter and her almost instant “adoption” of Newt in Aliens.

    I’m surprised it was cut from the theatrical release. It seems such an important part of her character arc.

    I prefer the director’s cut myself.  It adds more to the movie, including action.

    • #31
  2. Marjorie Reynolds Coolidge
    Marjorie Reynolds
    @MarjorieReynolds

    Stad (View Comment):

    Vince Guerra: So Elizabeth Banks is wrong. Men will spend money to see women in action movies, with one caveat: The movies must not suck.

    So true.

    I love Ripley and Sarah Conner. Their toughness was more real than say, The Bride (Uma Thurman) in Kill Bill 1 (but still fun to watch).

    I’d forgotten about how disappointed I was with Kill Bill for that reason. You can only suspend disbelief for so long before it gets boring. On the other hand, Patricia Arquette lamping James Gandolfini with the lid of a toilet cistern in True Romance was a scene I could believe.

     

    • #32
  3. Henry Castaigne Member
    Henry Castaigne
    @HenryCastaigne

    Samuel Block (View Comment):

    It’s the truth. Men couldn’t possibly be capable of any emotional investment into a story where a woman’s survival is at stake.

    Whether women live or die has just never had much of an effect on us.

    The evolutionary psychology of this is super fascinating. In essence, men are expendable so stories are more interesting to when they protect women. 

    • #33
  4. Max Ledoux Coolidge
    Max Ledoux
    @Max

    Marjorie Reynolds (View Comment):

    Stad (View Comment):

    Vince Guerra: So Elizabeth Banks is wrong. Men will spend money to see women in action movies, with one caveat: The movies must not suck.

    So true.

    I love Ripley and Sarah Conner. Their toughness was more real than say, The Bride (Uma Thurman) in Kill Bill 1 (but still fun to watch).

    I’d forgotten about how disappointed I was with Kill Bill for that reason. You can only suspend disbelief for so long before it gets boring. On the other hand, Patricia Arquette lamping James Gandolfini with the lid of a toilet cistern in True Romance was a scene I could believe.

     

    In the movie The Kingdom there’s a scene where Jennifer Garner gets into a fist fight with a terrorist and absolutely gets her ass kicked and only survives by luck. It was one of the most realistic fight scenes (regardless of male/female actors) in a movie I’ve ever seen.

    • #34
  5. Max Ledoux Coolidge
    Max Ledoux
    @Max

    Max Ledoux (View Comment):
    In the movie The Kingdom there’s a scene where Jennifer Garner gets into a fist fight with a terrorist and absolutely gets her ass kicked and only survives by luck. It was one of the most realistic fight scenes (regardless of male/female actors) in a movie I’ve ever seen.

    I’d forgotten that Jason Bateman was in the scene. Here it is. Warning, of course, this is very violent:

    Yeah, she kills the guy, but in a totally believable way.

    Of course, this brings up the question: do we actually want to watch realistic violence? Part of the escape of an action movie is that it’s entertainment. It’s not real. We know that.

    • #35
  6. Marjorie Reynolds Coolidge
    Marjorie Reynolds
    @MarjorieReynolds

    Max Ledoux (View Comment)

    Of course, this brings up the question: do we actually want to watch realistic violence? Part of the escape of an action movie is that it’s entertainment. It’s not real. We know that.

    Somewhere in the middle for me. I prefer there be emotional impact in a scene where is someone is murdered, the realism of the scene doesn’t mean the violence level  must be intense, but the menace and fear should be.  Uma Thurman prancing around with a sword  in a boiler suit wasn’t something I could believe in or be moved by in any way. But I tend to class fight scenes separately to killing scenes. In general I don’t like killing to be treated in a trivial way. But fight scenes can be great fun.

    • #36
  7. Jerry Giordano (Arizona Patrio… Member
    Jerry Giordano (Arizona Patrio…
    @ArizonaPatriot

    Max Ledoux (View Comment):

    Max Ledoux (View Comment):
    In the movie The Kingdom there’s a scene where Jennifer Garner gets into a fist fight with a terrorist and absolutely gets her ass kicked and only survives by luck. It was one of the most realistic fight scenes (regardless of male/female actors) in a movie I’ve ever seen.

    I’d forgotten that Jason Bateman was in the scene. Here it is. Warning, of course, this is very violent:

    Yeah, she kills the guy, but in a totally believable way.

    Of course, this brings up the question: do we actually want to watch realistic violence? Part of the escape of an action movie is that it’s entertainment. It’s not real. We know that.

