ok alien saga is is a good starting place.

i think theyre tend to be more male oriented due to the fact that there was a 'crisis' in masculinity in the 80's so men wanted to show superiority through masculine persuites, hence all the macho action films of thew 80's
hope that helps a bit

How about Cynthia Rothrock films..can't actually remember the name's of any of them(instantly forgettable B movies really) but I'm sure IMDB could help you. She did a lot of karate movies where she was a cop and stuff.

Grace Jones and Bridgette Neilsen did some action stuff as well.

I think action films with women in the lead just don't work because it looks strange to see a 5ft women beat up a 6ft3 300lb man with only her hands and feet..you have to think that it just wouldn't happen in real life.

Whereas Rambo et al were believable?

Seems to me that Action flicks are aimed at a particular male audience. And they no more want to see female leads than they want Action Woman toys. It's a boy thing. Live out you fantasies as a bottom-kicking Arnie, Sly or Jean-Claude. Women should be leggy, beautiful and demure (with a hint of bedroom tigerishness). They should not, under any circumstances, look like Bridgette Neilsen.

The Alien films were never Action flicks. The later ones bordered on it, but Alien has absolutely nothing to do with the genre. Only example I can think of is Red Sonya, and that hardly raked it in. You could always try Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, but that's getting desperate.

I'm with April 29, this genre invented itself in the 80s as an attempt to reassert traditional masculine values and role models. There were some attempts to do this with a female lead (usually trying to connect the same audienceÂ’s desire for action and soft porn), but I personally can't think of any successes.

I quite liked The Long Kiss Goodnight.

The long kiss goodnight was going to be my suggestion. I have a book at home all about women in action roles and there's an essay in that about Gena Davis' role. I'll dig it out tonight and give you the reference for it.

Also, one of my lecturers at Uni was a bit of a specialist in this area. can't remember her surname at this point but again i'll look up her books and post the references here.

ok - the book is called Working Girls - Gender and sexuality in modern cinema and its by Yvonne Tasker (1998)

She's also written a book called Spectacular Bodies which addresses the male action figure (i think)

Another helpful author is Sue Thornham (that was my lecturer) she's written a couple of books on feminist film theory and is particularly interested in Ripleys role in the Alien films, so definately worth a look.

Hope this helps a little

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by Jayjay
Whereas Rambo et al were believable?

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I think the first Rambo film actually verged on believable, especially the human side of it dealing with John Rambo's damaged psyche and his inability to re-adjust into society. The others well... er ... didn't, not by a long way... a VERY long way.

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by Jayjay
The Alien films were never Action flicks. The later ones bordered on it, but Alien has absolutely nothing to do with the genre. Only example I can think of is Red Sonya, and that hardly raked it in. You could always try Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, but that's getting desperate.

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I agree that the first Alien film wasn't an action movie, in my opinion it was practically pure chiller/horror, the second though, Aliens, was pure action movie. The subsequent ones were purely, well, anyway

Aliens was as much lead by The characters of Hicks and Bishop as it was by Ripley (and then also almost as much by the Alien queen itself) So I'm not sure if even though Weaver had top billing on the film that I would say she had the "Lead Role" I think that went to the big yellow power loader .

I think a part of it is like Jayjay said. Action movies are stories for boys, by boys, starring boys (albeit steroid enhanced muscle bound freak-of-nature type boys) .

Now where did I put my M-60 ?!?!?

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by MonSTeR
I think the first Rambo film actually verged on believable

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Actually, I'll give you that, First Blood wasn't that bad and did try to have a plot. The rest, especially Rambo 3, aren't worth debating.

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by MonSTeR
I agree that the first Alien film wasn't an action movie, in my opinion it was practically pure chiller/horror, the second though, Aliens, was pure action movie. The subsequent ones were purely, well, anyway

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Alien was clearly, as you say, a Chiller/Horror. I would argue that Aliens was a Sci-Fi War movie, borrowing heavily from the post-Vietnam War movies. Alien 3, I'm not too sure on. Sci-Fi Horror or all out Action movie? Get to Resurrection and I stop caring (although it's not a half bad movie - just not one worth analysing).

