Feminists with a bullet: how the ageing heroine became screen gold

As a greying Linda Hamilton dusts off the rocket launcher to take on a new Terminator, we look at how the cowering victims of 70s horror paved the way for today’s grizzled gunslingers

The trailer for Terminator: Dark Fate hinges on the return of Linda Hamilton’s Sarah Connor to the franchise. Halfway into it, she steps from an SUV with not one but two guns so big that the trailer slips into slow-mo in sheer awe. “Who are you?” another character gasps.

Sixty-two year old women don’t usually get to be action stars. It’s common for guys like Clint Eastwood, Bruce Willis, Harrison Ford and Arnold Schwarzenegger to tote firearms and perform stunts into their 50s, 60s, even 70s. But women in action films are typically younger than their co-stars, often by decades. In last year’s Mission: Impossible – Fallout, Tom Cruise was 55; female lead Rebecca Ferguson was 35.

Continue reading...

from Culture | The Guardian http://bit.ly/2K9vORK