It’s an interesting point about Neo being un-defeatable. There’s a whole structure of Christian allegory of course (‘Neo’ is the ‘One’)to justify Neo’s power, but I do prefer flawed heroes.

Robert McKee has a great phrase, which he uses about Harry Potter – ‘overdog’. Harry P is an overdog, so is Neo; I prefer underdogs.

I can go with equal opportunity sexiness. But still I have a sneaking suspicion that an audience primarily of young males might not quite see it that way.

On a really simplistic level, I want to empathize with all the characters (antagonist, protagonist, male, female, alien- no alienism here) but I can’t make that leap to imagining falling in love with Brad Pitt in Fight Club and although I can see a sexiness I would much rather BE his character and get Helena Bonham-Carter.

Hi Jon.
The Dirty Dozen scene to cry at is when the blokes start to die…though my all-time three-hankie tear-jerking weepie of all time is when Jimmy Cagney goes to the electric chair in ANGELS WITH DIRTY FACES.

The ‘Yowzer – she’s hot’ factor is a real hot potato, of course, when talking about SF heroines, who are ALWAYS gorgeous. So yes, I love Trinity because she wears fetishistic leather…but then Keanu is a babe too (he can’t act all that well, it’s looks that have made him a superstar.) So I think sexy heroines are fine so long as they are balanced with sexy heroes. Bruce Willis in a vest…Marlon Brando, in a tight T shirt, Patrick Swayze in DIRTY DANCING, Paul Newman in every movie he ever appeared in. This is equal opportunities sexiness.

BUFFY is non-sexist, in my eyes, because the sexy Gellar is balanced by a cast of remarkably sexy blokes, esp David Boreanaz, as a young and rarely shirted hunk.

How many teenage boys dream of ending up with Matt Damon…good point! Some, but only the gay ones. (Yes? No? I like him as a hero, but I’ve never got him as a sex symbol.) But even as a straight guy, I could imagine, say, falling in love with Brad Pitt in the fight scene in FIGHT CLUB, when he bares his six pack…am I revealing rather too much here? I guess what I’m saying is that in drama I like to fall in love with all the characters, and be all sexes; and in SF, I get to be alien too.

I am sure there is an audience for kick-ass heroines, however, I would question the motives of the males watching (and making) the same. Would Buffy have got such a large male audience if Buffy was played, not by Sarah Michelle Gellar, but by the female equivalent of the Elephant Man. To quote a previous comment, ‘Allyson Hannigan- yowzer! She’s hot!’. While Trinity was a strong kick-ass character she was also corseted up in the most fetishistic of clothing (like Tilly and Gershon in the Wachowski’s Bound before her). Ditto the Monica Bellucci character in the Matrix sequels. Are such kick-ass women in these movies more about fulfilling a sexual fantasy for the male audience and makers rather than playing on an empathetic male connexion with the female character?

Silence Of The Lambs was the real watershed: a real world, strong female led story which didn’t dwell on the perceived vulnerability of the character’s gender. Unfortunately, for a real world scenario, it was not capitalized upon. While Kiss The Girls, Murder By Numbers and Twisted (for example) have all continued with the female detective protagonist theme they have tended to revert to the ‘woman in peril’ model.

It is arguable whether Heroes has marked a great leap forward: of nine (?) hero characters just two are female. The male characters are the likes of Policeman, Politician, Nurse, Geneticist (though one who doesn’t know anything about the subject) and ‘Tortured Artist’ (is there any other kind?) while the two women are… cheerleader, who is seemingly surgically attached to what could be described as a skimpy/ revealing/ tight outfit, and an internet stripper. This seemed to me as if it was written by a teenage boy working through their own personal fantasies and stereotypes: boys get to be cops, scientists and artists; girls get to be pretty cheerleaders and strippers (virgin and whore). Why did the men get all the proper jobs and the women get relegated to objects of fantasy? (The internet stripper is also the only one of the Heroes who is, so far, apparently a psychopath.)

Personally, I have no problems with a strong female protagonist and I preferred Elektra to Daredevil but mainly because it was notably less silly.

I must have missed the scene to weep at in The Dirty Dozen! Do tell!

Not answers or even a viewpoint just more questions.