Category: TV

9 disappointing kick-ass women movies

In my continuing quest to find media that prominently feature kick-ass women, I have come across examples of such that well…haven’t measured up. In some of these, a potentially kick-ass character was disappointingly wimpy. Or the actor/actress couldn’t pull off the role convincingly. In others, the movie was not great. In still other cases, the movie just plain sucked. Here’s the list of my biggest disappointments. As with previous lists, movies are ordered by year produced/released. With one big exception: I’m saving my all-time biggest disappointment for the end of the list.

9 kick-ass women movies I hoped would be better:

  1. …coming up at the end of the post…
  2. Cutthroat Island (1995)
    I really want to like this movie, and it has its moments. Geena Davis plays a pirate. How cool is that? Lots of action, fight scenes, chase scenes, etc. And Geena Davis plays a pirate. But somehow, unfortunately, it’s just not that good a movie. But Geena Davis plays a pirate!
  3. The Fifth Element (1997)
    I remember looking forward to this one, since I’ve liked Besson’s other movies, and since it appeared to prominently feature a kick-ass woman. I saw it in the theater. However, I found the movie to be generally pretty forgettable. (As in, at this point, I don’t remember much beyond some bright colors and some irritation with Bruce Willis.)
  4. Star Wars: Episode I – the Phantom Menace (1999)
    This movie disappointed so many in so many ways. One of the ways in which it disappointed me was that I thought there was an opportunity for Natalie Portman to kick some ass. I was unimpressed. (And things just got worse in Episode II…)
  5. Rush Hour 2 (2001)
    Another movie I don’t remember too well. This one has Zhang Ziyi, playing a kick-ass villainous type. Problem is, she seems pretty unstrung, from what I remember. And of course, she’s not the star, so her character doesn’t get to win.
  6. Tomb Raider (2001)
    While Angelina Jolie did kick ass moderately well in this, the movie was pretty weak overall. I do remember a few cool fight scenes. I should probably give it another chance.
  7. Daredevil (2003)
    Another movie I really wanted to like. Probably because of Kevin Smith‘s involvement, as well as being a comic book/superhero movie. But let’s face it. Ben Affleck is just not convincing as a superhero. But Jennifer Garner kicked ass as Elektra in spite of things. At least in the fight scenes.
  8. Underworld (2003)
    I loved Kate Beckinsale in Cold Comfort Farm (one of my all-time favorite movies, though not in the kick-ass woman genre). However, this movie was…well…not great. And Kate was not terribly convincing in an action role.
  9. Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle (2003)
    I’m not sure what was going on with this movie. I found the first one entertaining and funny. This one just pained me.

And here it is. My all time biggest disappointment in a movie in the kick-ass women category:

  1. The Avengers (1998)
    How could they???

To say that The Avengers (1998) movie disappointed me would be like saying Everest is a pretty big mountain. That eating the chicken salad sandwich you left in your car all one hot July day may lead to stomach upset. That the Hindenberg disaster was the result of an unfortunate mishap. What I’m saying is that this movie was a gigantic, mountainous gut-spewing fireball of a disaster.

Okay, perhaps I exaggerate. In that my expectations were pretty low, so I supposed the disappointment level couldn’t have been that extreme. But please understand that I love the Avengers show, at least in its 1965-1967 incarnation. That I have idolized the character Emma Peel, as portrayed by Diana Rigg, since my formative teenage years.

This movie had a variety of “flaws” (Ralph Fiennes’ cardboard performance as Steed, the inclusion of the character “Mother,” Sean Connery’s unconvincing role as a megavillain, to name a few), which could have been overlooked if only the portrayal of the character Emma Peel had been appropriately…like Emma Peel. But she just wasn’t. Uma didn’t cut it.

I actually got a fair amount of enjoyment, after I saw the movie, just from ranting about how many things they got wrong. Believe it or not, I want to watch it again. So that I can relive those rants, and perhaps share them here.

