With the end of summer drawing near, it's now time to begin the season's autopsy on the Beat. If you're totally burned out on discussing or reading anything to do with summer blockbusters, you may want to skip the next few columns – though I'd be terribly hurt if you did.
This week, I want to discuss the girls of summer geekdom. At the beginning of the season, I complained about the lack of superheroines in film, a trend that not even the summer flicks seem to be reversing. (Unless it's a Top Cow property – it looks as though we will get Witchblade and Magdalena before we ever see Wonder Woman or Black Widow.) Nevertheless, women weren't a complete nonentity in the franchises this year -- some were quite interesting, some were merely bland, and a few were complete failures. I think it's important that we recognize the good and the bad, and with that, let's tally up the scorecard and hand out the prizes.
This week, I want to discuss the girls of summer geekdom. At the beginning of the season, I complained about the lack of superheroines in film, a trend that not even the summer flicks seem to be reversing. (Unless it's a Top Cow property – it looks as though we will get Witchblade and Magdalena before we ever see Wonder Woman or Black Widow.) Nevertheless, women weren't a complete nonentity in the franchises this year -- some were quite interesting, some were merely bland, and a few were complete failures. I think it's important that we recognize the good and the bad, and with that, let's tally up the scorecard and hand out the prizes.
Shall we talk failures, first? It's better to get them out of the way quickly, like ripping off a Band-Aid. The worst heroines of the summer season were, oddly, the ones most "established" in their franchise mythology, the ones most beloved by girl geeks everywhere. I'm talking about Marion Ravenwood, Agent/Dr. Dana Scully, and Evelyn "Evey" O'Connell. (Calling her beloved is a bit of a stretch, but I always held her in fond regard for being a brainy librarian with fabulous shoes.) All of them were dull, uninspired versions of their previous incarnations. It was hard to believe Marion had ever survived a hard-scrabble existence in Nepal, drank Nazi sympathizers under the table, or sparred with Indiana Jones. I detect the hand of George Lucas in her empty barbs and lost expression, it's like watching a pregnant Amidala all over again. I've said it before – one thing I've always admired about Steven Spielberg is that he wrote engaging mothers, women who handled their children's announcement of extraterrestrial pals with realistic skepticism and humor. Just because they had children, and just because they were often stuck raising them single-handedly, didn't mean they were stupid. Sadly, he didn't extend his knack to Marion Ravenwood, who just seemed lost and irresponsible.
Was motherhood what brought down Agent Scully, too? I want to believe that an FBI Agent as ruthlessly brilliant and tough as Scully wouldn't become a humorless cipher once returned to civilian life. I want to believe she wouldn't let Mulder run around in a grungy beard when she berated him for leaving the toliet seat up in Arcadia. And I want to believe that she wouldn't have to Google medical treatments! (It brings to mind a MAD Magazine spoof I read eons ago, where Mulder asked how she had found time to go to medical school and become an FBI Agent – and she replied that it was cheaper and easier to just buy the scrubs.) Thank goodness I still have Temperance Brennan to be my guiding light. Young girls, look to her! (You know, when it comes to cool chicks, television has the lion's share from The Sarah Connor Chronicles to Battlestar Galactica.)
I'm not sure what happened to Evey O'Connell. She had begun to degenerate into a silly sexpot by The Mummy Returns, so it's not surprising that come the third installment and a casting change, she gave up Egyptology for penning romance novels. Now, I think this could have been a cute quirk alongside a career as a studious professor or museum curator, but it's bitterly disappointing to see her shove aside her Bembridge ambitions for bodice rippers. (I now sense half of my professors reading this and thinking about the brilliant career I gave up hunting scraps of Anglo-Saxon. Cest'la vie.)
And now, on to the successes. While her dialogue was clunky, and she seems to be the only non-floozy female in Gotham City, I found Rachel Dawes to be a very reassuring presence in The Dark Knight. There were opportunities galore to sex her up, and flake away her brains, but Christopher Nolan didn't take it. Instead, she's a capable career woman, who dresses smartly (love that blue dress of hers), and holds her own against Bruce Wayne and Harvey Dent. I can see why both men love her, because frankly, I kind of do too. As the brainy girl oft passed up for the flashier model, I like that the smart girl gets the studliest guys in Gotham – and isn't dependent on either one of them. (Someone will knock me here for judging Dawes by her attractiveness to men, but perhaps I can temper it by saying that I especially admire Dawes' emotional fortitude in her darkest hour?)
And maybe I can further temper the "studly" remark by my commendation of Virginia "Pepper" Potts in Iron Man. I love that she so coolly resisted the suave charms of Tony Stark. She had a few wobbly moments in the middle of the film, but hey, not every personal assistant can handle corporate espionage and her boss in a robot suit. Plus her verbal volley towards Stark's "Remember that night?" made up for it. She could have easily hopped into bed with him at any point of the movie – investigative journalists did, with nary a care – but Potts knew she deserved better.
But the prize for the most kickass female of summer belongs to a little iPod lookalike named EVE. She's rebellious (her free flight after being dropped off on Earth speaks volumes), she packs firepower, and she takes her directive so seriously that no boy, not even one as cute and attentive as WALL-E, can dissuade her. There was something vaguely Princess Leia-like about her that I couldn't put my finger on – maybe it was her coloring, maybe it was her blaster, but when she proved to be a co-savior of Earth, I wasn't surprised. Frankly, the emotion tucked into her repeated "Plant!" packed more punch than most of the lines given to any of summer's love interests. Way to go EVE – it's a sad state of affairs when you're more complex and interesting than half your human counterparts. Let's hope Summer 2009 fares better in this regard. (I'm looking at you, Terminator: Salvation, Star Trek, and X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Don't let me down. Give me someone to rival Elizabeth Swann, at least.)
That concludes my scorecard on the girls of summer. There's two I left off because I haven't seen the films yet (I know, I know – I devoted more time to piracy than movies) and that's Liv Tyler as the latest Betty Ross in The Incredible Hulk, and Selma Blair's Liz Sherman in Hellboy II: The Golden Army. So please, tell me where you think they should rank! And do the same with any chicks I've missed, or chastise me for the ones I've ranked. And lest you think this column is becoming too girly, if all goes according to plan, we'll do one about the heroic boys later in the month. And I'll try not to use the word studly.
1. Imagine my surprise when I Googled "Sexy+woman+geek+beat+off" that it returned a smartly written, non-shallow, eloquent article. Well done Elisabeth. Not what I've come to expect from a "I'd-fuck-a-stair-rail-if-Megan-Fox-had-touched-it" blog.
Seriously. Thanks. And no, I did not really Google that.
Posted at 1:47PM on Aug 12th 2008 by Mike