Action Heros Aren’t Gender Neutral

A good action film; a simple plot, little meaningful dialogue, a lot of action, some comedy, a lot of gratuitous violence and no pointless romance; combined with a huge bucket of popcorn always makes for a good night’s viewing. I don’t care whether the protagonist is male or female so long as the film meets my conditions but, as I was watching the latest offering; Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre as it happens; I got to thinking. Despite nearly 50 years of clamouring for equality and all the awards ceremonies ditching best actor/actress for more gender neutral awards, this genre continues to be heavily dominated by male actors. If I was asked to name the main actor in the majority of action films; particularly those which have become franchises; I can reel off the male ones with ease. I would, however, be pushed to come up with more than a handful of female ones off the top of my head. It all depends upon what you class as an action hero, I suppose; there is a huge list out there, but I don’t count Disney princesses, animated or otherwise, one off proving a point roles or the supporting action heroine, added for contrived romantic tension; I mean actual gun toting, full throttle, badass action heros. 

How many of us think of Alien in the same breath as Rocky? Both made in the 70s and leaders of a film revolution, with the 80s seeing the rise of the action film genre and it’s subsequent franchises. Although there have been action films since the dawn of cinema they were not in the same league as the films of this new era. For me it all started with Stallone’s first Rambo film First Blood; which I thoroughly enjoyed by the way; followed two years later by Schwarzenegger’s Terminator; a rip off of Yul Bryner’s 1973 film Westworld in my view; leading the way for a select group of testosterone fuelled actors such as Bruce Willis, Mel Gibson and Tom Cruise leading the way. They were later joined by the likes of Keanu Reeves, Jason Statham and Vin Diesel, to name a few, over the next couple of decades. And this same little band have continued to make the most remembered action films and franchises ever since. 

The 2000s saw the addition of DC and MARVEL take to the screen with their own brand of superhero action, but again most of the protagonists are male, possibly a hangover from the comic books of the 50s and 60s. So where are the women? Oh they are there, but quite often in the role of a super villain rather than the superhero. Or if they are on the side of good it’s as a sidekick or a member of a team of superhero’s. 

It would be nice to see more standalone female heros like Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley or; even though I’m not a fan of Angelina Jolie; a decent Lara Croft, which, despite the CGI and a costume that appears to be borrowed from The Hunger Games, the latest rendition looks like it might be. For the most part though, female heros tend to be lightweight, comedic and/or romantic with many failing to reach the franchise stage or sinking into relative obscurity. The only really badass female I’ve watched recently was Michelle Yeoh as the nuclear ( or should that be nuckiler?) bomb toting villain in an old season of Strike Back. So why is there still a dearth of decent female action stars and films? Maybe if some of these mediocre actresses embraced their womanhood, stopped complaining about being sexualised in films and accept that no-one wants to watch a bland, unsexy, politically correct, gender neutral (female) actor whinging about equality, we might get somewhere. No wonder no-one will touch them with a ten foot bargepole! Mind you, the films they do make are the sort that I avoid like the plague anyway. The way I see it the vast machine that is Hollywood might let all the whiners have their gender neutral awards but the film studios and film producers probably know on which side their bread is buttered and will keep giving us what they know that both men, women and me will flock to watch; a machine-gun toting muscleman half clad in leather, covered in sweat and grease, enduring all manner of beatings before crashing a car or few whilst chasing the villain through the city, finally finishing him off in a hail of bullets topped off with an impossible to survive explosion. Cue the popcorn!