Girls and Guns: Female Action Stars – Episode 39
November 14th, 2009
A slightly unconventional episode. But it seemed a fun idea at the time. In the 50s there wasn’t a whole lot of Female Action Stars, now there’s a whole bunch. Big change.
Let us know what you think, or if we’ve missed a stitch…
Featuring Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) from Alien, Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) from Terminator, Lara Croft (Angelina Jolie) from Tomb Raider, Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss) from the Matrix, Alice (Milla Jovovich) from Resident Evil, Selene (Kate Beckinsale) from Underworld, also a glimpse on the new action thriller SALT.
Tags: alien, angelina jolie, Female Action Stars, Girls and Guns, Kate Beckinsale, lara croft, milla jovovich, SALT movie, sigourney weaver, underworld
fiiiiiinaaaaallllllyyyy!! waited a long time to see this episode, dude!
great one as i think. i actually read the book about the perfect behavior of a wife and i was really inspired by it!! why did times change…? well, thats a different topic.
to be honest…most of the movies starring a female actor as the action star just suck!!
i mean alien was great! but that was not a typical shooter movie! take ultraviolet…bad, aeon flux…OMG!!! tomb raider…are u kiddin’ me?
please don’t put female actors as action heroes. or at least don’t leave them alone. they suck!!
or just make a good movie out of it!!
i am wondering how “salt” will be! the trailer looks pretty good, just like a trailer is supposed to be, haha!! maybe worth to check that out…
I still haven’t seen Alien. I almost bought it dead cheap at HMV yesterday, but…didn’t.
Most films like Tomb Raider and Ultraviolet and Aeon Flux are pretty dumb whoever’s in the leading role (see also Equilibrium, which is basically a Bale-led UV). I actually found the first TR quite likeable, though, in its own way. Videogameish fun combined with a lead character who actually has a little personality to go alongside her ridiculously padded breasts.
The Aeon Flux film was just bland and also completely unlike the source. Go watch the original animated series by Peter Chung. Then try picturing that Aeon Flux reading a book on how to be the perfect wife. (You can watch the pilot episode here: http://bit.ly/30BYEI)
In the 1950 the wife did wait to her husband with the dinner ready, now she waits for her best woman friend for sleep with she in the bed… ja ja joke joke.
In the past the woman was a prisioner of her body, the prision of doesn’t can choise when has or not your baby. The conseptiv pill determine it her liberation.
Liberation? Call this liberation? After come new prisons, the extreme beauty. “Don`t think, be happy, no matter that you don’t have nothing in the head, more empty, and more beauty you are”. Everybody sells for equal. The woman begins to transform into man and the man in woman. You walk in the street and look the guys and you ask if the guys are guys or really are women…
The marketing of the ambiguity, because to be ambiguous it is a business for the great companies and the ambiguity is fomented. The question is that everything becomes so dark and you run the risk of losing your thought and start to doubt your primary desires truly, and then to kiss a man is for you the same that to kiss a woman.
The Karma of the solitary man, to separate the man to dominate it.
Very interesting episode but… I think that the idea cinema for to put a revolver in the hand of a woman is a concept totally masculine, why? for the eternal fetichism is like listen about Angelina Jolie her side lesbianism or vampire… Marketing, the sad of this is that the people take this and more sad is, that in some point people like she start believe them own lies. And after come the crazy things, stupids things or sobredosis, suicide, big emotional crisis etc.
The caracter of Natalie Portman in “Leon” rememberme to a this subjet…
and remember about Alien Resurrection the relation ship of the personage of Winona Ryder and Sigourney Weaver and is so fantastic, was like the movie that broke the line between the sexuallity generate.
All that thing about action movies always think that is a thing about “sex”, big guns, big cars, blows, the highest sound, visual impact, extreme effects, is like a big orgasm and sometimes it’s obtained but… is like the in the real life, you need some of intelligence and tact, know when and where touch…maybe for this the action movies never finish of convincing to me. I think that the intensity and the inteligence can`t to separate and this sense is the eternal different between women and men, maybe for a man a little of intensity and is complete, for the woman not happens this, maybe you are with the most very good looking man and he don`t wake up anything, maybe the first time but is very insustial and feel the emptiness that something that don`t have, something called love.
Oh please I am a little heated ja ja better behind me under the wall.
Love the women with weapons is so sexy, but a man in a big car love it more!! Jiji
great episode, very exciting.
like it Juli. Thax
“you need some of intelligence and tact”
Agree.
“that thing about action movies always think that is a thing about “sex”, big guns, big cars, blows, the highest sound, visual impact, extreme effects”
Understand.
Like this episode as it has a little of both!
@Rob: Yes I know! Maybe for the same reason, the action movies are the favourtie movies in the public generally. Everything is a cuestion psychological or better say a cuestion instinctive, natural.
