Ladypendables
Aug. 27th, 2012 07:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seriousficHave you heard the news? Of course you have, because you probably don't get your news from this site. They're making a female Expendables! I actually really prefer that idea to including more ladies in The Expendables Proper, since it's such a guy movie that it would feel weird to include more than the token chick (as would show up in a real 80s movie; thanks, Vasquez!). Plus, the fact is, there just aren't as many iconic female action stars as there are men. No knock on the ladies, that's more about old (and current) Hollywood sexism. Luckily, The Expendables concept has been good at mixing legends (or, well, has-beens) with current attractions and up-and-comers. So even if Cynthia Rothrock doesn't have the same pizzazz as Dolph Lundgren, you can still do a movie with no female Dolph Lundgren.
Also, one of the problems with The Expendables is that there's no specialists. Anyone who's even heard of G.I. Joe knows that every hero has to have their own quasi-ridiculous specialty, like knife-killing, Arctic environments, detecting mines… In The Expendables, everyone is just "the guy who shoots a really big gun." I'll try to avoid that by giving everyone their own distinct thing, so Kate Beckinsale's action scenes are really different from Zoe Saldena's action scenes. So, without further adieu, a dream-cast!
Linda Hamilton – The Retiree
I'd feel odd wanting Linda Hamilton to get back into ridiculous physical condition to basically play a fake Sarah Connor. It just seems a little mean, inviting that comparison. So instead, she could be the team Mickey Rourke. She used to lead the team, back in the day, but she retires and now she owns the hang-out where the team goes when off-duty. I'm not sure what the most zesty cheese would be there—a Coyote's Ugly style strip joint where the ladies sometimes do spontaneous dances, but then punch out obnoxious patrons? A beauty parlor? A karaoke bar? A tattoo joint with Gina Gershon as a really unprofessional tattoo artist? I don't know, but it has to be something that makes you roll your eyes at least twice.
Sigourney Weaver – The Nick Fury
Every team needs someone who's really cool and hardcore, but doesn't go out into the field, yet can crack a shotgun when the enemy inevitably invades home turf. And that's where Weaver comes in, since she gets to be a major presence in the movie without, ya know, being a sixty-year-old woman whose day job is running around shooting people. I think telling the President to hold on line two because she has a country to save is plenty badass enough.
Angelina Jolie – The Point Man
Let's face it. Angelina Jolie is pretty much the only A-list female action star. Milla Jovovich and Kate Beckinsale have their place, but their franchises are solidly B-movies, while Jolie has films that play with the big boys in the summer blockbuster realm. So it only makes sense that she'd either be the leader or the Big Bad, and since it's a dream-cast, let's pretend we can drag Jolie out of an African orphanage for an entire movie of shooting guns and trying not to make PMS jokes.
Jolie would have a good ol' student-mentor relationship with Weaver, sipping tea together and maybe having the obligatory sparring scene, because who left The Tourist not thinking "man, it'd be good if Sigourney Weaver hit her in the face just once." (Just kidding, nobody saw The Tourist!)
Milla Jovovich – The Driver
Jovovich is a lesser action hero, but still an action hero. The Fifth Element alone gets her a seat at the table, and the fact that she's been in a ridiculous amount of Resident Evil movies should make her the Jason Statham to Jolie's Stallone.
Jolie's right-hand man, Jovovich is hotheaded and impulsive, but she can drive anything with more than one wheel. Just don't ask for it to come back to the garage in one piece; it's like she has a hate-on for rental agencies. Jolie likes Jovovich's spunk, but knows that sometimes when the pressure ramps up, she needs someone who can stay a lot cooler. That's why she has a left-hand man.
Kate Beckinsale – The Sniper
Cool, collected, and always professional, Beckinsale can shoot the wrapper off a lollipop from… well, like thirty feet away. But it's really hard, so that's still impressive. And she could shoot the lollipop itself from several miles away, which is all you really need to do to kill someone.
