Jennifer Lawrence was quoted implying that The Hunger Games was the first female-led action movie ... today I want to introduce you to one of my favorite exceptions: The Long Kiss Goodnight.
If you observed Jennifer Lawrence and tried really hard to put her fairly on an intelligence tier list she would be safely in the middle. Overanalyzing what she says in any context is an utter waste of time.
alien doesnt count?
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.
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.
Alien isn't an action movie. It's a horror. Aliens, however, is absolutely an action movie.
Dude, there are at least:
They are not all that well known, but the claim is still complete nonsense.
Edit:
Oh hell I need to watch at least Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon from that list. Possibly more. But a wuxia film starring Michelle Yeoh? Hell yeoh!
So I realise it's a typo, but I'm also chuckling at the idea of a "non-dei" (heavily /s) version of Aeon Flux following the life and adventures of Aron Flux.
Ultraviolet is absolutely fucking terrible.
Or Terminator 2?
Alien came out 12 years before terminator 2.
Id even say that arguably that doesnt count.
She was a lead role, but Michael Beihn and Arnie got top billing in the Terminator and Terminator 2 movies. Edward Furlong and Linda Hamilton had "starring" roles but they werent the lead.
Terminator would be a better and earlier example.
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.
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.
Pam Grier would like a word
There hasn't been a woman action hero actor like Pam Grier, before or since. She's the GOAT.
Dunno if that counts as an action movie, but she is wrong because there were a number of action movies with one or more women as leads in the 70s and 80s. They were B movies, but still movies!
Debbie does Dallas?
There are a whole lot of sexploitation horror films that would fit the bill.
How quickly we forget Foxy Brown.
Shows the age demographic
What about Underworld ?
Fuck guys, I forgot about this. I'm going to write a strongly worded tweet to Jennifer because I bet she forgot she was wrong too!
Be sure to include some kind of passive-aggressive "joke" about how everyone in Hollywood who's left of Harvey Weinstein is stupid.
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.
aliens
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
"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 — 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.
To be fair, I don't think she meant it literally. I could definitely see how in a conversation she meant little to none which is true.
she's talking about an attitude studios had at the time. you have no evidence that this exact conversation didn't happen. fuck, you can see right wing babies cry and throw a fit right now whenever they see a woman in the lead of any movie let alone action.
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.
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.
Doesn't the internet ridicule everyone who slips up though?
The Internet also takes every opportunity to elevate women, warranted or not. I suppose it balances out.
True. There’s certain asymmetry in how internet likes to shit on women. You would have to be blind to not notice
It is some kind of sport in every single community regardless of political spectrum. The difference is amount of slurs
I always get the death threats quite immediately when I mention being a land lady. There is asymmetric escalation
The death threats aren't because you're a woman, the death threats are because you're a parasite and don't provide anything to society by hogging up housing and keeping it from being affordable. No land lord/lady has ever provided a useful contribution to their community.
I've been downvoted for my feminist opinions being unforgiving towards men. I hate you for your job title, not your gender.
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.
La Femme Nikita (original French), Alien, and Terminator 2 all had seriously kick-ass female leads.
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.
they will say anything, it's literally their job on the promotion circuit
Its almost like they're fed lines to say and....act?
Kill Bill? or its inspiration, Lady Snowblood?
IIRC she was specifically talking about the young adult genre.
There are like...so many exceptions that she's just wrong. But Long Kiss Goodnight does rule and it's worth noting
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.
Aeon Flux?
EDIT: Ah someone beat me to it.
scroll down for good movies
Mary Pickford "dude wut" Also Pearl White in the perils of Pauline 1914 there's probably earlier but early film and fire etc
Aeon flux i remember being a female led action film.
Am I wrong?
Oh. Em. Gosh, I've watched that movie so many times since I was a kid, I couldn't even count. She's awesome and terrifying!
All debates aside, this is one of my all time favorites movies.
Great movie.
Renny Harlin directed some good action packed movies in the 90s. Die Hard 2 (1990), Cliffhanger (1993), Cutthroat Island (1995), The Long Kiss Goodnight (1996), Deep Blue Sea (1999). Geena Davis and Renny were married in the mid 90s but he cheated on her with some movie assistant and they broke up. They did 2 movies together. The other one was Cutthroat Island where Geena did her own stunts.
Cherry 2000!
Doomsday 2008
Leia wasn't 'the' lead, she was 'a' lead, so there's some debate as to whether that qualifies. But a great example and one where the lead actress herself pointed out the disrespect from J-Law, is Alien with Sigourney Weaver. Or Aliens if you don't count the first one as action.
Besides, OP was just adding to the list of examples. There's more. Kill Bill is also a more recent example.