Yesterday watching “Dexter”, my favourite serie think in that actually the best talent are in the tv and not in the cinema, from scriptwriters, directors to actors like Michael Hall. A episode with the hansome-talent men of the tv will isn’t a bad idea
… Michael Hall, Gary Dourdan, Wentworth Miller mmm… But with Michael Hall I’m more of happy! “Dexter” looks cinema in too much things, everything the first season, never watch something like that, really really fantastic and Michael Hall is really fantastic. “Dexter” is a serie for not forget.
I was searching a link about of publicity of “Dexter” where Dexter was walk like in a dream but I can`t find now in internet.
The first season with the Ice truck Killer is the another planet. The final is something that I can’t believe it and the soundtrack reconstructs perfectlly a full underworld of the dark and simultaneously total mortality.
Almost the final
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DQbMUCYVXk&feature=related
The music (The intro)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wyRxc8DxEW0&feature=related
@juli: i kinda get the impression that u r liking girls more than guys:) is that why u don’t want me to have megan fox?? cause u want her urself?:)
i don’t mind movies with mindless shooting and a bad storyline as long as it is a good movie.
there is a thin line between doing a good job in that or making a ridiculous movie.
starting with a woman holding a machine gun in the one hand and a desert eagle in the other is just a bad beginning…maybe i am a sexist…maybe…
OK you want comments, here’s my two cents: I thought this episode could have been a little more thoughtful. The book you bring up depicts women in an old fashioned way, but the clips you show from contemporary films – while indeed give a contrasting image of women – are just action clips and over the top scenes. Instead I felt it would have been more intriguing to focus on some of these characters and how they do (or possibly DON’T) break gender stereotypes.
However there were some impressive (if not over the top) clips. I like intricate choreographed scenes like that in movies.
@Ibby: Please don`t put me nervious je je I don`t said that I like more women that men, please. I like men. Enjoy so much with the look of the female beauty but one thing is apreciatte something like a image and another thing enjoy something with the body.
Anyway.
Don’t exist the perfect formulate for make a perfect movie, but happens that some films of action have to actors with cliche beauty and sometimes destroy a good film or a good actor. Return to the example of Angelina Jolie, she is oh my God, so so pretty, and good actress but… in the last years she make a cliche of herself and now is like see a clown of herself. I know that you like it Megan Fox but, Megan Fox is a copy of the cliche of Angelina Jolie without offend.
I think that actually enjoy it more of to see to Natalie Portman like a revolver in the hand like Angelina Jolie. I don`t know, the beauty will be a thing simple and not complicated, the simple resist to the time and the look.
First time I’ve watched one of your vids and I have to say I quite enjoyed this. Now to watch through the others
Thanks!
I’d like to nominate Scarlett O’Hara from “Gone With the Wind” aa an action hero. She had to survive a war, deliver a baby, shoot a looter, and survive on her wits. Not your typical choice but she is mine.
Great Topic! Needs a part 2: What makes a great female action star vs. a poor one.
i would like to add on your clips ‘TOURNAMENT’ with KELLY HU in the movie… the fights that she made is literally a jaw-dropping scenes…
the women in 1950’s are more refined than of today’s… they just simply played a plain housewives, serving their husbands unconditionally.. to give further details,i would like to emphasize im differentiating ‘the women in 1950’s and of today’s women’… We, women in this generation think independently with passion..the main line is we can do both, like being a ‘SUPERWOMAN’…And we initially, dominating the world.. i guess MEN on different sides i bet, would like to disagree on me..
@juli: hey girl, will you please say somthing nice about Megan Fox? See, Ibby is doubting your ‘Sex Preference’.. hahahaha..
@ibby: juli for sure prefer men than women, i can attest to that…
Qoutable Qoutes:
‘In man’s success there’s women behind it”
@baxtelf: hahaha!!!! i am sorry that i laugh but it sounds so dramatic!! sorry sorry!! but why not make any actress who plays a nurse in a war movie a female superhero. or give it to jodie foster in “nell” for taking care of her dead sister over all the years. i apologize for being so sarcastic in advance!!! not meant to be personal.
@juli: you are right about angelina jolie. her roles kinda suck lately. maybe “salt” will bring things into order again
and you are again wrong about megan fox!! SHE IS NOT A COPY!!! DON’T MAKE ME MAD!!! she is the one!! ok? no doubt about that!
@gray: r u a woman?
@ibby: o gosh, you’re questioning my gender? to tell you this, im definitely a woman,isnt that obvious enough? to pacify you, Megan Fox is closely like Monica Bellucci a younger version..I’ve seen lately “JEnnifers Body’ (starred megan Fox) to be honest the movie is trash…
.
@Gray: Thinking better in a real woman for my collection’s doll will be interesting. Do You wish be the first? ja ja joke joke please don`t censured to me.
The woman in 1950 was more refined? Do you think really this? I don`t know, always think that live in a box of papper because is the only place where you can live is like… “this is it”. The woman in 1950 escaped of its house with a pregnancy because without another option, slave of her housband. But… who was slave of who? Not?
