I’ll be blunt, I usually despise females in warrior roles. Why? I feel like they aren’t characters at all, just cardboard cutouts. They either aren’t allowed to have flaws or their flaws are excused by virtue of femininity. (Whole other blog post in that.) Anyway, here are the first three action heroines that come to my mind when I think of my favorites and they are my favorites with good reason.
Angelina Jolie as Evelyn Salt in “Salt.”
Evelyn Salt (Salt, 2010)
I keep seeing all these people whine about the lack of female action heroes and I want to hit them in the face with this. Salt is an incredible portrayal of a female spy/assassin who is not invincible, makes miscalculations, gets knocked down, but always gets back up. She basically leads a one-woman war against two governments and is pretty much as hardcore as they come. She’s probably my favorite action heroine in film, but not many seem to have heard of her (and judging by their mewling online, that includes Feminazis).
Vin (Mistborn series by Brandon Sanderson)
If we’re talking vulnerabilities and relatability, Vin takes the gold without batting an eye. Insecurity and softness mixed with awesome power and a capability for terrible destruction, Brandon Sanderson really set a standard here. It is impossible to be in possession of a heart and not want to protect Vin, even though she’s the character who tears through 300 soldiers and comes out with nary a scratch (seriously, that happened once).
Tabrett Bethell as Cara in “Legend of the Seeker.”
Cara the Mord Sith (The Sword of Truth series by Terry Goodkind/The Legend of the Seeker, 2007-2009)
Cara is pretty much all the things I usually dislike in a character—sassy, sarcastic, dominant, sometimes outright cruel. But the author (and the writers of the television series) spent huge amounts of time humanizing and sympathizing the Mord Sith order as a whole. The reader/viewer is shown how much pain these women are in (physically and emotionally) every second of their lives. We see Cara cry and regret and mourn, then turn right around and level entire an entire battalion while dragging an evil sorceress by the hair.
I really wish there were more action heroines like this. Not one-dimensional tropes like Black Widow in Iron Man 2 or Andromeda in Wrath of the Titans. These three ladies are characters that feel real and I think that’s what all characters should be.
Inkspelled Faery 
This makes me think of Lady Sif in Thor. She doesn’t get much character development, but whenever she fails, she jumps right back up again.
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I did like Sif a great deal in Thor 2. (She’s leaps and bounds ahead of Black Widow in terms of awesome if you ask me, but it might just be the swords.)
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Yep, she was pretty awesome. She does have some advantages over Natasha, including her age. She’s been around a looooot longer than Natasha. 😉
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Just a little bit, LOL.
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If you asked me about great heroines, then I would go for Victoria Warshawski, Smilla Jasperson and Clarice Starling, but none are really action heroines, except possibly Clarice.
But action heroines? Difficult. Ellen Ripley, perhaps. Just maybe Nikita (the original film with Anne Parillaud). Charlene Elizabeth Baltimore (Geena Davis in Long Kiss Goodbye) at a stretch. Milla Jovovich in just about anything – if you’re desperate, in which case you may as well include Buffy Summers and Xena.
But there are others. They’re just very obscure.
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LOL. Yes, the only two in that list I am familiar with are Xena and Buffy.
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As a feminist, I couldn’t agree more! People often think with warrior women that the “strong woman” trope should be played up, but usually this is ALWAYS at the expense of actual character development and humanizing, – (because imagining women complexly is too hard, I guess..?) And you’re right to bring up Black Widow too! In the comics she had much more dimension, but in the movies? Ugh, she’s basically written as a prop, especially in Avengers 2.
Great post!
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This whole topic quite often makes me want to smash my head against my desk. People never seem to GET IT!
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I hate when they cry and run away, or bounce from one guy to another. It can ruin a good story.
sherry @ fundinmental
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^Yes. I hate it when the writer(s) seem to believe it’s impossible for a character (male or female) to be powerful without having a “long list of ex-lovers.” Bleh.
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I agree about the whole, past boy/girlfriends equals strong worthwhile character, story in books or movies.
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A whole other blog post in that, too. 😉
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