Beckinsale's a bit of a suck-up, a product of being a poor girl coming up on scholarship in some of the most exclusive private schools in Britain, then in some of the most elite squads in the SAS. As prim and proper as she conducts herself, she's Cockney deep down. She idolizes Jolie, and battles constantly with Jovovich for her respect, like two sisters battling to be mommy's favorite.
Again, the Underworld movies aren't Resident Evil, they aren't even Tomb Raider, but she is a bit of the name and I feel like she deserves a break after getting through Van Helsing. So she can round out our main trio, or "Sigourney's Angels," if you will.
Maggie Q – Close Combat Specialist
Sometimes, you can't just shoot someone. It's rare, but it happens. When that time comes, it helps to be able to kill them with your bare hands. And everyone is able. But sometimes they know how to kill you with their bare hands, so it's nice to have someone who's really, really good at killing people with their bare hands. That's Q.
A defector from a top-secret Chinese spy program, Q keeps her past and her old career on the down low, tending to bury it in gin when she's not actually on the job. She may sneak a sip from a flask now and then, but she could do a keg stand and come out of it doing a roundhouse kick that'd knock your head off.
Here's where we get more into the B-team. And hey, if Terry Crews can be in The Expendables off Terry Tate: Office Linebacker, then Mission Impossible 3, Live Free Or Die Hard, and the ever-surprising goodness of Nikita gets her the obligatory "Asian chicks that knows kung-fu" slot. Is it still racist when everyone else knows kung-fu? I don't know, these are questions best pondered when Maggie Q isn't punching someone's throat in.
Gina Carono – Heavy Weapons Specialist
Of course, most of the time you can shoot someone. And if you're going to shoot someone, you might as well shoot them with a really big gun. A former Olympic weightlifter and ex-Marine, Carono tends to carry at least five guns at all times, the bigger the better. Her current favorite is an AA-12 automatic shotgun, but she's got a cannon in her garage that she lovingly restores in her spare time. In her spare time, she enjoys watching shoot 'em up movies and visiting shooting ranges.
Okay, Carono's really a newbie, but so was Randy Couture, and there aren't a lot of actresses these days who can fit into the Vasquez slot. So she barely escapes the rookie slot.
Zoe Saldena – The Rookie
New blood, Saldena was in the SEALS until she got drummed out for doing the right thing at the wrong time. She still dreams of being in uniform, and the old Navy way of doing things is right under her skin. She and Beckinsale are bosom buddies, more likely to be in a quiet corner sipping tea and discussing a book they've both read than drinking beers and pouncing on dudes with the others.
The newest actress of the bunch next to Carono, Saldena has some action movies under her belt, but she's not as established as the rest of the cast. So she gets the respectable position of the rookie, and impresses everyone with how good she is at killing people instead of them taking it for granted.
Michelle Rodriguez – Demolitions Expert
When something's too big to shoot, you blow it up. Rodriguez came up digging in the mines in Chile, eventually graduating to working with the explosives. When her family immigrated to the United States, she found work demolishing buildings, but not enough buildings needed demolishing for her tastes. After a run in the Army, working artillery, she got picked up by Jolie and now gets to blow shit up at least once a month, which she says has finally cured her chronic migraines. An out lesbian, if Rodriguez isn't on a mission, she's at a bar, smoking a cigar with a stranger perched on her lap.
C'mon, guys, you can't have an over-the-top female ensemble action movie with no Michelle Rodriguez. She's been preparing for this role her whole life. In every action movie, someone needs to blow something up by hitting one of those phallic detonators with the red button on top. M-Rod can do that while saying something in Spanish with "bitch!" or "motherfucker!" for emphasis. Case closed.
Tom Hardy – The Charmer
Every dude team has a token chick with her zipper undone to the cleavage. So the chick team gets a token guy who shows off his arms a lot and maaaaybe wears leather pants. He can charm and joke his way into any situation, and has a thing with one of the ladies since, you know, romance subplot. Sometime in the second act, he gets grievously wounded so the ladies can have the spotlight all to themselves, only to pop back up at the end in a hospital bed.