Remember to the caracter of Kate Wislent in Titanic in the escene of the lunch, in the absolute loneliness to a stop of married with a man that she doesn`t love… and the words that say the caracther of Leonardo Dicaprio is so true, so SCARY TRUE
“One day the woman that I love will die, don`t let she die, this passion yours is that I love Rose”…
Be free, don`t look the past.
The better man in the life of the all woman will be her father… always…
You love or hate a man because an image, an image of your father.
Is so fantastic this escene of Titanic… maybe Titanic was a movie comertial and very know but, is perfectly filmed and narrated.
@juli: of course, certainly i’l be the first…
you know women of today maybe more liberal than before juli… if you’re going to ask me which way im going to walk through, ’staying at the house or go out and work’, my answer would be like this, If my husband can answer all my needs y not stay at home and take care everything but if not well i rather go out and work…
@eleo: i got the point your pointing out, maybe for you it didnt jive the whole scenario but for me the way i look at it, its like differentiating the women before and women of today…and i guess,the clips was delivered with JUSTICE!
And i need part 2 on this… How about if the question like this..1..Does women can park or not? 2.does women cant drive manual 3.Does women can even change tires or not? Now that is surely a debate…
@juli: hey girl, anwser this question… hahahaha and i’l be posting my answer too if you’re done…
OR ANYONE CAN ANSWER THIS…
Great episode Tomas!
I never really watch the kinds of films shown in this episode, but it’s easy to see why they’re so popular.
Like the Comments bubbles too, a welcome return
Really cool episode! The girls look hot…and they mean business.
@Gray:
Take your best dress I’ll come for your home in a while in my super mortocicle hahahah, please pont you pretty for me ok? Am your man now… no no, I dont want be a man NO NO!!! Don`t drive me crazy please, dont drive me!!! I like be woman, hahahahahaha
Here your answers (I can’t understand for what but… are here:)
1. Drive ponts me crazy, the only time that I take a car and I drive almost kill to a old woman in a supermarket hahah not please. I am very dengerous when a car, a desastre, better a man for this, if is a very good looking man better hahaha black with green eyes mmm very interesting.
2. And the rest are the same question. I did a boyfriend that were a pilot of cars, he runing rices every time and the one think that I tell about him is that a man that loves a car, not very deep love a man. A car is like a man for me.
Oh this rememberme to ones of my favorites movies, “Crash” of David Cronember, we can watch it tonight if you like it. mmm
Great movie! amazing director.
@juli: all i could say is HAHAHAHAHAHA…..will you please stop it,maybe they’re thinking we’re lesbians.. NO WE’RE NOT! YOu’re really NUTS!
Here’s my answer Juli:
1.yes a women can park.. i think women are just a bit more cautious in general,its not that they dont know what they’re doing..
2.definitely yes we can drive manual,women can basically do what a guy can..
3. A lot of women can change tires but there’s a lot of difference between CAn and Want.. a lot of women would rather not..
FOLLOW UP QUESTIONS:
So what would you do stranded with busted tires?
- Honestly,call a friend,hahahhaa… Because you Men are eager to help and we wouldn’t want to turn down a lending hand…
@tomas: whats your views on my questions above?
@gray: putting aside physical differences, women can do what men can do. Very generally speaking, any lack in physical ’strength’ most women compensate by being mentally stronger on a day to day basis. My mother is the strongest person I have ever met and I respect and love her to death for it! plus, she parks better than me. takes her much longer but she never broke the side-mirror like I did. Although we are living in a society that is still evolving from our undeniable primitive origins (man gets food, woman makes food and preps the off-spring), it is in the end more a matter of character and personality rather than gender. I am going to hunt food now driving automatic!
For precaution Gray better would have close a revolver. Maybe the help is with two opstion, generally the masculin help is this hahaha, “will be friend but… we can sleep together too”- they say.
Anyway a revolver close in cause of maybe we happens of an accident like in “Thelma y Louise”.
Love the final of this movie!! ahahaha
Choise a Mercedez Benz for us.
Sehr schön zusammengestellt! Aber mir fällt auf, dass es trotzdem in der Filmgeschichte an einer Heldin fehlt, die mich so richtig umhaut. Übrigens ist der Tag von Mr&Mrs Smith falsch: dit is aus Wanted! Die perfekte Actionheldin muss cool und kompromißlos sein, elegant und effizient, mit trockenem Humor und irgendwie dabei gut aussehend – aber nicht unbedingt immer sexy a la angelina. Sie muss halt Style haben..eher wie Milla J. Krass ist auch patricia arquette in true romance, auch wenn sie dort keine action heldin ist. und die Heldin dürfte nicht so ne selbstverliebte tenniestartussie sein, eher so n bischen rough. ich sag becheid, wenn ich sie gefunden hab. chop.