dimfuture.net

Note: I’d like everyone to welcome Tyrell Choren, aka Christopher the Fabulous, who will occasionally be gracing the pages of dimfuture.net with his thoughts on cinema. Great to have you aboard, Tyrell! -Dan

James Cameron films (back when he made them), along with being flat out awesome, always had strong central female roles. The women were as much involved in the action elements of the film as the men — sometimes more so — but were also able to maintain their femininity. Cameron is one of the few directors to give his female characters as much respect, if not more, as his male characters. As a result, they are some of the most memorable and unique female characters of cinema.

The strongest Cameron character is Sarah Connor. While in the first film she spends about ninety percent of the time being the damsel in distress who constantly needs saving from her knight in shining armor, Kyle Reese, by the end of the film she starts to learn a bit about self preservation. Ultimately, she ends up saving herself and is responsible for stopping the “unstoppable” terminator. In between the events of the first and second films, Sarah transforms from a timid waitress to a tough-as-nails soldier. Though her life is spent preparing for the upcoming apocalypse, she still treasures the ideal of human life. When the time comes to kill, Sarah finds that she is prepared… until the crucial moment when she has to pull the trigger. Her collapse after the attempted assassination of Miles Dyson is one of the most believable and heart wrenching character driven moments in any action film. Even though Dyson is indirectly responsible for the apocalypse, he is ultimately innocent of any intentional wrongdoing. When it comes to battling the T-1000, she keeps going to the bitter end, despite numerous injuries that would halt most men in their tracks, all in an effort to protect her son.

Similar to Sarah is Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley. Like Sarah Connor, Ripley started out as a meek woman in distress, but ends up much stronger, both physically and metaphorically, under Cameron’s watch. Being a lowly civilian amongst a group of marines, Ripley quickly rises as a leader when the shit hits the fan and the marines realize that they aren’t prepared for what they’re up against. While she could’ve easily fallen into stereotypical tomboy territory like her marine counterpart Vasquez, the introduction of Newt allows Ripley to play the role of a protective mother. A protective mother with a grenade launching plasma rifle, that is. While Ripley often exhibits an understandable amount of fear and sadness, she manages to remain headstrong enough to get the job done, and is juxtaposed nicely against the alien queen, who exists solely to ensure the continuation of her species.

Probably the most realistic of Cameron’s women is Helen Tasker. The bored housewife from True Lies, who ends up caught up with a womanizing con man, just so that she can add a bit of excitement to her suburban homemaker lifestyle. Her monologue about watching her life slip away allows us to instantly associate and sympathize with her. While she spends most of the rest of the film screaming and needing saving, she does have a number of very strong moments, including an empowering striptease and a fist fight in a limo, where Helen shows far more ruthlessness than you would expect to find in a housewife. All of this culminates into a finale where Helen is saved at the last second from an out of control limo by helicopter, a stunt which Jamie Lee Curtis reportedly did herself. The excitement that Helen thought was missing from her life was filled in spades and she felt exhilarated by it, so much so that she ends up joining her husband in his spy lifestyle.

Thrown into the mix is Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio as Lindsey Brigman from The Abyss. While she never wields a gun, and actually plays second banana to Ed Harris’s Bud Brigman, this actually makes her a bit stronger. The crew of the underwater rig see her as a bitch. This is understandable considering that she’s the designer of the rig, and the ex-wife of their boss. However her strongest moment is when the character is at her most exposed. Lindsey and Bud are stranded far away from the underwater rig with no way for both of them to get their. Lindsey allows herself to drown so that Bud can drag her back and revive her. Oddly the only female nudity in any of these films comes in a moment completely bereft of any kind of sexuality. The crew rips open Lindsey’s blouse in order to apply defibrillators and get her heart started. When the character is already at her most vulnerable and basically dead they tear that last little bit away from her, something which I consider very brave of the actress. Most nude scenes are done in the most flattering way possible for the actress, this was anything but.

The best thing about Cameron’s female characters is that none of them are the typical bombshells. Instead of having their blouses rip in just the right places and becoming sexier as the action becomes more intense, Ripley and Sarah become much more haggard looking and are filmed in anything but a flattering way. Helen goes from typical frumpy housewife and has an almost unbelievable transformation into a total sexpot. This is actually fitting with her role as she discovers what she’s capable of once she strips away, literally, the stereotypes of her lifestyle. Even though they’re not the normal vixens associated with action films, they actually end being far sexier because of their strength and realism.