MovieChat Forums > Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001) Discussion > Director surprised at the delay in more ...

Director surprised at the delay in more female led action films.

posted 4 years ago by HarlemEagle42 (16135)
2 replies | jump to latest

Simon West apparently expected a lot of Lara Croft knockoffs after its release.

"at the time, the studio was incredibly nervous at what the outcome could have been. I’m surprised it's taken so long [for other female-fronted action stories to rise up], because I thought that two or three years after, there’d be 10 other movies like it cashing in on its success ...[b]ut it's amazing how things work so slowly. But finally The Hunger Games and Patty Jenkins’ Wonder Woman have caught up!"

I get what he means about female superheroes. Catwoman and Elektra didn't help the cause at all. But on the other hand, we did have a few female led action films. Namely, the Kill Bill movies and not that they're exactly good, there were not one but two franchises in the form of Resident Evil and the Underworld movies.

[–] Ace_Spade (9334) 3 years ago

Kill Bill Vol.1 and 2 are really great movies; I think so, anyway.

Female-led action movies are an interesting topic, partly because of how political it gets.

You've got a bunch of execs who assume guys watch action flicks and don't want female leads, so they don't want to bank on a movie they don't think they can sell.

You've got a bunch of activists saying that women want action heroes and there should be action films with women in the lead roles because it's Important.

Then you've got a bunch of female-led action movies like RE, Underworld, Kill Bill, Alien, et al., which nobody seems to mind and everybody goes to see, male and female.

Yet, you don't hear either the executives or the activists acknowledge their existence...

[–] HarlemEagle42 (16135) 3 years ago

I've wondered about that too. Not to sound elitist but perhaps West meant in reference to movies with an A-list budget and are a bit more ambitious like Hunger Games or Wonder Woman in terms of storytelling.
There weren't many of those for a while after the first Tomb Raider came out. Kill Bill 1 and 2 are good examples against the trend which at the time was pretty much just Underworld or Resident Evil (which I'm not a fan but it has its audience) or just real life shit like Elektra or Catwoman.