HBO is some shiesty little tricksters. They gave me HBO for free long enough to watch the pilot for Game of Thrones, which was really good, and reminded me that they also have True Blood and Entourage. So now I have HBO.

So I'm waiting until it's time to take my new puppy to meet the doctor for the first time and I turn on HBO, and they're showing Terminator Salvation. Now I posted about this movie when I saw it in the theater, but I neglected to mention one scene that to me epitomizes the flaws in this film.

At the end of the movie, when they're running around in the Terminator factory, John Connor gets knocked back by a door flying open, and behind that door stands Arnold (or a facsimile thereof), the original Terminator, the machine who once tried to kill John's mom. But all John ever knew of him was as a friend. The Arnold Terminator saved his life countless times and sacrificed himself for the greater good. If you pretend number 3 didn't exist, which is my preferred way of thinking, then the last time John saw his buddy he was giving the thumbs up on the way to his death. All for John.

So it's years later and John's in the middle of this big battle and he's very stressed out trying to find his dad who's not his dad yet, and suddenly there he is, the only father figure John ever knew. Hey, there would have been a cool theme to pursue given the whole John's about to be a dad and he's looking for his dad and then his dad is kind of fostering a little girl, but somehow that didn't seem like a theme.

Anyway, so John sees, for the first time in a decade or more, his best childhood friend. And John doesn't even take a fucking second to react. He just starts fighting.

What an opportunity that was. You've got this Terminator who hasn't even experienced all these things that John has, he doesn't know his fate, doesn't know this man he will save in the past, and here's someone who does know all the good and bad things he will do, all this history and yet not history between them, and not even a tiny fraction of it is explored.

Why'd they go through the trouble and expense of putting Arnold on that dude's body? Because it was cool. Because in his big moment, audiences would go Ooooooh cool! Not because it matter to the story AT ALL.

It could have mattered to the story. John would have known it wasn't his friend of course, but that doesn't mean he wouldn't need a second to process it, or have doubts, or think he should run instead of fight, because what if he kills the Terminator? The past will never happen. He will never be born, or maybe they'll send a different one that succeed in killing his mother. Maybe some part of this Terminator IS the hero he knew. After all, he never met the bad guy version. Maybe he thinks he can talk the Terminator into doing the right thing. Maybe....

But nope. All they do is fight. Then we move on.

Squandered potential.

Last night while channel surfing I stopped on Aliens. Don't you just love Aliens?

It got me thinking, which is a hobby I picked up. Remember that flap about how Warner Brothers (it was WB, wasn't it?) wasn't going to make anymore films with female action leads because nobody watched them? Well the facts in the case were correct but the reasoning was wrong. Nobody watched those movies because they weren't good, not because they starred women.

You could learn a lot about it by watching Terminators 1 and 2 and then Alien and Aliens. Their heroins have very similar arcs.

In Terminator and Alien, both Ripley and Sarah Connor are not prepared for the danger. Ripley's pretty tough, but not nearly tough enough to take on an alien and poor Sarah is just trying to be a regular old '80s chick. Then a monster invades both of their worlds, and through the help of an attractive man they run. And eventually the attractive man becomes a sacrifice to the monster and the women must learn to fend for themselves.

So a female heroine can work if she has to learn to fight to protect herself. But what happens if she's already a badass?

In Terminator 2 and Aliens, experience has made the woman a big old badass. She's not emotionally cut off, she's terrified of what she's seen and this terror gives her strength because becoming strong is the only way she's been able to overcome her fear. And then she gets a kid to take care of so we remember that she is, in the end, a woman.

Now look at a movie like Ultraviolet or Aeon Flux or any one of those shitty female lead action movies. They have this cold-hearted heroin who starts the story already cutoff from the world, unable to be hurt emotionally or physically. There's no vulnerability. This badass persona is foreign to us so we reject it. Sure, most of those movies toss in a kid or a love interest in danger, but it never feels real because our heroin is so full of anger at what was done to her or just trying to make a buck.

Look at Catwoman. Her motivation is rage. If a woman's enraged, we like it to be because someone hurt her child or put someone she loved in danger. But Catwoman is angry because people tried to kill her and she wants revenge. Blech.

Think about the most iconic scene in Aliens. Are you thinking about it? It's the end, right? That scene where Ripley gets in the machine thingee and yells "Get away from her, you bitch!" She's protecting someone else. Someone who is completely discounted in the third movie which really fucking pisses me off but whatever.

Why does Sarah Connor bust into Myles Dyson's house and put his family in danger? She wants to save the world. You feel the weight of that on her shoulders every step of that story. Of course if she actually does save the world she will create a time paradox, but whatever.

Anyway, this isn't totally a woman thing, either. One of the reasons we love John McClane so much is because he gets completely fucked up in the process of trying to save all those people. He's worried about his wife, but he's also physically vulnerable, as is demonstrated when his feet get all mangled on the broken glass.

So I guess my conclusion after doing all this thinking is that your heroin can be a badass all she wants, but she needs a reason outside herself. She needs to have someone to protect and love, someone who drives her to hurt herself in order to get the job done. And maybe guys can learn a lesson from that, too.