Tom Hardy, I don't know, I guess he's popular with the kids these days. Basically, we're just going to completely avoid the scene where some hot chick needs to dress slutty for justice, and instead have Tom Hardy act chill for justice. Cool? Cool.
Allison Brie – The Hacker
Every genre fiction in the 21st century needs some cute, pop-culture-obsessed hacker and we are no different. Only now she's Allison Brie. Might experiment with her cosplay outfits whilst doing her job. Tends to piss off Weaver like nothing else, but she's too good at her job for Weaver to bend her over her knee.
Also, we need an adorably woobie sub for all the badass ladies to dom SHHHHHH.
Jason Momoa – The Villain
So I figure for the villain, we'll do a classic bit-—the criminal mastermind with a fanatically loyal sexy henchwoman. To which, of course, all the ladies will react "Oh, okay." Maybe it turns out she's running the whole thing, what am I, a writer? Anyway, Momoa's a big guy, so naturally he'll end up in a brutal two-on-one fight with, let's say, Q and Carono. Not in a "it takes two girls to beat up a man!" way, but in a The Raid "this guy is so good it has to be two on one!" Only here, there's the added factor that he's fucking huge and they can actually shop for shoes at non-zoo locations. Anyway, they win.
Noomi Rapace – The Villainous Leather Catsuit Chick
Like I said, every self-respecting supervillain needs a quiet, creepy henchwoman to get into a fight with, oh, let's say Beckinsale. And when has Noomi Rapace gotten to play a badass villain? Let's fix that.
Jeremy Renner – The Villainous Leather Catsuit Dude
Same deal as before. We need a little more guy candy for the ladies and someone to fight, I don't know, Michelle Rodriguez in a John Woo style shoot-out. Which he'll lose. Should've stuck to arrows, Renner.
Okay, that's enough for the first movie, as you want to give everyone time to shine. But there are so many great actresses and so many great female action stars specifically, that there's no way this can't be a franchise. To improve on The Expendables model a bit, every film should have someone die, retire, whatever, to clear the way for some fresh blood. You don't want this to turn into X-Men: The Last Stand, with thirty different characters running around and each of them getting two lines apiece.
That said, in the next movie, let's have…
Rhona Mitra – The Rogue
A completely self-interested mercenary who does things like steals sensitive information and sells it to the highest bidder. Never seen without her partner in crime, Zoe Bell. They're sisters or something.
Eva Green – The Spy
Our gals are more the shoot-first, ask-questions-whenever sort, but sometimes you need someone to ask questions, preferably while in a designer gown that looks like it's made out of diamonds. Eva Green shows up in the opening of a movie, working with our team, sends them on their way, maybe betrays them, maybe gets killed for pathos, maybe jumps off a cliff and opens up a parachute with the French flag on it.
Michelle Yeoh – The Big Bad
It's not easy to top Khal Drogo, but once we've established the team, let's bring in fucking Super Cop 2 as the ultimate villainess. She's an one-woman army who can outshoot, outfight, and out-explode the whole team at once.
JeeJa Yanin – The Evil Daughter
And of course, she has a completely twisted relationship with her zealously obedient daughter, who is also a ridiculously lethal martial artist. While Yeoh gets the big "entire team has to bring her down" fight, Yanin could have the more personal one-on-one with Q.
Michael Ealy – The Boyfriend
All these movies need some concerned boyfriend or girlfriend who is so worried about his or her boo going into danger. And I hear that Michael Ealy cat is not in danger of catching the unattractives anytime soon. So let's add even more color to our cast and give the straight ladies just a few more abs at the same time.
Pam Grier – The Director
Every sequel needs a plot where the team gets framed for stealing a ton of plutonium so the director of the CIA, who fuck you is a badass black chick, sends hordes of trained killers after them until her old friend Linda Hamilton calls in a favor and gets the Ladypendables twenty-four hours to prove their innocence, then she saves the day at the last minute and gets a grudging "You're all right, you bitch" from Sigourney Weaver.
