this post was submitted on 19 Apr 2025
270 points (93.3% liked)

movies

3643 readers
171 users here now

Matrix room: https://matrix.to/#/#fediversefilms:matrix.org

Warning: If the community is empty, make sure you have "English" selected in your languages in your account settings.

πŸ”Ž Find discussion threads

A community focused on discussions on movies. Besides usual movie news, the following threads are welcome

Related communities:

Show communities:

Discussion communities:

RULES

Spoilers are strictly forbidden in post titles.

Posts soliciting spoilers (endings, plot elements, twists, etc.) should contain [spoilers] in their title. Comments in these posts do not need to be hidden in spoiler MarkDown if they pertain to the title’s subject matter.

Otherwise, spoilers but must be contained in MarkDown.

2024 discussion threads

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 days ago
[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 days ago

Great movie.

[–] [email protected] 138 points 1 week ago (9 children)
[–] [email protected] 82 points 1 week ago (1 children)

She was widely ridiculed for the quote with Alien as a notable example.

I think the rest of the quote was pretty accurate. She was speaking to gender bias in Hollywood and saying she was happy to be an exception, which I think was fine. But because she said something boneheadedly wrong to tee up the point, that's all anyone really remembers about it.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 week ago (2 children)

You can be wrong but still hold a valid point broadly.

If you say "franchises" instead of movies and limit it to movies where the woman is the STAR and not part of a duo (Terminator and Terminator 2) and goes for 3 or more movies the only other example I can think of off the top of my head is Alien.

Theres a lot of female starred standalone movies, and a decent number of duos, sometimes with sequels. But once you start looking beyond that it gets REALLY skinny really fast.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 week ago (3 children)

Resident Evil has entered the chat...

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 week ago (3 children)

We try to forget those movies exist at all.

load more comments (3 replies)
load more comments (2 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 47 points 1 week ago (4 children)
[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Alien came out 12 years before terminator 2.

load more comments (2 replies)
load more comments (3 replies)
[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (6 children)

Dude, there are at least:

  • Alien
  • Doomsday
  • Planet Terror
  • Aeon Flux (edit: not Aron Flux)
  • Catwoman
  • all Charlie's Angels movies
  • and literally all Mills Jovovich movies

They are not all that well known, but the claim is still complete nonsense.

Edit:

  • Ultraviolet
  • Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon
  • Sucker Punch
  • Salt
  • Pans Labyrinth
  • Lara Croft
  • Kill Bill !!! (How the f did I forget Kill Bill?)
load more comments (6 replies)
[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Absolutely does. But they wanted to introduce us to one of their favorites. Which if I must say absolutely is an underrated awesome movie. Gina Davis is great in almost everything she's ever been in. They didn't imply it was the first.

As you said aliens definitely predates it and also counts. But the statements that it was the first big female led action movie was just so ridiculous because there are so many good ones that are easy to point out. Just how that blue origin launch with the all female crew was somehow this big step for females in space. Completely ignoring and down playing all the female astronauts throughout NASA's history.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 week ago

Fun fact about that: I think it was Mike Mullane who was on one of the first missions with a female astronaut. He found her, obviously, to be beyond qualified, and was just as furious as all the other astronauts of any gender at the dumb type of "how will you do your makeup in space" type of questions she would get from the press.

Anyway, partway through the mission her hair got caught by some kind of machinery, sucked in and tangled up in it, and it was a little bit of a pain in the ass to get things sorted out. She hunted down every single member of the crew and made them swear an oath under threat of terrible violence not to say a goddamned word about it, because it was intolerable that there be some actual negative issue with some reality that was connected with her gender in any way, that anyone could point to as a reason why male astronauts were better.

Then he put it in his book. Of course. Hopefully enough time had gone by at that point that we understood that astronauts can be qualified even if they have hoo-has. Or, well, we did until Jeff Bezos got involved.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Pam Grier would like a word

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 week ago

Alien isn't an action movie. It's a horror. Aliens, however, is absolutely an action movie.

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] [email protected] 79 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Aliens has her beat by a few decades.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 6 days ago

Yeah, and Aliens is actually GOOD.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 week ago (5 children)

Came here to say this. Why do people forget about Ellen Ripley?!?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 days ago

It's strange, because Ripley is like the #1 "I don't hate women in movies, just bad writing" excuse

load more comments (4 replies)
[–] [email protected] 28 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

Zorro’s Black Whip beats Hunger Games by 68 years. And we live in a universe where the Tomb Raider and Alien films exist, as well as Elektra, Foxy Brown, and yes even Catwoman.

Don’t trust actors, especially when they are selling something.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 week ago (1 children)

How quickly we forget Foxy Brown.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 days ago

Shows the age demographic

[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 week ago

La Femme Nikita (original French), Alien, and Terminator 2 all had seriously kick-ass female leads.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 week ago

IIRC she was specifically talking about the young adult genre.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 week ago
[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 week ago

What about Underworld ?

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 week ago

I wasn't allowed to watch "violent" movies as a kid, so I missed a lot of action classics like RoboCop, Rambo, etc. But there were a few exceptions we had on tape so they got watched a lot. Long Kiss Goodnight, T2, Alien,... I rewatched this one again a couple of years ago and was shocked at how violent it actually is. It finally clicked that my single Mum was making an exception for iconic kick-arse women.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 week ago (7 children)

The internet loves ridiculing women who slip up, or like Jennifer Lawrence in this case, are maliciously taken out of context for the purpose of ridiculing women

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago

Doesn't the internet ridicule everyone who slips up though?

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 week ago (15 children)

"I remember when I was doing 'Hunger Games,' nobody had ever put a woman in the lead of an action movie because it wouldn’t work β€” because we were told girls and boys can both identify with a male lead, but boys cannot identify with a female lead."

I'm curious how you're gonna spin that as being taken out of context.

load more comments (15 replies)
[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I think some of it is because we love our action women! Sigourney Weaver and Linda Hamilton were fucking AWESOME action stars that were unique, smart and complex; and not just "woman who acts like a douche male" type that most modern poorly written female action stars are.

And IMO they were way better actresses and better written than whatever hunger games was.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 days ago

Fun fact, the character of Ripley was written for a man, and only once the script was complete did they randomly decide to cast a woman for the part and see what happened.

And yes I completely agree with you. Implications about how Hollywood does things are left as an exercise for the reader.

load more comments (4 replies)
[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 week ago

Kill Bill? or its inspiration, Lady Snowblood?

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 week ago

There are like...so many exceptions that she's just wrong. But Long Kiss Goodnight does rule and it's worth noting

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Aeon Flux?

EDIT: Ah someone beat me to it.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 week ago

Other female led action movies that came out in 2012 include- Brave, Underworld: Awakening, Resident Evil: Retribution, Silent Hill: Revelations... but I feel like I'm belaboring the point that many others have made by now.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 week ago

This feels more like she was obviously exaggerating for dramatic effect versus outright lying. In a conversation, I think most would understand that she meant not very much and she was talking about the young adult genre in general.

load more comments
view more: next β€Ί