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After her, we had Sigourney Weaver's long-suffering Ellen Ripley character from the Alien(s) series.
Then we had Karen Allen as Marion Ravenwood in "Raiders of the Lost Ark".
Followed by Joanne Whalley as sword slinging semi-evil princess Sorsha in "Willow", Linda Hamilton as a buffed up, newly pyschotic, machine gun toting Sarah Connor in "Terminator 2", and Michelle Pfeiffer as the bull-whip cracking, leather clad Catwoman of "Batman Returns".
In more recent years, we've had Natalie Portman taking an unconvincing stab at action heroinedom in "Attack of the Clones", running around in a ripped off shirt to show off her six-pack (which was probably digitally enhanced), followed by an ultra-vanilla Jennifer Garner badly miscast as Elektra in "Daredevil".
And, only a few months ago, we had Keira Knightley as the ass kicking Lady Rambo Guinevere of the 21st century in "King Arthur". For some reason, Knightley's Guinevere wears a light dress during this snow battle scene on an frozen lake while all the men - King Arthur, Lancelot, and the Knights of the Round Table - are all dressed warmly and wearing armor in preparation for a battle with some miscellaneous barbarians. For the film's climax, we get Guinevere running around half naked (sporting what looks like a "chest thong"), decked out in Celtic paint, again while the men are all wearing armor, and somehow she manages to killing a bunch of men who're twice her size, despite the fact that she's too thin and too frail looking to even break a twig.
I'm not even gonna touch the topic of Halle Berry's "Catwoman"...
Lately I'm finding that there really aren't a lot of convincing "tough girls" out there. A lot of them are just underfed waifs who cop an attitude with no real feeling of depth and do the half naked/leather dominatrix get up thing while duking it out with men twice their size in a series of badly choreographed fight scenes. The only ones from more recent years who've been convincing for me have been Carrie-Anne Moss as Trinity in "The Matrix" films and Miranda Otto's Eowyn in "Return of the King".
Keira Knightley's Guinevere is probably one of the more offensive examples - she not only lacks the intensity to be a warrior princess type, but she lacks the physicality to boot (where exactly did those 20 lbs of weight training muscle go?). If you're going to do a tough girl, at least make sure she LOOKS like she can beat the crap out of someone. Lucy Lawless (Xena) looked like she could beat the crap out of someone, Keira Knightley does not. Of course, it all depends on what the tone of your movie is: "Pirates of the Caribbean" was a farce, "King Arthur" was not supposed to be a farce.
Red heads ROCK. Blondes do not rock. Nuff said.
