SALT - Jolie Gives Us the Female Early Nineties Hero We've Always Dreamed Of

A girlfriend and I went to see, “SALT” this week. We’ve both been looking forward to it all summer, so it only seemed fitting to leave the husbands and kids at home and go watch a good-old-fashioned action movie. 

“SALT” delivered in every category that we’ve come to love and hope for in an Angelina Jolie action movie. She’s tough, she’s believable, and this time saving the world has nothing to do with her gender. In fact, Jolie can not only be thanked for jump-starting the action heroine franchise a decade ago with, "Tomb Raider", but she's almost making up for missed action heroine opportunities of decades past with this espionage thriller. (Spoilers throughout…)

You probably know that the original script for, “SALT” was written for Tom Cruise, who then turned it down feeling that it was too similar to his Mission Impossible role. Well, the studio then turned to Jolie who played the part originally written for a man with note perfect clarity.

NPR Recognizes the Power of Action Heroines

Click HERE to listen to or read this NPR story that addresses the issue of what happens when Hollywood chooses to replace male roles in films with female actresses. (Hint: You can either be funny or tough.) Also, I'll be seeing "SALT" soon and posting a review here as well as some writing about all the action heroines presented to us this summer.

Introducing the Black Widow - Did She Sink or Swim?

Here's the thing about action heroines on film, they work or they don't. Audiences will buy them right away or dismiss them as silly and unbelievable. Same thing goes for their male counterparts. It's a tough sell to begin with, the idea of a costumed super hero especially, and movies have about thirty seconds where an audience will make their decisions. Yesterday, I saw Iron Man 2, and Scarlett Johannson is on screen for almost the entire film as her secret identity, a buttoned-up hyper intelligent assistant to Tony Stark and Pepper Pots. So when she finally shows up in her trademark black catsuit near the finale and starts doing her real job, it only took me a few seconds to love it...

Roots in the Past - America's First Action Heroine (1767)

So...you may think that my obsession with action heroines is just limited to my geekosphere, movies, video games, and comics. Wrong! I take it all the way into the classrooms of my graduate school experience. During an Early American Literature studies class this semester, we read a book from 1767 titled, "The Female American". I was shocked to see just exactly how closely her fictional life followed that of so many other contemporary action heroines...