Flashback episode

Remember that time when I wrote about needing to finish my paper? And then I wrote about how I finished it? That was so cool. And then there was that time when I wrote I was going to write about kick-ass women movies and stuff, and then I wrote some lists about kick-ass women movies? And then I wrote my fourth list like that? And remember that time when Fonzie jumped the shark?

I just realized. I’ve now been blogging here for 1 month. So I thought it would be a good chance to reflect on what I’ve done. In the spirit of the clip show. Or maybe I’ll just reflect on clip shows.

Clip shows are a longstanding TV tradition. And one that’s likely to continue. Sadly.

And they really don’t work when you buy a DVD box set and watch episodes basically back-to-back. For instance, I recently discovered Alias, a fun show with a great kick-ass woman protagonist. We bought the first season on DVD, and proceeded to work our way through the discs in rapid succession. And then towards the end of the season, we got to the clip show. In the great tradition of a wafer-thin pretense to show some clips, the episode was “cleverly” set up as an interview between a government interrogator and the main character:

Interrogator: You’ve been working for a dangerous really, really bad organzation pretending to be the good guys. You claim that you didn’t know. Why should we believe you?

Agent Sydney Bristow: In my defense, check out these clips. [Some clips are aired.]

Interrogator: I see that you wore a number of different disguises.

Agent Sydney Bristow: Yes, that’s true. Many of them involving wigs. And look at these additional clips. [More clips.]

Interrogator: Wow. You sure used a lot of neato gadgets. Plus you spoke in different accents. I’m convinced.

It’s kinda hard to get nostalgic for episodes that you just saw within the last few days…On the other hand, my favorite clip show/flashback episode of all time is the second episode of Clerks, the animated series. (Yes, the second episode. Which includes flashbacks from the all the previous episodes.)

Hey, remember that time when I wrote about clip shows? That was awesome.

time warped

I seem to be having trouble accurately perceiving the passage of time lately. Just a couple of weeks ago (or perhaps it was months), I was in a meeting at work. We were discussing the agenda for the day, and various upcoming scheduled events of the day. I looked at my watch. (A normal thing to do when talking about times.) However, my watch did not have the answers I sought. While it is quite a nice watch, with hands and numbers and well-crafted internal mechanisms, it had not been wound, nor the time changed, since some time in February. It was, in fact, the first time I had managed to wear my watch in many months. It seemed like a great accomplishment, a step towards recapturing the structure of my previous life. When I grabbed my watch, in a fit of inspiration, I figured I would “get around” to setting the time before heading to work. Well, hours passed (I presume), and there I was, sitting in a meeting looking at watch that reflected the time of some moment from my past. A metaphor perhaps?

Time has been racing by like you would not believe. (Just now, since writing that first paragraph, I’m pretty sure I lost at least half a day.) There have been a number of times when I’ve thought “I should respond to that email from [insert name here] that I received a couple days ago.” When I actually then dig up said email in my inbox, it is often weeks or even months since I received it. Yes, send me an email, and I will get back to you right away. Within the year.

And then there was this whole bizarre time warp I experienced shortly after my daughter was born. The first few weeks absolutely crawled by. Every day felt like a week. It was a haze of feeding and comforting (lots of bouncing) with not much sleep or much of anything else. And then at some point, vroom, time took off. The first 6 weeks and the subsequent 6 months seem of approximately equal duration in my mind.

So now, in spite of looming deadlines (the damn Incomplete is due next week), I am compelled to put together a small collection of stories (TV episodes, movies and more) reflecting my sense of the world passing me by.

Movies, shows and other stories of warped time:

These further seem to group into 3 main chunks.

1. I overslept.
Comas and long naps. In the tradition of Rip Van Winkle and Sleeping Beauty. (Wikipedia has some great lists of other takes on these tales.)