    I don’t know whether this is realistic or not.  I haven’t seen any real fights.  I find it very unlikely that Garner would have prevailed against this man, who was much larger and stronger, in a real fight.

    • #37
  8. Jerry Giordano (Arizona Patrio… Member
    Jerry Giordano (Arizona Patrio…
    @ArizonaPatriot

    I am annoyed by the “girl power” characters.  Even Ripley and Sarah Connor were a bit unbelievable.

    I do apply the rule to men, too, so I lost interest in movies like Bond and Mission Impossible once they started doing superhuman things.

    I agree with Max’s comment (#9) that I have a bit of an exception for superhero, SciFi, and fantasy shows, where at least there’s an implausible explanation for the super-powers.  They’re still a bit annoying, though, especially when only the woman character has the super-power, like Two in Dark Matter.  Oh, and in Dark Matter, they add another woman later on who also has super-fighting-powers.

    I don’t make much of an exception for the superhero, SciFi, or fantasy shows, though.  Men may actually be expected to do difficult physical fighting, in the military or police.  Women are incapable of doing such things, in the real world.  Thus, the unrealistic Captain America can, at least, be an inspiration for a real-life hero like a SEAL or Ranger.  The unrealistic Captain Marvel is not a proper inspiration to anyone, and probably leads girls to think that they can do things — like take on men physically — that they cannot actually do.

    Eowyn was a good exception to this rule, though better in the books than in the movie (because in the movie, it’s suggested that she’s actually a match for Aragorn, which is ridiculous).

    • #38
  9. DrewInWisconsin, Type Monkey Member
    DrewInWisconsin, Type Monkey
    @DrewInWisconsin

    Jerry Giordano (Arizona Patrio… (View Comment):

    I don’t know whether this is realistic or not. I haven’t seen any real fights. I find it very unlikely that Garner would have prevailed against this man, who was much larger and stronger, in a real fight.

    Oh come on! Didn’t you ever watch Alias? Happened all the time, so I’m sure she’s capable of it. ; )

    • #39
  10. Vince Guerra Inactive
    Vince Guerra
    @VinceGuerra

    Max Ledoux (View Comment):
    In the movie The Kingdom there’s a scene where Jennifer Garner gets into a fist fight with a terrorist and absolutely gets her ass kicked and only survives by luck. It was one of the most realistic fight scenes (regardless of male/female actors) in a movie I’ve ever seen.

    The scene from True Romance that @MarjorieReynolds mentioned is another. She gets beat up so bad that another character later asks her if her husband is beating her. It’s incredibly hard to watch, and she also only barely escapes alive.

    • #40
  11. Vince Guerra Inactive
    Vince Guerra
    @VinceGuerra

    Max Ledoux (View Comment):

    Vince Guerra (View Comment):
    The last film Terminator: Genysis was pretty awful though.

    Is that the one where John Conner was a terminator?

    Yes, but now that one has been erased from Terminator canon.

    • #41
  12. Stad Coolidge
    Stad
    @Stad

    Marjorie Reynolds (View Comment):
    I’d forgotten about how disappointed I was with Kill Bill for that reason. You can only suspend disbelief for so long before it gets boring.

    In an interview, Taranteno explained why he made it over the top and exaggerated the violence and gore.  This is one reason why I like to watch the Special Features sections that come with a lot of DVDs . . .

    • #42
  13. Stad Coolidge
    Stad
    @Stad

    Jerry Giordano (Arizona Patrio… (View Comment):
    I do apply the rule to men, too, so I lost interest in movies like Bond and Mission Impossible once they started doing superhuman things.

    My favorite bit of superhuman ability (seen in Mission Impossible and many old cop shows) is a detective who can pick off a bad guy at fifty yards with one shot from a snub-nosed revolver . . .

    • #43
  14. Max Ledoux Coolidge
    Max Ledoux
    @Max

    Jerry Giordano (Arizona Patrio… (View Comment):
    I find it very unlikely that Garner would have prevailed against this man, who was much larger and stronger, in a real fight.

    Bateman’s character knocked the bad guy over and then Garner’s character was able to stab him with a knife. Without Bateman’s character’s help and the knife, Garner’s character would definitely have lost. Nothing in the scene was unrealistic, such as the female character kicking the larger and stronger male character with one leg and having him fly through a wall, which is an absurd action movie trope we often see. 

    • #44
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