I've tried to avoid TV actors in this, since Kate Beckinsale, Milla Jovovich, and Angelina Jolie teaming up is a big fucking deal in a way that, sorry to say, Katee Sackhoff and Gina Torres aren't. Maybe if the movie's a big hit, there could be a TV spin-off. I'm down for "Eliza Duskhu Playing Eliza Dushku & Friends: The Series."
Also, one of the problems with The Expendables is that there's no specialists. Anyone who's even heard of G.I. Joe knows that every hero has to have their own quasi-ridiculous specialty, like knife-killing, Arctic environments, detecting mines… In The Expendables, everyone is just "the guy who shoots a really big gun." I'll try to avoid that by giving everyone their own distinct thing, so Kate Beckinsale's action scenes are really different from Zoe Saldena's action scenes. So, without further adieu, a dream-cast!
Linda Hamilton – The Retiree
I'd feel odd wanting Linda Hamilton to get back into ridiculous physical condition to basically play a fake Sarah Connor. It just seems a little mean, inviting that comparison. So instead, she could be the team Mickey Rourke. She used to lead the team, back in the day, but she retires and now she owns the hang-out where the team goes when off-duty. I'm not sure what the most zesty cheese would be there—a Coyote's Ugly style strip joint where the ladies sometimes do spontaneous dances, but then punch out obnoxious patrons? A beauty parlor? A karaoke bar? A tattoo joint with Gina Gershon as a really unprofessional tattoo artist? I don't know, but it has to be something that makes you roll your eyes at least twice.
Sigourney Weaver – The Nick Fury
Every team needs someone who's really cool and hardcore, but doesn't go out into the field, yet can crack a shotgun when the enemy inevitably invades home turf. And that's where Weaver comes in, since she gets to be a major presence in the movie without, ya know, being a sixty-year-old woman whose day job is running around shooting people. I think telling the President to hold on line two because she has a country to save is plenty badass enough.
Angelina Jolie – The Point Man
Let's face it. Angelina Jolie is pretty much the only A-list female action star. Milla Jovovich and Kate Beckinsale have their place, but their franchises are solidly B-movies, while Jolie has films that play with the big boys in the summer blockbuster realm. So it only makes sense that she'd either be the leader or the Big Bad, and since it's a dream-cast, let's pretend we can drag Jolie out of an African orphanage for an entire movie of shooting guns and trying not to make PMS jokes.
Jolie would have a good ol' student-mentor relationship with Weaver, sipping tea together and maybe having the obligatory sparring scene, because who left The Tourist not thinking "man, it'd be good if Sigourney Weaver hit her in the face just once." (Just kidding, nobody saw The Tourist!)
Milla Jovovich – The Driver
Jovovich is a lesser action hero, but still an action hero. The Fifth Element alone gets her a seat at the table, and the fact that she's been in a ridiculous amount of Resident Evil movies should make her the Jason Statham to Jolie's Stallone.
Jolie's right-hand man, Jovovich is hotheaded and impulsive, but she can drive anything with more than one wheel. Just don't ask for it to come back to the garage in one piece; it's like she has a hate-on for rental agencies. Jolie likes Jovovich's spunk, but knows that sometimes when the pressure ramps up, she needs someone who can stay a lot cooler. That's why she has a left-hand man.
Kate Beckinsale – The Sniper
Cool, collected, and always professional, Beckinsale can shoot the wrapper off a lollipop from… well, like thirty feet away. But it's really hard, so that's still impressive. And she could shoot the lollipop itself from several miles away, which is all you really need to do to kill someone.
Beckinsale's a bit of a suck-up, a product of being a poor girl coming up on scholarship in some of the most exclusive private schools in Britain, then in some of the most elite squads in the SAS. As prim and proper as she conducts herself, she's Cockney deep down. She idolizes Jolie, and battles constantly with Jovovich for her respect, like two sisters battling to be mommy's favorite.