  • Dead Zone (book, movie, TV show)
    A guy wakes up from a coma. Has special powers. (Where are my special powers?)
  • Kill Bill, volume 1 (2003)
    Woman wakes up from a coma. Pissed off.
  • Bear Snores On
    This is a book I read to my daughter. Bear in hibernation misses out on a party.

2. I was a popsicle.
Things in the tradition of Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer.

  • Forever Young (1992)
    I’m not actually sure I saw this whole movie. Mel freezes, Mel melts.
  • Late for Dinner (1991)
    Only vaguely remember this one, too. I seem to remember it was cute. Had Peter Gallagher. (Strange, he was in another coma movie.)
  • Futurama (1999-??)
    The whole premise of the show. Fry freezes, unfreezes.
  • Austin Powers (1997)
    You know this one.

3. I lost track of time.
Miscellaneous time warps.

  • Blast from the past (1999)
    Brendan Fraser grows up in a bomb shelter, and emerges decades later in complete ignorance of the progress of time.
  • Buffy, season 6 “Smashed” (2001)
    Having been a rat for several years, Amy comments: “I felt like I was in that cage for weeks.”
  • Buffy, season 6 “Life Serial” (2001)
    I’m thinking of the part of the episode where Buffy is taken out of time, and what seem like seconds to her translate to hours for the rest of the world.
  • Stargate, season 2 “A Matter of Time” (1999)
    A black hole messes up the passage of time.
  • She’s had a baby (2006) A grad student suffers from baby-induced time warping, and falls even further behind in her school and work obligations by blogging rather than doing things she’s supposed to be doing.

Mrs. Peel, you’re needed.

I stumbled across the Avengers when I was 15 years old. Watching late-night TV when I probably should’ve been doing homework. I liked the show, a British spy series made in the 60s (in case you don’t know it), for a number of reasons. The episodes were entertaining mysteries with bizarre, often surreal, premises and colorful, quirky villains and guest characters. It was all carried out in that tongue-in-cheek way that the British do best. The show (in its 1965-1967 incarnation) had two lead characters: John Steed (top professional) and Emma Peel (talented amateur). John Steed was dashing and dapper in his well-tailored suits and trademark bowler, and he certainly had his charm and appeal. But the reason I loved the show was Emma Peel. Emma Peel became my idol.

Emma Peel, as portrayed by Diana Rigg, was a groundbreaking character. She was well ahead of her time. Contemporaneous TV shows on this side of the Atlantic featured women with supernatural abilities who squelched their phenomenal powers to keep house and keep a man. Meanwhile, The Avengers had Emma Peel, a woman (with merely human powers) who used her abilities to defeat diabolical villains– in her spare time. She was a physicist and a mathematician and had run a large company in her early twenties. She possessed strength, intelligence, a keen wit, and a wide range of skills and talents. Emma Peel was a master martial artist, a skillful fencer, sharpshooter and could drive like a racecar driver. She could paint, sculpt and dance, not to mention speak many languages. She had an attitude of fabulous self-confidence without arrogance. To top it all off, she had incredible style and grace.

I wanted to be Emma Peel. In some ways, I still do. It’s funny to think that a TV show may have shaped who I’ve become, or at least who I’ve wanted to be. There is no doubt in my mind that my interest in martial arts stems from my idolization of Emma. Perhaps some of my desire to be a “Renaissance woman” also comes from my desire to emulate Emma.

Another of the ways in which The Avengers has inspired me is that I continue to look for strong women characters, whether fictional or real-life, who instill in me awe, admiration and pride in being a woman. While I realize it is somewhat shallow, I most enjoy seeking out these women in popular entertainment. Particularly TV and movies. On the other hand, while it may seem shallow, TV and movies have an incredible power to reach a wide audience, and the potential to inspire more women and young girls.

For years I’ve been wanting to put together a website or some such to review and rate movies and TV shows that prominently feature kick-ass women. Here’s where I’m digging in to that task. Stay tuned…