This essay was originally published at Rotten Tomatoes on May 12, 2020. The first half is excerpted here with permission.
The last 25 years have brought us a slew of female action heroines. From Lorraine Broughton in Atomic Blonde andLetty Ortiz in The Fast and Furious franchise to Lucy in Lucy and Milla Jovovich’s Leeloo in The Fifth Element, women have been kicking their way to center stage in a genre that once mostly excluded them.
These characters have very little in common on the surface—their story motivations don’t overlap and they come from all walks of life. But they are all connected by the way they are depicted on screen. The women are all physically strong, a whiz with weapons, or both.—Every one of them has a rousing “girl power” fight scene that drives home their physical prowess. The “power” is the key.”
Instead of becoming an expanded avenue for female characters to flourish, action films have become a place where female characterization goes to die. Combat skills have become a handy shortcut for films to skimp on true character development for the women in their story. Rather than learning about these women’s inner lives or motivations, we watch with glee as they raze through scene after scene of dangerous (nearly always male) thugs, and enjoy the minor thrill of seeing them act just like one of the boys. After all, if a female character lands enough punches, it can be easy to miss that she isn’t adding much depth to the story. This lazy narrative trick has meant that instead of getting character arcs, women have just been getting bigger and better guns. But there are other possibilities, and we’re finally starting to see them onscreen.
Female-led action films of the last five years have started showing that empathy is also an integral part of the heroic scaffolding. It’s noteworthy that by combining physical and emotional strength, films like Wonder Woman, Captain Marvel and Mad Max: Fury Road, demonstrate that women do not have to be emotional vacuums in order to live up to their heroic ideals.
In 2019’s Captain Marvel, the titular heroine spends most of the film being gaslit by her mentor. After absorbing an unimaginable cosmic power and being kidnapped by the Kree, Carol Danvers (Brie Larson) is turned into a weapon for the galaxy’s villains against her will, and without her memory, she doesn’t know her own power. In the film’s final confrontation, her mentor turned nemesis, Yon-Rogg (Jude Law) attempts to bait her into a fistfight, but she merely blasts him off his feet instead. She has nothing to prove. Over the course of the film’s runtime she has learned that her physical strength and otherworldly abilities are not what make her valuable. Her true skill is in valuing the dignity of human life and a willingness to right the wrongs of her past.
Danvers’ narrative arc may feel unfinished to some, but what it succeeds in doing is showing that physical and emotional strength do not have to be mutually exclusive traits. As she regains her memory, Danvers must come to terms with the fact that she has been fighting on the wrong side of a colonial war, and her innate goodness is what propels her to defect to the side of the righteous. Though the story makes clear that she is possibly the singular most physically powerful being in the universe, it also takes the time to highlight that her emotions also bring her power. Her rage, love and desire to be good make her physical power stronger and more lethal, feeding into her ability to protect the people who deserve it. It is a delicate balance that gives credit to the character’s physical capabilities while making her capacity for empathy a force of equal power.
What makes Captain Marvel such an interesting example of the modern action hero, is that part of the villain’s plan is to get her to repress her emotional side. Danvers is outfitted with an inhibitor chip meant to suppress her powers, and she is repeatedly told that in order to master them, she must release herself from emotional complications. It’s a direct engagement with the idea that feelings make women weak or less capable, and that’s what makes it all the more satisfying when her embrace of her full emotional range allows her to truly access the true extent of her power.
Patty Jenkins’ Wonder Woman similarly makes empathy a central part of its title character’s arc. Diana of Themyscira (Gal Gadot) is driven directly by her innate need to protect and defend the powerless. The very purpose of the Amazons – the powerful all-female tribe to which Diana belongs – is to protect mankind from the jealous god Ares. When fighter pilot Steve Trevor (Chris Pine) washes up on the shores of her idyllic nation and tells the Amazons about a war that is ravaging the world, Diana feels obligated to intervene on behalf of humankind. Her purpose is to defend the helpless and ensure peace.
Throughout the film, Jenkins takes great pains to display and demonstrate Diana’s empathy. The famous No Man’s Land scene is the audience’s first hint at how strongly Diana can draw from her emotions to affect real change. In the scene, Diana faces a violent threat directly, and acts in service of her empathy for the war’s victims, defeating an enemy and saving a town. The moment is the film’s best action scene, and it only works because the audience understands Diana’s empathetic motivations.
Later, in the finale, it could have been cliché when Diana finds the strength to defeat Ares by drawing on her love for Steve, but it falls completely in line with the actions of an empathetic hero. With her hopes dashed and her belief shattered by Ares, it makes sense that Diana’s access to love, empathy, and a true belief in righteousness would be the thing that allowed her to access her true power as Zeus’s “Godkiller.”
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