Again, the Underworld movies aren't Resident Evil, they aren't even Tomb Raider, but she is a bit of the name and I feel like she deserves a break after getting through Van Helsing. So she can round out our main trio, or "Sigourney's Angels," if you will.
Maggie Q – Close Combat Specialist
Sometimes, you can't just shoot someone. It's rare, but it happens. When that time comes, it helps to be able to kill them with your bare hands. And everyone is able. But sometimes they know how to kill you with their bare hands, so it's nice to have someone who's really, really good at killing people with their bare hands. That's Q.
A defector from a top-secret Chinese spy program, Q keeps her past and her old career on the down low, tending to bury it in gin when she's not actually on the job. She may sneak a sip from a flask now and then, but she could do a keg stand and come out of it doing a roundhouse kick that'd knock your head off.
Here's where we get more into the B-team. And hey, if Terry Crews can be in The Expendables off Terry Tate: Office Linebacker, then Mission Impossible 3, Live Free Or Die Hard, and the ever-surprising goodness of Nikita gets her the obligatory "Asian chicks that knows kung-fu" slot. Is it still racist when everyone else knows kung-fu? I don't know, these are questions best pondered when Maggie Q isn't punching someone's throat in.
Gina Carono – Heavy Weapons Specialist
Of course, most of the time you can shoot someone. And if you're going to shoot someone, you might as well shoot them with a really big gun. A former Olympic weightlifter and ex-Marine, Carono tends to carry at least five guns at all times, the bigger the better. Her current favorite is an AA-12 automatic shotgun, but she's got a cannon in her garage that she lovingly restores in her spare time. In her spare time, she enjoys watching shoot 'em up movies and visiting shooting ranges.
Okay, Carono's really a newbie, but so was Randy Couture, and there aren't a lot of actresses these days who can fit into the Vasquez slot. So she barely escapes the rookie slot.
Zoe Saldena – The Rookie
New blood, Saldena was in the SEALS until she got drummed out for doing the right thing at the wrong time. She still dreams of being in uniform, and the old Navy way of doing things is right under her skin. She and Beckinsale are bosom buddies, more likely to be in a quiet corner sipping tea and discussing a book they've both read than drinking beers and pouncing on dudes with the others.
The newest actress of the bunch next to Carono, Saldena has some action movies under her belt, but she's not as established as the rest of the cast. So she gets the respectable position of the rookie, and impresses everyone with how good she is at killing people instead of them taking it for granted.
Michelle Rodriguez – Demolitions Expert
When something's too big to shoot, you blow it up. Rodriguez came up digging in the mines in Chile, eventually graduating to working with the explosives. When her family immigrated to the United States, she found work demolishing buildings, but not enough buildings needed demolishing for her tastes. After a run in the Army, working artillery, she got picked up by Jolie and now gets to blow shit up at least once a month, which she says has finally cured her chronic migraines. An out lesbian, if Rodriguez isn't on a mission, she's at a bar, smoking a cigar with a stranger perched on her lap.
C'mon, guys, you can't have an over-the-top female ensemble action movie with no Michelle Rodriguez. She's been preparing for this role her whole life. In every action movie, someone needs to blow something up by hitting one of those phallic detonators with the red button on top. M-Rod can do that while saying something in Spanish with "bitch!" or "motherfucker!" for emphasis. Case closed.
Tom Hardy – The Charmer
Every dude team has a token chick with her zipper undone to the cleavage. So the chick team gets a token guy who shows off his arms a lot and maaaaybe wears leather pants. He can charm and joke his way into any situation, and has a thing with one of the ladies since, you know, romance subplot. Sometime in the second act, he gets grievously wounded so the ladies can have the spotlight all to themselves, only to pop back up at the end in a hospital bed.
Tom Hardy, I don't know, I guess he's popular with the kids these days. Basically, we're just going to completely avoid the scene where some hot chick needs to dress slutty for justice, and instead have Tom Hardy act chill for justice. Cool? Cool.
