Would Tomb Raider-type movies work better with lesbian protagonists?

Re: Would Tomb Raider-type movies work better with lesbian protagonist

Well I think part of the problem with some of the female action heroes is that either they are so badass and gungho, that invariably any man they end up with ends up being "pussy-fied" and it just makes us guys look inept and like a bunch of dorks. OR they end up said badass heroine needing an assist from another badass dude, but then they both end up getting de-fanged because both of them can't really do something on their own, or it just ends up being a film about oneupping each other. Mr and Mrs Smith was kinda like that, a prettier version of Spy Vs Spy. They were both equally capable. Equally badass, and once they got over the one upping they kinda worked as a team, but both still kicked ass.

So its a fine rope. Either the woman or the man looks weaker. "But I still love/like ya" kinda way. Its not really even a matter of two women working together/falling for each other. I mean take Xena:Warrior Princess. It had a rather Lesbian subtext for most of its 6 years. Especially those last 2-3 seasons. Xena was still the badass, but Gabrielle could kick some major ass too, although it was frustrating that they still had her getting her saved by Xena, like Xena was just that much better.

So adding a "lesbian" to the mix doesn't necessarily make an action movie better or even worse for that matter, its just the way the characters are written and how they interact. I think action movies with more than one character work better when they're more of a "team" not just a "hero with a few sidekicks". No one is more or less badass, but each is badass in their own way. Like say fem hero 1 is a kick ass martial artist. Male hero is a kick ass marksman, fem hero 2 is a able to do something else. male hero 2 is able to do something else... each is kick ass in their own way and no one really overshadows the other. Kind of the one thing I liked about the Charlie's Angels movies, all three girls were equally kick ass and it seemed like all of Charlie's Angels had very similar training and could fight Demi Moore's former Angel nearly to a standstill simply because they all were sort of on the same playing field. Even though Cameron Diaz's character was sort of the unofficial "lead", Lucy Liu and Drew Barrymore were still able to lead too. So that kind of dynamic worked for me.

Always drives me nuts when I see like the main hero guy saved by some new warrior chick and he's kinda de-fanged. Or vice versa.

As for the hot badass babe going for an average guy... well... hey most of the viewing audience are average guys that drool over the hot badass babe. I mean are we so vain that an attractive woman (or man for that matter) wouldn't be interested in someone who's more normal? So she's a kick ass killing machine, but he's a intelligent, witty, helpful, loyal partner. So what if he's got a beer gut. She just does more physically. LOL I'm sure kicking ass burns a lot of calories!

 

Re: Would Tomb Raider-type movies work better with lesbian protagonist

I agree. And another problem is that, because there are so few action films with a female lead, every action film that does have one is talked about in terms of the protaganist's gender.

As a result, you often get a schizophrenic potrayal of a character who's half [specific character X] and half The Generic Chick. And because she's A Chick there are certain marketing boxes studios seem to feel they have to tick - she must have a scene of being super kickass, but also one of being feminine/motherly, there must be cheese-cake shots etc. Or perhaps they'll stick in ridiculous dialogue about shoes, because it's a topic lots of women get mileage out of, without considering whether it makes any sense for that particular character.

As a result the characters are impossible to relate to. It's not that their unrealistic (since when was any action hero), but they're inconsistent because they're being nailed to the Woman template.

This whole thread is reminding me that I still don't own a complete Xena boxset, and I really really should.

 

Re: Would Tomb Raider-type movies work better with lesbian protagonist

I hereby christen this "Steve Trevor Syndrome."

 

Re: Would Tomb Raider-type movies work better with lesbian protagonist

No I understand. (I am a man) I suppose I went through a phase where that seemed ... 'fascinating' ... But these days I don't see the appeal of it all.

 

Re: Would Tomb Raider-type movies work better with lesbian protagonist

+2

 

Re: Would Tomb Raider-type movies work better with lesbian protagonist

Yeah but the Ripley/Hicks romance is so under the radar in that film. It focuses more on the maternal relationship between Ripley & Newt.

I was speaking primarily from a marketing/what will the film snobs say standpoint. But l wholeheartedly agree that action films are almost never about romance and the romance is frequently a pointless tack-on. Cheap lesbian exploitation in action movies would be no worse than the cheap heterosexual exploitation that you get in most other action movies. But then, I often get the sense, in male driven action movies, that the only reason why the love interest exists is because studios believe that you need at least ONE woman in every film, regardless of how poorly she fits into the rest of the story (SEE Rachel Dawes in Batman Begins). If you already have a woman as the lead hero, you've already filled your quota. Why complicate things?

