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eleanorjaneSo, I watched Dredd (the 2012 iteration with Karl Urban and Lena Headey) the other night, and it was actually less horrible than I expected, and it was surprisingly less full of misogynist bullshit than I feared.
* Dredd is paired with a female rookie, Cass Anderson (played by Olivia Thirlby), for the duration of the story. Anderson is presented as a below-average trainee, with grades 3% below a pass, and Dredd is hard on her, but there's never any dismissal of her because of her gender - it's purely about competence/ability, and I didn't get any sense that Dredd would have gone any easier (or harder) on a male rookie in the same position.
* Anderson is never a liability. She does get abducted at one point, but saves herself and then turns up at just the right moment to save Dredd too - he's an utterly legendary Judge, and she's awesome enough to not only *not* need him to rescue her, but to rescue him instead.
* When she gets abducted, although it's by somebody who's been using threats of sexual violence against her and she's taken to the headquarters of a very very nasty and violent gang, she's not actually raped, assaulted, or tormented in any way beyond a bit of taunting and the knowledge of her (averted) imminent death. I was expecting it to get horribly rapey at that point and actually had to check on Wikipedia to make sure I could sit through the next few scenes, and I was pleasantly surprised that the moviemakers didn't even remotely go there.
* Anderson is psychic, and when aforementioned abductor tries to use threats and imagery of sexual violence against her, she turns it back on him; she is absolutely *not* a victim.
* Anderson starts out as a nervous rookie who's never been in a firefight, freezes in combat and hesitates to pull the trigger. By the end of it she's toughened up substantially, but hasn't suddenly turned into a More Butch Than The Male Hero action woman in the way that Hollywood so often characterises tough women, and she's never dehumanised.
* The resolution of Anderson's character arc is when she decides to offer mercy to someone whom Dredd wanted to sentence as guilty, and she confidently stands up for herself and defends her decision to Dredd. It's fairly clear that it earns his respect, too. (The greatness of this scene was compounded, for me, when you consider the fact that mercy and compassion are usually seen as feminised traits, and the movie quite clearly paints her as being in the right for those traits, instead of "weak" or "not tough enough", and we're expected to sympathise with her decision and consider it the correct one.)
* Lena Headey is excellent as the antagonist Madeline Madrigal, a woman who's been the victim of men with power over her, and who has refused to be cowed or defeated. She's a horrible person, mind you, but she's neither an androgynous robot nor a vampy femme fatale; she's a horrible, broken, fucked-up person, but she is far from the stereotypical movie "bad girl". (Also, bonus points to Lena Headey for taking a role that involved serious cosmetic defacement, which is a brave move in a looks-obsessed industry when you're not talking about Oscar-bait roles.)
* The movie is a technical Bechdel pass, but although it only scrapes that pass, it does not *feel* dude-centric.
* There are (as far as I remember) about fifteen speaking parts in the movie; five of them are women, and split approximately evenly between the good and bad guys. That's better representation than in almost any action movie I can think of.
Don't get me wrong; it's not a *great* movie by any means, and there are definitely problems. (Like the gratuitous and sometimes really graphic violence.) But I was expecting this to be the archetypal dudely testosterone-laden action flick, and I was pleasantly surprised at how even-handed it was.
This is concrete proof that you can do Stupid Action Movies that appeal to guys without slapping every woman in the face as a prerequisite.
* Dredd is paired with a female rookie, Cass Anderson (played by Olivia Thirlby), for the duration of the story. Anderson is presented as a below-average trainee, with grades 3% below a pass, and Dredd is hard on her, but there's never any dismissal of her because of her gender - it's purely about competence/ability, and I didn't get any sense that Dredd would have gone any easier (or harder) on a male rookie in the same position.
* Anderson is never a liability. She does get abducted at one point, but saves herself and then turns up at just the right moment to save Dredd too - he's an utterly legendary Judge, and she's awesome enough to not only *not* need him to rescue her, but to rescue him instead.
* When she gets abducted, although it's by somebody who's been using threats of sexual violence against her and she's taken to the headquarters of a very very nasty and violent gang, she's not actually raped, assaulted, or tormented in any way beyond a bit of taunting and the knowledge of her (averted) imminent death. I was expecting it to get horribly rapey at that point and actually had to check on Wikipedia to make sure I could sit through the next few scenes, and I was pleasantly surprised that the moviemakers didn't even remotely go there.
* Anderson is psychic, and when aforementioned abductor tries to use threats and imagery of sexual violence against her, she turns it back on him; she is absolutely *not* a victim.
* Anderson starts out as a nervous rookie who's never been in a firefight, freezes in combat and hesitates to pull the trigger. By the end of it she's toughened up substantially, but hasn't suddenly turned into a More Butch Than The Male Hero action woman in the way that Hollywood so often characterises tough women, and she's never dehumanised.
* The resolution of Anderson's character arc is when she decides to offer mercy to someone whom Dredd wanted to sentence as guilty, and she confidently stands up for herself and defends her decision to Dredd. It's fairly clear that it earns his respect, too. (The greatness of this scene was compounded, for me, when you consider the fact that mercy and compassion are usually seen as feminised traits, and the movie quite clearly paints her as being in the right for those traits, instead of "weak" or "not tough enough", and we're expected to sympathise with her decision and consider it the correct one.)
* Lena Headey is excellent as the antagonist Madeline Madrigal, a woman who's been the victim of men with power over her, and who has refused to be cowed or defeated. She's a horrible person, mind you, but she's neither an androgynous robot nor a vampy femme fatale; she's a horrible, broken, fucked-up person, but she is far from the stereotypical movie "bad girl". (Also, bonus points to Lena Headey for taking a role that involved serious cosmetic defacement, which is a brave move in a looks-obsessed industry when you're not talking about Oscar-bait roles.)
* The movie is a technical Bechdel pass, but although it only scrapes that pass, it does not *feel* dude-centric.
* There are (as far as I remember) about fifteen speaking parts in the movie; five of them are women, and split approximately evenly between the good and bad guys. That's better representation than in almost any action movie I can think of.
Don't get me wrong; it's not a *great* movie by any means, and there are definitely problems. (Like the gratuitous and sometimes really graphic violence.) But I was expecting this to be the archetypal dudely testosterone-laden action flick, and I was pleasantly surprised at how even-handed it was.
This is concrete proof that you can do Stupid Action Movies that appeal to guys without slapping every woman in the face as a prerequisite.