The British publication Empire Magazine recently published a list of the 100 greatest movie characters of all time, and it didn’t take long for some commentators to note what was missing on the list: women. To be precise, there were three female characters in the top 50, being Ellen Ripley(the Alien quadrilogy) at number 9, Mary Poppins at number 41, and Amelie Poulain (Amelie) at number 45. The entire list is viewable here.
Now, I’ll admit it, when I’ve created lists of my own favorite characters, there haven’t been too many women, but in the interest of being fair and open-minded, I thought it would be good to create a list of generally overlooked female characters, none of whom appeared on the list, but deserve a certain degree of recognition. I’ll be posting one every day this week, but they’re not ranked in any particular way, just because I don’t want to write myself into a corner in case I remember some one who deserves it after I’ve already started ranking.
Marion Ravenwood (Karen Allen) - Raiders of the Lost Ark. Just like Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest made us all miss Geoffrey Rush’s Captain Barbossa, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom made us realize what the lynch pin of Raiders of the Lost Ark was-Karen Allen. The sequel’s plot doesn’t make exponentially more sense than that of the original, nor is the action less exciting, but somehow it left us all feeling a little bit wanting after the magnum opus of action-adventure films that is Raiders of the Lost Ark. Maybe it didn’t help that the woman that she was replaced with was Kate Capshaw, but it showed us just how much a unique female lead can be essential to a film’s dynamic.
And how unique is Marion Ravenwood? The first time that we see her, she’s out drinking a whole bar full of heavies (and some pretty rough customers at that). Minutes later, she’s punching, shooting, and hitting her way of the same bar while said bar is on fire. Granted, she is captured in the finest damsel-in-distress tradition, but she never stops yelling at her captors, always ready to out wit them. Plus, she calls out Indiana Jones when he doesn’t save her at quite the right time (for a perfectly logical reason). Do you know any one who would call out Indiana Jones on anything? I mean, seriously, if Harrison Ford was burning my house down, I’d compliment him on his arson technique.
It’s nice to know that they thought enough of the character to bring her back for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, even if it didn’t give her anything to do but show up awkwardly in the middle of it for no real reason. But we can’t really blame her for that, and problems with that movie are another list entirely.