On a personal level, I concur with The Mirrorball Man that EVERYTHING works better with lesbians.

I'm not sure anyone is in a hurry to rerelease them. Dammit, just rent them anyway! You're not allowed to post on sci-fi boards without having at least seen Alien & Aliens. (You can skip Alien 3 & Alien Resurrection. Alien vs. Predator & Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem are OK but don't expect much.) Seriously, it's nearly impossible to comment intelligently on the action or sci-fi genres if you haven't seen them. (You've been doing OK so far, but I can't let this infraction continue.)

I'm picturing a rather entertaining action film in my head where the female lead is married to a schlubby but funny computer hacker/gadget guy. Imagine Tomb Raider if Lara Croft got together with Bryce.

Well, it's an action movie, so the scenes of being super kickass are a requirement. They must be frequent, many, & varied.

But I agree that the feminine/maternal scenes are a bad idea and rarely work. James Cameron was able to pull it off in Aliens & Terminator 2. But trying to give the heroines feminine/maternal sides did not at all help Elektra or Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li. On the flip side, 2 of the more moderately successful female action movies in the last decade--Lara Croft: Tomb Raider & Underworld--portrayed cold, unfeeling, unfeminine (except for in appearance, obviously) heroines, particularly Selene.

But then, sometimes the best male action heroes are ones with a private, sensitive side. It absolutely broke my heart when Jason Statham's family was killed in Death Race.

Perhaps the most promising avenues for adding lesbians into female action movies is to take scripts for male action movies and just cast a woman in the role instead. This was how women first became movie action heroes. In the original Alien script, none of the characters' genders were specified. In a less auspicious instance, in Transmorphers, the leading man's ex-girlfriend was now married to the asshole general. The asshole general was originally written as a man but they cast a woman in the role, creating lesbianism where there had previously been none.

 

Re: Would Tomb Raider-type movies work better with lesbian protagonist

The fact that most action movies are bad does not preclude the possibility that heroine-driven flicks are more likely to be bad.

Can anyone name a good, emotionally involving action movie starring a flat-out main character heroine who has a heterosexual romance with a guy physically weaker than herself? Just one? (And no, Underworld is not a good, emotionally involving movie.)

Fact: few action movies primarily star females.

Hypothesis: because of action-movie gender dynamics, it can be incredibly hard to write, cast and justify production costs of an action movie starring a heterosexual heroine.

The dearth of heroine-centric action movies is itself suggestive. Consider that while everyone knows and many people like Wonder Woman, they haven't yet been able to make a movie of her, while far less recognizable characters such as The Spirit, Deadpool and Green Lantern are getting/have gotten films. The "Steve Trevor Syndrome", indeed.

Methinks, in short, that your fact my hypothesis cohere quite nicely...

 

Re: Would Tomb Raider-type movies work better with lesbian protagonist

Well part of the Wonder Woman 'problem' is that you have one half "super kickass babe" and one half mythological being. So in some ways you have to accept that in the WW/DCU that there are "gods and goddesses" as in the Greco-Roman tradition. You also have to accept that these Amazons are at the same time uber capable and very lesbonic and yet "tender". Hollywood can't really give us that easily. Either they're complete man hating bitches or they're man deprived porn/WWE stars. Wonder Woman could descend into being a soft core porno very quickly. And yeah Steve Trevor is a prime example. He's capable but not nearly as capable as WW. OR the only time he has the upper hand is when she's somehow incapacitated or something. Which is pretty weak. So what if WW was just another Army/Air Force chick and Steve used his skills to the best of his ability. You either have the man as a weak, fuckin' idiot or as a complete jerk wad that's gotta save the pretty fighter babe and then screw her in the end.

One way or the other someone ends up in the sack and honestly that rarely happened in WW. Which is odd to say the least LOL. Of course, if you go by like the John Byrne styled WW, she frakkin' towers over the average man, plus she's super strong, can fly and has big boobs. So some guys would feel threatened by that... and Hollywood can't really find a really super-proportioned woman that isn't a wrestler honestly. I mean, really... and frankly the Amazons would be like the WWE "Divas", strong and sexy and tall.

 

Re: Would Tomb Raider-type movies work better with lesbian protagonist

The Buffy TV series qualifies except for the "movie" bit. (I haven't seen the movie and don't want to.) Although in that case, they had a lesbian who in some respects was actually stronger than the theoretical lead.

I'll grant that the big-screen offerings are certainly harder to identify.

