This Epic Supercut Reminds Us That Women Can Be Just as Badass Action Heroes as Men

Impact

Tired of steroid-popping bros getting all the guns and glory while female characters are reduced as plot devices?

Video editor Clara Darko put together an all-female action supercut featuring some of the baddest women in action history from 61 separate movies, and it's both totally refreshing and immensely satisfying. Maybe subverting the patriarchy will take a few decades of work, but in the meantime individual bad guys would be very unfortunate to run into these ladies.

Take a look:

Decades of film history in just a few big explosions and a hail of gunfire. Nice!

There's some of the best-known action heroines from cinematic history, like xenomorph-destroying Ellen Ripley in the Alien trilogy and Terminator 2: Judgment Day's Sarah Connor. But it also features scenes from films as diverse as The Matrix, Thelma & Louise, Sin City, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and True Romance. Turns out ladies have range. The full credit list is on her Vimeo page, where Darko explains that she deliberately left out super-powered female characters and explains why she left out various other movies. 

Action movies are usually pretty formulaic and sexist when it comes to their treatment of women, so kudos to Darko for subverting traditional gender roles in film. Contrast Darko's reel, for example, to this supercut of action dudes screaming "let her go!" as they attempt to rescue a beleaguered female love interest:

Hopefully these cliches will mostly go the way of the dodo and future generations of action heroes will look more like Darko's reel than the second one. Casting directors: More female badasses, please!

In a similar supercut released this week, Darko also cut together some of the best swordfight scenes of all time. Warning: some of them look painful.

h/t The Verge