Top Five: (Real) Action Heroines
1) Sarah Connor (Terminator Series)
If you think about it, Sarah Connor is the only human to kill a Terminator – at least as Reese describes them in the first movie (a ‘Terminator’ is a T-800 and up, designed to infiltrate). The T-1000, TX and CGI T-800 that appear in the sequels are all killed by other Terminators. That’s pretty fucking impressive, especially when the original was the baddest of them all. This is the all-out female action heroine, as delivered by probably the only man who could.
The back story helps, which Cameron is careful to insist upon – Connor is a woman who has real motivation and has willingly attached herself to people who could train her. Starting with Michael Biehn (Michael Biehn likes training tough women it seems). Shit, she just didn’t appear that way. Perhaps a key of Cameron’s is that his female heroes always play support roles, which creates a certain amount of underlying restraint. It’s the same here. We’ll probably never see another Linda Hamilton/Sarah Connor. Shit, I think even Clint Eastwood would run the other way.
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