Heroes don’t necessarily have to be ridiculously huge, bulky stereotypes. And there’s plenty of male lead films in which the main character isn’t big and bulky:

Spiderman
Men in Black
Garden state
V for Vendetta
Moulin Rouge
The Fantastic Four
Harry Potter
Lord of the Rings

Tapping into more than just action films there, obviously.

And films like Elektra are more focused on showing off the body and flexibility of their leads than they are telling a story. Underworld was quite similar in direction but a little better on storyline.

Perhaps if everyone lightened up on the “Ooh, this is how movies are SUPPOSED to be made” films wouldn’t suck quite so badly just now. I mean, the best film I’ve seen in two years was a political film about aliens.

I’ll give you a few to start:

Elektra
Catwoman
Aeonflux
Ultraviolet

There’s a place in my heart for Kill Bill though, that movie just hits all the right spots.

But for the sake of all that is good on this planet. stop trying to put women at the forefront of the film industry. Women are not naturally big and strong like the majority of the male population. Men are (usually) born protectors and it’s going to stay like that due to nature. Have fun with your further whining though. /rant

Maybe women just don’t make very good movies? Like, honestly, why bother pointing this out? Men are the hero archetype, they always will be. Why would you WANT women to be known for being big, bulky and full of testosterone? It’s a major feature of being male and it’s one of the main features of movies. I’m sorry to hear that you have a hard time overcoming the world. Please, when you get a grip on reality and begin to understand that there is more to life than women being the best at something, give me a shout. For the time being… shut the fuck up.

As a deeply dedicated female martial artist, I am very pleased when I have the pleasure of enjoying quality dramatized combat that utilizes well-realized female characters. When I first took up fighting when at the less-than-self-assured age of eight, I really loved it, but that hardly kept me from being very aware that I was the only girl there or worrying about the social repercussions in the unforgiving world of an elementary playground. As that I have grown up, I have found it gratifying that talented female fighters have increasingly become such a point of admiration, but it does comfort me that young girls finding themselves in a similar place have women like Summer Glau as examples. But more specifically as a martial artist, when I go to a movie with fighting in it, the actors in it had better damn well be good, be they male or female, otherwise I don’t want to watch it. One of the best action/martial arts movies I’ve seen is Jet Li’s “Unleashed”. The combat in the movie was brutal, efficient, and almost entirely without frills or acrobatics. I very much approve of this realistic approach to cinematic combat, for both male and female characters, as it makes for more realistic characters. I’ve always found that conscious attempts to make female characters more feminine not only fails to make them more realistic, but instead, does the very opposite. The fact that movie makers are under the delusion that a woman who is a skilled fighter is somehow basically unfeminine just goes to show how poorly understood women are. My learning to break someone’s arm didn’t mean I lost my ability to hold my baby, nor did I stop being able to do pirouettes because I started doing roundhouse kicks; so there was no reason to compensate by trying to be more feminine. Now, I’ll be the first to admit that there have been plenty of disappointing and less than convincing performances by women in this genre, I’ve also seen more than my fair share of attempts by their male counterparts that have been no better. So, let us be fair about this when we consider what fails when it comes to movies and not forget to that, while well-conceived parts are available to everyone, awful action movies know no gender. It is at least rather misguided, if not outright foolish for one to think that inequality no longer occurs for women, and for the proof of it you need look no further than this thread. The debate of the adequacy of women to make an engaging lead in action film has continued based, despite the supply of several excellent examples to the contrary, but the droves of awful movies through out the ages hasn’t even crossed people’s minds. Not just in movies, but in politics, business, military, and so-forth, the moment a woman screws something up, there are people asking whether or not women are qualified to be in that position, never mind that men in that same position have made plenty of messes many times before. No one notices when men screw up because its all been done before, and no one notices all the women who’ve done well. In the last week, I’ve had someone say to me, “you shouldn’t have to carry that! It’s heavy; let one of the boys take it.” which would have been at least condescending, if not outright insulting, on its own even if you didn’t consider that I’ve been able to thoroughly best every last one of the boys in question in a fight since we were sixteen. So, lets consider how much more available to men, not only the cinematic, but other professions as well, and what terrible stuff they’ve been able to come up with, before we dismiss the entirety of the female sex as unable to manage the things that many women could perform satisfactorily.

As a woman, I have not felt myself particularly deprived of movies and TV shows that boast female leads, but rather I have found myself increasingly concerned with the declining of in those leads. The increasing intensity with which sexual objectification and exploitation of women, not just by movies and television, but by magazines and books and so forth, is beginning to bother me deeply, made even worse by the increasingly younger age to which it is being targeted, all while throwing around words like “empowerment” and “freedom” when what is really meant is “lack of self-respect” and “insecurity”. If this is the path that our popular media continues to take, it really won’t be long before that image of women becomes so prevalent for our society that, as scarce as movies with competent, intelligent female leads seem now, that number will only drop. It vaguely terrifies me that my little sister is far more likely to be exposed to female role-models from the media that are more akin to those of Sex in the City than those of Firefly. If the only characters girls today see on TV and film are those that use that rely on their sexuality to get what they want and to measure their self-worth, that is what they will believe is expected of them.

For my encore, I will be stepping off my soap-box and adding a few scattered comments. While I admit to having skipped about a quarter of this thread down toward the end, I don’t believe anyone has mentioned the movie “V for Vendetta” for which Natalie Portman received top billing, even over actors such as Hugo Weaving and Stephen Fry, and in which she gave an impressive performance as a woman with great inner strength. Also, in reference to some comments made about women having their movie tickets, among other things, paid for them, I would like to point out that through out my dating life, my dates and I would alternate paying, and I am far from alone in this manner of arrangement; and, last time I checked my paycheck is going into my household’s account along with my husband’s. Really guys, if you’re paying for absolutely everything for all you’re dates in this day and age, you’re getting taken for a sap, and that’s your own problem. Don’t assume all women are a constant drain on their significant others’ wallet just because you’re letting it go on.

Also, Summer Glau inspired me to go back to ballet classes; because of her, I want to go into a career as a ballerina terminator.