Allison Brie – The Hacker
Every genre fiction in the 21st century needs some cute, pop-culture-obsessed hacker and we are no different. Only now she's Allison Brie. Might experiment with her cosplay outfits whilst doing her job. Tends to piss off Weaver like nothing else, but she's too good at her job for Weaver to bend her over her knee.
Also, we need an adorably woobie sub for all the badass ladies to dom SHHHHHH.
Jason Momoa – The Villain
So I figure for the villain, we'll do a classic bit-—the criminal mastermind with a fanatically loyal sexy henchwoman. To which, of course, all the ladies will react "Oh, okay." Maybe it turns out she's running the whole thing, what am I, a writer? Anyway, Momoa's a big guy, so naturally he'll end up in a brutal two-on-one fight with, let's say, Q and Carono. Not in a "it takes two girls to beat up a man!" way, but in a The Raid "this guy is so good it has to be two on one!" Only here, there's the added factor that he's fucking huge and they can actually shop for shoes at non-zoo locations. Anyway, they win.
Noomi Rapace – The Villainous Leather Catsuit Chick
Like I said, every self-respecting supervillain needs a quiet, creepy henchwoman to get into a fight with, oh, let's say Beckinsale. And when has Noomi Rapace gotten to play a badass villain? Let's fix that.
Jeremy Renner – The Villainous Leather Catsuit Dude
Same deal as before. We need a little more guy candy for the ladies and someone to fight, I don't know, Michelle Rodriguez in a John Woo style shoot-out. Which he'll lose. Should've stuck to arrows, Renner.
Okay, that's enough for the first movie, as you want to give everyone time to shine. But there are so many great actresses and so many great female action stars specifically, that there's no way this can't be a franchise. To improve on The Expendables model a bit, every film should have someone die, retire, whatever, to clear the way for some fresh blood. You don't want this to turn into X-Men: The Last Stand, with thirty different characters running around and each of them getting two lines apiece.
That said, in the next movie, let's have…
Rhona Mitra – The Rogue
A completely self-interested mercenary who does things like steals sensitive information and sells it to the highest bidder. Never seen without her partner in crime, Zoe Bell. They're sisters or something.
Eva Green – The Spy
Our gals are more the shoot-first, ask-questions-whenever sort, but sometimes you need someone to ask questions, preferably while in a designer gown that looks like it's made out of diamonds. Eva Green shows up in the opening of a movie, working with our team, sends them on their way, maybe betrays them, maybe gets killed for pathos, maybe jumps off a cliff and opens up a parachute with the French flag on it.
Michelle Yeoh – The Big Bad
It's not easy to top Khal Drogo, but once we've established the team, let's bring in fucking Super Cop 2 as the ultimate villainess. She's an one-woman army who can outshoot, outfight, and out-explode the whole team at once.
JeeJa Yanin – The Evil Daughter
And of course, she has a completely twisted relationship with her zealously obedient daughter, who is also a ridiculously lethal martial artist. While Yeoh gets the big "entire team has to bring her down" fight, Yanin could have the more personal one-on-one with Q.
Michael Ealy – The Boyfriend
All these movies need some concerned boyfriend or girlfriend who is so worried about his or her boo going into danger. And I hear that Michael Ealy cat is not in danger of catching the unattractives anytime soon. So let's add even more color to our cast and give the straight ladies just a few more abs at the same time.
Pam Grier – The Director
Every sequel needs a plot where the team gets framed for stealing a ton of plutonium so the director of the CIA, who fuck you is a badass black chick, sends hordes of trained killers after them until her old friend Linda Hamilton calls in a favor and gets the Ladypendables twenty-four hours to prove their innocence, then she saves the day at the last minute and gets a grudging "You're all right, you bitch" from Sigourney Weaver.
I've tried to avoid TV actors in this, since Kate Beckinsale, Milla Jovovich, and Angelina Jolie teaming up is a big fucking deal in a way that, sorry to say, Katee Sackhoff and Gina Torres aren't. Maybe if the movie's a big hit, there could be a TV spin-off. I'm down for "Eliza Duskhu Playing Eliza Dushku & Friends: The Series."
