First things first. Angelina Jolie is a very believable kick-ass spy in the new, exciting, thriller Salt opening today.
What’s so great about this film is that it could be a game changer. The reason why is that there are no gender issues with Jolie playing a CIA agent who kills while at the same time trying to escape from being killed and captured.
Let’s not fool ourselves. There have been women who have kicked ass in movies before. Salt’s foremothers are Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) in Aliens and Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) in Terminator 2, but that was the late 80s and early 90s, and interestingly both those women had a mama bear focus that gave them the permission to kill everyone around them because they were saving their kids (Ripley did not technically have a kid, but Newt became her kid in the film.)
There have been others who have been more cartoony like Uma Thurman in Kill Bill and the women of Charlie’s Angels, and we can’t forget the films that got Angelina started on this track –Tomb Raider.
But Salt feels different — firstly because it doesn’t seem created to attract only the male demographic), and with all the excitement around The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo it feels that we might be at a turning point where women kicking ass takes us to a new place for female characters in film.
By now you know that the film was initially written for Tom Cruise but when he bowed out Amy Pascal suggested that they do a gender switch to Angelina Jolie. I’m going to go out a limb here and say that a male studio chief would have been looking for the next male star for the film, and it took a woman to think about it from a different perspective.
There are other things that make this different, not better or worse, just different from your typical Hollywood thriller.
The violence and the action sequences did not make me feel like I was being assaulted. Yes, she kills people. A lot of people. But if you look closely a lot of the violence is with a small caliber weapon (spoiler: she does wipe out her Russian friends with a machine gun) with a couple of shots. She kicks a lot, and uses her body and her training as a weapon. In other words, not that much shit blows up. But you don’t even notice because the action is so fast paced. There are great car chase sequences and Jolie is basically on the move the whole film.
Another thing I noticed is that having a female lead opened up parts for other women in the film. Action films are notorious for their lack of women. None of these characters are major, but having other female voices in the film matters.
For example, there was a woman on the assault team that tried to capture Salt; there was a female secret service agent on the protection details at the church in NYC; there was a female deacon at the service; and the head of the CIA was a woman. It would have been great to have another female have a significant part, but a girl can’t get everything. And another funny moment that made this different is that Jolie used a sanitary napkin to blunt an injury. She pulls off the sticker, slaps the napkin on her side and heads out of the bathroom and back onto to the motorcycle. That just wouldn’t work for a guy.
I hope the film makes tons of money and that both men and women see it. The great thing is that even before it has opened it has had an effect. Scarlett Johansson is going to co-star with Robert Downey Jr. in an upcoming film Gravity. According to the NY Daily News, Jolie turned the part down because she didn’t want to share screen time with a male star even if it is Robert Downey, Jr. Now that’s some frickin Hollywood power.
And by the way, Salt 2 has got to already be in the works (if it’s not they are really stupid) cause the ending had sequel written all over it.
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I’m seeing this tonight after work. FUCKKKK YEAAHHHHHH!!!!! and I hope there will be Salt 2, too!
I think it was Ridley Scott who suggested the gender change for ALIEN in the 70s. The franchise would not have been successful if the protagonist was a male.
Noth kickass characters, Ellen Ripley and Sarah Connor, had a mama bear’s instinct while also being tough and badass. I guess that’s part of their appeal.
But people need to remember there’s no such thing as gender binary, it is all man-made. Women can be just as brutal and vicious as males. No such thing as acting “masculine” or “feminine.”
YES. This is not the kind of thing I usually make the effort to see in the theatre, but I think I’ll make an exception because of the situation. When watching movies with predominantly (or entirely) male casts, I often wonder, “OK, which of these characters could’ve been made XX instead of XY?” It’s not like action-movie characters, in particular, are finely-drawn characters rooted in a specific place and time blah blah. You could easily change the gender or sex of a lot of the characters we see on screen, and praise Amy Pascal for actually doing it!
