28 Days Later (2002)

[miss_haitch]

I recently rewatched the horror film 28 Days Later and was impressed at how well it stands the test of time. Jim, a bicycle courier, wakes up alone in a London hospital, and things have changed. A lot. People taken over by a lethal "rage" virus run rampant, attacking and infecting anyone in their path. Running from the infected, Jim teams up with Selena and Mark and hides out in a newspaper kiosk. And then the scary really sets in...

It's the low-key and character-driven moments that make 28 Days Later so effective - it's fairly quiet for a zombie film, which for me makes the suspenseful bits almost unbearable (but also a lot of fun). The main characters are likeable, and there's very much a sense of ordinary people having to deal with an utterly extraordinary situation.

I really appreciated having two major female characters - Selena, a pragmatic survivor and Hannah, a teenager still numb from the apocalyptic events. They talk to each other about varied things - surviving, driving, food-foraging and more.

Content notes for the film: rated 18 in the UK, it includes explicit language, graphic gory violence, and threat of sexual assault - and is very bleak in places.

Thor (2011)

[valtyr]

Thor is the latest Marvel superhero movie, and it's a good one. Most of the conversations revolve around Thor, unsurprisingly, but the movie still passes.

There are three named female characters (Frigga appears in the film and is credited, but I don't think she's addressed by name; her sons call her 'mother') the Lady Sif, Jane Foster, and Jane's assistant Darcy. Sif barely interacts with Jane and Darcy, but Jane and Darcy do talk about physics and Jane's work with each other.

In the original comics, Jane was a nurse, assistant to Thor's alter ego Dr Don Blake. Here, she's a physicist studying wormholes and ion storms and stuff; I really liked that she'd been given her own goals and storyline, and that other characters respected her and her work. Her assistant Darcy was also a hoot.

Lady Sif, in the comics, was also a love interest; here, she's been added to the Warriors Three, who in the comics, like here, are a band of Asgardian warriors and Thor's sidekicks. It's worth noting it would have been really easy for the filmmakers to just include the Warriors Three and either ignore Sif or have her backgrounded. She's either been included because they think Sif's awesome, or because they decided they needed more women. Either motivation is good. :) Also, she's a very sensibly dressed warrior woman as well as a badass!

Also, when fighting breaks out, Frigga picks up a sword and throws down. She doesn't have a huge part, but it's nice to see an older woman doing even a bit of action stuff.

Overall, this is one of the best superhero movies I've seen for female characters. Jane Foster is competing with Michelle Pfeiffer's Catwoman for my favourite superhero movie love interest of all time. :)