ABSTRACT
Undoubtedly the most iconic of these is Angelina Jolie’s potent incarnation of the world’s most famous video game character, Lara Croft, in 2001’s adventure thriller Tomb Raider. In 2000 the comic-strip mutants of X-Men included stunning superheroine X-women played by Famke Janssen, Halle Berry and Rebecca RomijnStamos; Drew Barrymore, Cameron Diaz and Lucy Liu teamed up as glamorous private detectives in the big screen Charlie’s Angels; and a dutiful Michelle Yeoh locked swords with mysterious Zhang Ziyi in the martial arts chivalry film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. We can add to this list the tomboy-ish Milla Jovovich and butch Michelle Rodriguez as commandos in the survival horror picture Resident Evil (2002), and the digital perfection of computer-generated scientist Dr Aki Ross in the epic science fiction Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (2001) (voiced by Ming-Na). In their shared concern with showcasing female stars as beautiful action heroines in beautiful fantasy action spectacles, these movies comprise an interesting category for critical analysis. In the argot of contemporary popular culture, through their combinations of ‘eye candy’ and ‘the ride’, those elements of cinematic
contemporary action babe cinema.2