A group of us are going tonight (all women) and are making it a kick ass Women Power tired of being portrayed as weak, desperate to get married, only care about fashion on film night. Everyone please bring your friends, significant others, strangers, your cats/dogs/birds, whatever as long as you buy tickets. I’m afraid that if this fails the studio heads will believe that there is no place for action films with a female lead.
I think what makes this film different is that it is cast as an action-thriller. It’s not fantastic, or even exaggerated. It is basic, real life violence necessary to push the plot – less James Bond and more Richard Kimbal. I don’t recall a whole ton of stuff blowing up in that film, but I remember all the clever ways Harrison Ford goes about proving his innocence, and Tommy Lee Jones trying to capture him.
It just seems like they took the film very seriously, thankfully. A lot of times a female leads will be surrounding by a not so great cast (IMO), and I would think having Chiwetel and Liev helps a lot.
Also, I just want to say I love Ripley and Connor, but I hope we give other heroines, who made not have had as much success as them, love as well. It’s all their efforts combined that brought us to this place.
In many ways the forerunner to Angie has been Carrie Fisher’s princess Leia. Carrie took a role that could have been your typical damsel performance and gave the character more strength. That actually reminds me of a lot of Angie’s roles – even the throw-away sidekick ones like Gone in 60 Seconds, or even Hackers.
“But Salt feels different — firstly because it doesn’t seem created to attract only the male demographic)…”
Is that really true? I might be splitting hairs, but are these films made for a male demographic, or do they write stories that in general appeal to a male demographic? Something like Taken? I would agree. But something like Aeon Flux not only starred but was directed by a woman. And something like 300 becomes complicated, because they purposely buffed up the queen role (though you still may not be impressed) in order to attract more women, going against Frank Miller’s male-fest that he seemingly wanted.
I guess I too hope this opens doors, not just for Jolie, although I would LOVE, and I mean LOVE another Tombraider movie – the second one is so underrated, but I hope it also gives a chance for other women to do action films as well. I would love to see Charlize try it again, or something where Lucy Liu or Gina Torres stars, and not just supports. I would love to see a female version of The Expendables. But perhaps I am getting ahead of myself. :p
I am going to see this film opening weekend so hopefully it will make lots of money and wake up studio executives.
Maybe then we can finally get a Wonder Woman flick!
You forgot CatWoman, who could have had an awesome story, but instead of her child, had only the permission to save the world from bad face cream.
Dammit, has everyone forgotten both The Long Kiss Goodnight and Cutthroat Island? Aliens, which is the film that cemented Ripley’s right to shoot a flamethrower combo gun? It’s like Miss Angelina discovered radium, or something, when Misses Sigorney and Geena already broke that ground.
This happens again and again, from the Perils of Pauline to Miss Stanwyck doing her own stunts after damaging her back in the 30s to Miss Grier putting platform boots to backsides — of course actresses and their stuntwomen can sustain an action film. It’s just that boys prefer their soft porn objects more passive, or dead before the last reel.
Geena’s Charlie Baltimore, specifically, was tougher than Clint, and she despised being pregnant and having a kid because she seduced a terrorist during her cover, which is still frakking radical for an action heroine. Davis dared to be ugly emotionally, until that moment when Craig Bierko’s villain (and to this day I can’t watch anything he’s in without hissing) disses their child, then locks Charlie and spawn in a freezer. Only then does Baltimore become the avenging mama, and it was *good*.
As for Catwoman, I prefer to believe that Halle Berry’s portrayal was a mass inception gone horribly wrong….
Great article. I also wanted to point out The Long Kiss Goodnight.
My boyfriend didn’t bat an eye when i said “let’s see salt”. “Sure” is not always the answer I get with a woman lead. Yes, this is a game changer!
When I said we should love our other heroines, that by no means should detract from Angelina. I’m sure if you asked her, she certainly wouldn’t say she invented anything, and is thankful for the women who came before her.
What makes her different are a couple of things. Both genders will go see her, and because of that it makes her movies profitable, and everyone likes profit. Indies get away with making less money because they can garner critical acclaim. But if you have an action film that doesn’t make money, you don’t get to make them for very long. I checked the numbers for the Long Kiss Goodnight, and it didn’t even make its money back in the states – it was the foreign audience who put it over. Now we are paying attention to the foreign markets, but at that time I bet they saw the low domestic pull and ignored it. I really enjoyed Cutthroat Island, but that was another one that performed poorly at the box office.