 

Re: Would Tomb Raider-type movies work better with lesbian protagonist

Can't think of any in English language film, but there have been some very good American TV shows with female protagonists who have hetero relationships with a man who is either her equal or physically weaker: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Alias, for example. And there are examples of very good, successful action films in foreign language cinema with female leads romantically involved with men who are equal to or weaker than them: for example, La Femme Nikita, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and Run Lola Run. I'm not that steeped in Asian cinema and still have a ton of films to catch up with in that regard, but I understand that action films with women as the action and romantic lead have been much more plentiful in Hong Kong cinema than in the West.

 

Re: Would Tomb Raider-type movies work better with lesbian protagonist

Yeah, I liked that one. Hicks wasn't as big a badass as Ripley of course, so he didn't compete for the limelight with the lead character. Also, he was hot. (So much for the notion that a guy can't be attractive just because he's not as big a badass as the female lead - we all expect the lead to be the biggest badass, so I certainly wouldn't hold that against Hicks.)

Another way to go: Sarah Connor's relationship with Kyle Reese was tragically short and therefore romantic (and didn't interfere with the ongoing story.) It's the Disney solution, sometimes a character is better for the story if they're dead (like all the dead parents that Disney characters have.)

If you have a lesbian protagonist, you still have the issue of how to shoehorn a believable romance into an action scenario where romance is hardly the point, and runs the risk of bogging the plot down.

Who says a romance should be the main relationship in a movie? Alien/Aliens wasn't about romance at all. It was a fight between species, so it made sense that matriarchal figures were doing the fighting, and their main goal was to defend their young. The human male was there as back-up, a surrogate daddy to Ellen's surrogate mommy. But the mommy-figure, representing the reproductive future of the human species, was rightly the chief antagonist againt the Queen Alien, as the reproductive future of her species.

The real story here is: why shoehorn a romance in a movie where it doesn't belong? Maybe it should be a minor theme. Maybe it shouldn't exist. Let the movie be what it's trying to be. Don't just throw lesbians at a movie for no reason at all!

Hey, that makes me wonder...where are all the rom-coms with lesbians?

 

Re: Would Tomb Raider-type movies work better with lesbian protagonist

So Lara Craft and the female villain stop for a bite to eat at Quiznos?

 

Re: Would Tomb Raider-type movies work better with lesbian protagonist

^You got a point there. The only romantic comedies I can think of with lesbian main characters are Grey Matters & Kissing Jessica Stein. (And the ultimate theme of Kissing Jessica Stein seems to be, "Some women just aren't gay, no matter how much they want to be.")

Lesbians are more common in the thriller genre. I'm thinking particularly of Bound & Wild Side. There were also lesbian subplots in Embrace of the Vampire & Wild Things but those didn't really go anywhere.

Spoiler: the end of "Wild Things."

Although, there might have been some hope for the lesbian romance in Wild Things had Denise Richards' character survived the whole film.

Firstly, I'm not sure what Gaith has against Underworld. (Although, I'll be the first to agree that the Selene/Michael romance is the weakest part of that film series. The movies get away with it because Michael is such a cypher that it's easy enough to forget that he's there at all.)

As for Buffy the Vampire Slayer, I was going to mention that one myself. There were even a few instances where Angel flat out admitted that Buffy was stronger than he was. But then, Angel & Spike were both immature, emotional wrecks. Meanwhile, Riley certainly seemed to have a problem with Buffy being stronger than him. And although Buffy was stronger than Angel, Angel could still hold his own. And when he couldn't when he became human in "I Will Remember You," he turned back time so that he could become a vampire again, even though it meant that he & Buffy couldn't be together.

The problem I'm having is, when the female action hero romances don't work, I know why. But on the rare occasions when they do work, I'm not entirely sure why that is.

I haven't seen La Femme Nikita. I bought Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon on a bargain bin blind buy but I haven't watched it yet. I'd hesitate to classify Run Lola Run as an action film. I think it's too unique. It defies formulas or classification.

So what do the Chinese know that we don't?

 

Re: Would Tomb Raider-type movies work better with lesbian protagonist

I don't hate it; it's merely a bad movie. Quoth Ebert: "Selene finds herself in love with a werewolf at the same time that her vampire kingdom is in grave danger. Exactly why she falls in love with Michael, or whether love bites are allowed in their foreplay, is not very clear, probably because romance and sex inevitably involve dialogue, and dialogue really slows things down." Like him, I enjoyed the Bill Nighy scenes, but that's about it.

Film a rom-com between Rachel Weisz and Kate Winslet, and I will be first... in... line!