But then what makes a film an Action Movie in the first place? I associate the tag with films with low-to-no plot or character development and where the point is the body count. Alien 3, for me, borders on that, but has something more to it. Long Kiss Goodnight I would suggest has far more to it than to deserve to be considered part of that genre. Or am I just being pretentious and refusing to call a film an Action flick just because I like it?

Would Charlie's Angels count as an Action movie, do you think? Or Tank Girl, or GI Jane? All have female leads that get involved with a lot of 'whupass'! I suppose it really does depend on your definition of action movie. Assasin springs to mind, too, with Bridget Fonda. Or the original Nikita, although I have never seen that.

A Long Kiss Goodnight was a great movie - it should have been far more successful than it was.

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by maisie19
Would Charlie's Angels count as an Action movie, do you think? Or Tank Girl, or GI Jane? All have female leads that get involved with a lot of 'whupass'! I suppose it really does depend on your definition of action movie. Assasin springs to mind, too, with Bridget Fonda. Or the original Nikita, although I have never seen that.

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I don't think Charlie's Angels or GI Jane count as pure "action movies" as such there's too much else going on in them.

Charlie's Angels is an Action-Comedy, and again I think the main character was male, Bill Murray stole the show in my opinion, even if the lead roles were female. But heck, it comes pretty darn close I really enjoyed this film but didn't view it in the same macho testosterone-fueled way I'd sit down with the guys to watch Bruce or Arnie or Steven or Sly tear a bunch of hapless terrorists another hole. I guess this reinforces the stereotype that "Action Movies" are, as I said above, about guys for guys etc etc.


GI Jane I've only seen once but the moral seemed to be, that if you want to compete with men you have to become a man. The fact that she was a former intelligence officer and thus an army "nerd" seemed to be the crux of it all rather than her gender, so I think yeah, this one qualifies, the lead character need not have even been female for the point of this story, just weaker that their peers. More overcoming adversity than a true romp with a machinegun "action movie" though.

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by MonSTeR
I don't think Charlie's Angels or GI Jane count as pure "action movies" as such there's too much else going on in them.

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Hmmm is it a trend then that action movies with female leads do have 'more' to them than just action? Could this be because they think a woman couldn't carry a pure action movie? Or perhaps they think that a female lead will bring in a more female audience and we need more than just action in a movie to keep our attention? 'They' being the film industry, I mean.

I don't know? Looking at the films there (with the exception of Tank Girl) had very big names attached to them Demi Moore, Cameron Diaz and Drew Barrymore.

As A-list actresses known for doing films other than "Action Movies" I get the feeling that they would demand more from a film than just a "shoot-em-up"

Arnie/Sly/Bruce et al all pretty much made thier names doing that and went for that niche, but more recently they've all gone for more plot/acting/character now that they're all established, whether they pulled it off or not (I actually thought Copland was great).

It seems that the purest (and thus maybe the worst) action movies were a product of the 80's and have grown since to include more story and character traits etc. The big "female-lead" versions didn't start till the mid 90's after these changes had been initiated and thus probably we'd have to look tothe likes of Cynthia Rothrock to get back to a true "Female-Lead Action Movie"

I'm getting out of my depth here.

Sydney ... HELLLLLLLLPPP!!!

(Edited by MonSTeR 16/05/2002 11:49)

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by MonSTeR

Sydney ... HELLLLLLLLPPP!!!

(Edited by MonSTeR 16/05/2002 11:49)

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I could help, but...

I could write a nice long essay with nice words of five or more syllables which would probably explain it all wonderfully but it would more than likely confuse people as you do need a certain degree of specialist knowledge to understand teh terms - and anyway i finshed uni last year and I don't *have* to any more so nerr

I'll see about crafting a more user friendly reply at a later stage (i.e. when i've come out of the cba rut i'm in at the moment) but i would have to say that i agree with most of Monsters observations about sophistication required! (See Monster you didn't really need my help )