And I love Sigourney, but when was the last time she did an action film where her role was defined by action? Or Linda Hamilton? Or Carrie-Anne Moss? What I like about Angelina is that she isn’t just committed to a particular role, she is committed to the action genre. Part of what makes someone believable in a role is their longevity. No one thought Bruce could pull off Die Hard when it came out. But now, he is a quintessential action star, big enough to spoof himself. And when you like action films, you don’t quit if you make one, or two, or quite a few bad ones. I liked Jessica Alba and Jennifer Garner on the small screen. But it seemed after some unfortunate box office returns for their action movies (FF & Elektra) they seem to have abandoned the genre.
So Angie likes doing action films. But she’s not the only one. Milla Jovovich is another person who may not win awards for acting, but has consistently performed action roles from her role in the 5th Element to the Resident Evil series (which does make money – I hope we support that too), to stuff like Ultraviolet. Zoe Saldana is also another woman who consistently does and likes to do action films, and her stock is growing as well. Even people like Drew and Reese; Reese may not look obvious, but when she had a chance to be a hero in animated form, she took it. So did Drew, and she did the Charlie’s Angels franchise.
And I don’t know, I liked the fact that in Catwoman Halle was trying to save her friend and the world. And for everyone who hates Catwoman, I would suggest renting the dvd – not to watch the film, but to look at the making of. I think the director made very interesting choices. It may have turned out spectacularly bad, but it may not have been intended.
Some examples. The director was really going for cat-like. So the revealing costume was partly to reveal her spine so that you could see it when she walks, just like a cat. But she’s not a cat, so in order to show that you would have to do a lot of behind shots, which probably just look gratuitous (it has been a while since I saw it). They also wanted to show her using capoeira because cats like to be low to the ground, and that martial art form allows for that, and isn’t filmed as often. But those scenes didn’t quite seem to gel. Catwoman may have been an idea that went very, very wrong.
But I am all for celebrating what came before. And it’s nice to both hope for the future – depending on how Salt does – and also to reflect back on some gems that may not have made a bucket of money, but were good films.
d, thanks. I just hate the discontinuity that’s sorta like the waves of feminism, about ‘rediscovering’ things women can do that yeah, they did before but another patriarchal generation just found out about it…
And it would be nice to hear about the stuntwomen who, Zoe Baird-stylee, embody these characters for everything save visible face shots (even though that can be fudged now, too)….
“My boyfriend didn’t bat an eye when i said “let’s see salt”. “Sure” is not always the answer I get with a woman lead. Yes, this is a game changer!”
Eh, is it because it’s Angelina Jolie? Or because it’s an action movie? I don’t understand why other female lead movies would be problematic but this one isn’t.
It looks like Inception will be #1 for the weekend, but Salt has done very well as #2:
http://www.deadline.com/2010/07/angies-salt-seasons-friday-box-office-but-chris-nolans-inception-still-big-no-1/
I am relieved, because if this bombed, then stupid, sexist execs would be all, “See, no one wants to see a movie with a female lead.” (Movies with male leads like The Prince of Persia and The Sorcerer’s Apprentice did poorly, but no one will stop making movies centered around men!)
So far the news in the box office world is how Salt cannot beat Inception (which has great water cooler buzz, but it is overrated and not as smart as everyone makes it out to be). Salt might bank $35 million and up, which is nothing to sneeze at, so I hope the media will see it as win for Jolie and female centered action films.
Here is a great music video with the yummy Brandon Flowers where he plays the perpetual man-in-distress resuced by Charlize Theron: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5AhU12zC8fc&feature=avmsc2
Please, don’t forget Jodie Foster.
Saw it, LOVED IT!!!!!
Spy / Action is my favorite genre.
And now, SALT beat Bourne as my fave of the genre!
Go Jolie!!!!
and how long till SALT 2 is in the theaters?
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