As for Buffy and Alias, I haven't seen 'em and frankly have no interest in doing so, so I can't really comment. But in the big picture, as I understand it, even action-heavy TV serials like Smallville often become more dramas with fight scenes than fight stories with drama scenes. An action movie builds up to a specific final confrontation while the protagonists go about their directly connected emotional arcs. An action series features countless individual confrontations, with emotional arcs often going at a different or even totally unrelated pace. Was Buffy ultimately about its protagonist's fighting side, or the evolution of her whole psyche? 'Cause Bond movies, for example, are definitely about the former; we only ever see sides of the hero that inform his psychological ability to kill for a living. I doubt, therefore, that TV series as a whole can be termed "action" rather than "drama".

 

Re: Would Tomb Raider-type movies work better with lesbian protagonist

I think there's certainly a point that TV shows have a very different format from movies. For one thing, TV shows often dissipate their focus amongst multiple main characters. This way, they can develop both the female & male leads in ways that make the relationship satisfactory.

I would recommend for you at least the 2nd season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It has some interesting, unique twists in the romantic plot.

Spoiler: "Buffy" Season 2

After Buffy & Angel sleep together for the first time, Angel turns evil and becomes the big bad for the rest of the season. In the end, Buffy has to kill him to seal a portal that would otherwise destroy the world.

I would also recommend the complete series of Angel simply because it's my favorite TV show ever!

 

Re: Would Tomb Raider-type movies work better with lesbian protagonist

Obviously, it didn't work for you. But I can testify that there are a LOT of UNDERWORLD fans out there who are very invested in the relationships. I get more fan mail for the UNDERWORLD books than for anything else I write. And, trust me, the UW fans really care about those characters . . . .

P.S. I'm curious. If you're fascinated by the topic of female action heroes, why are you resisting BUFFY and ALIAS? I'm not complaining. It just seems odd. BUFFY, ALIAS (and XENA) are pretty much the most successful examples out there.

 

Re: Would Tomb Raider-type movies work better with lesbian protagonist

Well, he's right that TV shows tend to be less action-focused and more character oriented. That's half about budget and half about format, I think.

 

Re: Would Tomb Raider-type movies work better with lesbian protagonist

Please note: I've only seen the first Underworld, and by its end, Selena was no longer the unambiguously "stronger" (in the physical sense) character, which is a key aspect of this discussion per my OP.

As for that first film, then, with all due respect, to quote Ebert quoting Siskel, "There is a point when a personal opinion shades off into an error of fact." If Underworld fans choose to become emotionally attached to the characters, that's dandy. But the movie, and its romantic angle particularly, was not emotionally substantive.

I believe I was quite clear: I consider them not action heroes drama heroes who happen to kick and punch. Now, Walker, Texas Ranger, that was an action show with an action hero, because very little of it didn't directly involve roundhouse kicks, shootouts and explosions.

And if I'm to watch a drama show, I'll take a serious, non SF&F show like Mad Men or Deadwood (neither of which I've yet gotten to) over one about a high school girl with a vampire problem. Make a Buffy, Alias, or Xena action movie, and we'll talk. (And from what I've heard, the Kristy Swanson Buffy not only isn't an action movie but also isn't worth the time, though I'd rather watch Swanson than Gellar any day.)

 

Re: Would Tomb Raider-type movies work better with lesbian protagonist

Blowing my own trumpet , this is how I dealt with the lead characters in my novels. Nina (the heroine) is the one who has the knowledge needed to drive the plot, and the kind of obsessive personality that would see it through, but to begin with she's somewhat of a cloistered academic. Which is where Eddie (the hero) enters: he's a former soldier who's initially hired by another character as Nina's bodyguard to protect her from the murderous bad guys while she's following the trail. She's the brain, he's the brawn, and they both have their own strengths and weaknesses which balance them out.

(Though their relationship changes over the course of the series, and not always for the better...)

As for lesbians, well, most movies would be better with lesbians. But while it's not a movie, I thought the old PS1 game Fear Effect 2 did quite a good job of having an action story where the two main heroes just happened both to be women instead of a male/female couple; events wouldn't have played out much differently in the latter case. (That said, the entire advertising campaign was based around "TWO HAWT GUN-TOTIN' CHICKS GET IT ON!", and the game did throw in some gratuitous cheesecake moments, so maybe it's not the best example...)

 

Re: Would Tomb Raider-type movies work better with lesbian protagonist

I liked Elektra (not great but not bad either) because it embraced the fantasy aspects of comic books; the romance or idea of saving the man was far from the focus, rather it was in defeating the villains and it worked pretty well in setting up those conflicts and the stakes.

Defeating the villain probably makes for a better climax than directly trying to save someone so that should be where the climax is. Both characters having to run away, as in Elektra or Raiders of the Lost Ark (though there the hero also pursued) is a fine way to have the characters on a nearly-equal footing.