The James Bond, Indiana Jones and Mission Impossible films have subverted the female role models of the past. They have something instructive, since they are highly visible and profitable products. They have not been the only ones nor the first, but they have been the ones that have done it better. Jason Statham (‘Fast & Furious’) will continue to smack, but the male hero of one piece, Bruce Willis style in ‘Die Die’, is in crisis or disuse. Jason Bourne’s and John Wick’s films, although without really important female characters, have also demystified the ‘action hero’.
In ‘Indiana Jones and the Dial of Fate’, released on June 28, Indy’s young goddaughter, Helena Shaw, is the one who takes the reins of the story. In ‘Mission Impossible: Deadly Judgment – Part 1’, which hits screens next Wednesday, Ilsa Faust, the former British agent turned nemesis and redeemer alongside the saga’s male lead, Ethan Hunt, has already acquired consistency. drama that the women in the first four films of the franchise did not have. The positive evolution of the female character in big-budget action and intrigue films is clear and significantas well as what the actresses in charge of representing them contribute among hundreds of images of sophisticated digital pyrotechnics.
Phoebe Waller-Bridge is an actress of ironic vis and particular magnetism. Choosing her to play Helena in the fifth installment of Indiana Jones is a huge success. Because the eighty-year-old Indy that Harrison Ford gives life to would not bear all the generous footage of the film by himself. Waller-Bridge replies and counter-replies, devours him in many scenes –and Ford’s amazed look when he contemplates his acts and actions seems very sincere– and, above all, he makes the most logical decisions in a story that could have fallen into referential cinephilia and self-indulgence.
If Ford puts his face and part of the heart, Waller-Bridge is the true lung of the film: the entire last part of the story is what it is thanks to her, because of what the writers make her say and because of how the actress enhances that empowerment that is increasingly rooted in theoretical ‘mainstream’ cinema. Another thing is her emoluments, but that war has not yet been won by the actresses.
Let’s also not forget that Waller-Bridge, creator and star of the iconic series ‘Fleabag’ –a ‘one woman show’ that assumes the characteristics of a perpetual monologue–, participated in the script for ‘No time to die’, the definitive closure of the James Bond cycle represented by Daniel Craig and the end of an entire male mythology as we have seen it since Ian Fleming wrote the first novel about 007. Waller-Bridge’s writing was essential in this process of humanization of the agent with a license to kill, a process accepted by many fans and rejected by many others. We could say that, as a screenwriter, she was one of those who killed James Bond.
different shades
Ilsa Faust’s role is different in the ‘Mission Impossible’ saga. She appeared in the fifth movie, ‘Mission: Impossible: Rogue Nation,’ and she immediately put her cards on the table. The character played by Tom Cruise had previously had ephemeral companions, as Emmanuelle Béart in the first film; a seductive and finely seduced rival, the Thandiwe Newton of the second’, and crude adversaries such as the hired assassin that Léa Seydoux incorporated in ‘Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol’.
From the fifth film on, and with the features of Rebecca Ferguson, Faust gave agent Hunt’s emotional conflicts different nuances.. And not only that. Ilsa is not what she is according to Hunt, in her shadow, but her own story emerges impetuously in the midst of the impossible missions that the main group assumes. No heroine in the saga had possessed the ambiguity that Ferguson gives her character. Friend or enemy? Love or cheat? Beyond unresolved sexual conflict, something in which Cruise has specialized by playing declassed and lonely types for years, Ferguson –protagonist and producer of the post-apocalyptic series ‘Silo’– brings a divergent look within the framework of action cinema and espionage.
Ferguson is of Swedish origin. Beart is French. Waller-Bridge was born in London and her sense of humor is that of British black comedy. Seydoux is also French and, like Béart, has excelled in auteur cinema. It is no coincidence that this model of a cultured, European and stylish actress has become the focus of attraction for some ‘blockbusters’ who seek, in addition to the impact at the box office, a certain respectability and break with the ossified codes of other times.
A different ‘Bond girl’
Because in addition to her evil assassin in the ‘Mission Impossible’ film, Seydoux is the actress who gave a radical turn to the female imagery of the Bond films starting with ‘Spectre’, the penultimate feature film of the cycle with Daniel Craig. In this and in ‘Without fear to die’, Seydoux plays the psychiatrist Madeleine Swann –as if she emerged from a book by Marcel Proust–, daughter of an enemy of 007. Ambivalent, torn between two worlds, she is a character full of well-exploited nooks and crannies in the two films until the final immolation of James Bond.
Nothing to do with what for so many years was known as ‘the Bond girls’ (Ursula Andress, Honor Blackman, Jill St. John, Jane Seymour, Britt Ekland, Barbara Bach, Tanya Roberts) and that those responsible for the stage with Craig tried to normalize without, of course, losing the erotic appeal of the saga, but with reaction rather than submission to the male. Eva Green’s role as an antagonist and tragic love in ‘Casino Royale’ was already along these lines.
Face to face with Vin Diesel
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Even in a franchise founded on the vertigo of speed and testosterone, that of ‘Fast & Furiois’, the character played by the wayward Michelle Rodríguez competes face to face with Vin Diesel in making clots, jumping bridges or destroying cars. The times of being the complacent rest of the warrior even in the most masculine stories are over. The effect was noted in other sagas of undoubted success. The latest ‘Star wars’ trilogy has Rey (Daisy Ridley) as its main characterthe first female Jedi with entity in the entire galactic narrative of George Lucas, and in ‘Mad Max: Fury Road’ the warrior Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron) is much more expeditious than Mad Max himself played by Tom Hardy.
And what to say about superhero cinema, which has always been very choral (groups like The Avengers, X-Men, The Fantastic 4) but with a predominance of heroes over heroines.. Black Widow, played by Scarlett Johansson, matured in the shadow of the rest of the avengers until she starred in her own film, one of the best of the last phases of Marvel. Without being any wonder, the DC films dedicated to Wonder Woman have more grips than those starring Batman and Superman. It may not be very relevant, but it is significant.