The Terminator: Early Hollywood Feminist Films

The Terminator (1984) was praised by film critics as one of the early Hollywood feminist films that portrayed the female as ‘real’ and not being objectified. At the beginning of the film, Sarah Connor who is the lead female character was portrayed as a damsel in distress, being saved repeatedly by Kyle Reese, a soldier from the future with a duty to protect her from the Terminator. Sarah needs to be constantly told what is going on as she is passive in the story, unlike the male character who is driving the story forward. As the story continues, the female character is still shown to be dependent on the male character’s knowledge and skill, for example, when Sarah learns how to defend herself and use weapons from Kyle. By the end of the film,

Usually, when talking about a female in action films, the role would revolve around either the woman being saved or being a distraction for the male protagonist. For Resident Evil, it isn’t. Milla Jovovich, who starred as Alice, was being active throughout the entire film despite being a female protagonist, instead of having a passive role. The story was about a zombie virus that has overtaken the world, and Alice must fight against Umbrella, the corporation that created the virus, to get back her freedom while often saving her friends, and sometimes her enemies. Comparing to the Terminator, there is a striking absence of love interest for a female character in this film series, which is filled with exciting action scenes instead. Alice, as portrayed in the film, is a perfect female role model who wasn’t put in the story just to fill the voyeuristic need or fetish of any kind that the male protagonist might have. She is simply a hero of the story, that have actions that drive the story forward. Despite the underlying feminist notion of it, there is still a fair amount of female objectification through unnecessary close-up shots of female’s body parts throughout the film, although it is significantly small when comparing with Charlie’s Angels’. According to John Nolte (Daily Wire, 2017), the portrayal of women in the film was