this post was submitted on 19 Apr 2025
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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.
Resident Evil has entered the chat...
We try to forget those movies exist at all.
You can't deny the first one was great.
The first one was great, the third one was good. The 6th one was funny-bad and the final one was OK.
The first one was good, they descend quite quickly though.
True, I knew there would be other exceptions I just couldnt think of any off the top of my head.
Sheena, Queen of the Jungle.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0047771/mediaviewer/rm3607541505/
Underworld
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!
From the lesser known entries on this list I recommend Doomsday. But CTHD is a musst watch and even on a lot of "top X movies of all time" lists.
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.
Don't misunderstand this list as recommendations, Sucker Punch and Charlie's Angels are also movies with mixed reviews.
Watched it recently and the over used cgu makes it very difficult to enjoy. Shame cause I liked the whole world itself.
Or Terminator 2?
Alien came out 12 years before terminator 2.
Yes, I was just giving another extremely well known example that predates Hunger Games by a few decades
T2 came out 34 years ago.
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.
Sure, but Sarah was really the protagonist. Regardless, Alien came much earlier
Terminator would be a better and earlier example.
Alien isn't an action movie. It's a horror. Aliens, however, is absolutely an action movie.
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.
Debbie does Dallas?
There are a whole lot of sexploitation horror films that would fit the bill.
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!