Strong female film characters came into their own as feminism did, toward the end of the 20th century. They started in exploitation ﬂicks—low-budget and sensationalist genre movies which were produced with no intention of meeting critical standards, let alone creating a lasting legacy. The Final Girls of horror, the ultraviolent survivors in rape revenge ﬂicks like Ms. 45, or Pam Grier, whose roles in Coffy and Foxy Brown made her the ﬁrst real female action star: Their artistic legitimacy was questioned, but they were what people needed to see.

Those movies were based on simple math: If watching violence was fun, and watching pretty girls was fun, then pretty violent girls would be fun squared. But the combination was resonant; in the late '70s and early '80s, people were simply ready to see women taking charge, and claiming the same right to plow through enemies that their ﬁctional male counterparts had always enjoyed.

The idea of the woman as action star permeated the culture; soon enough, big- budget movies joined in. James Cameron gave us Sarah Connor in The Terminator, and perhaps the best version of the iconic Ellen Ripley in Aliens. Both of these women are deﬁned around motherhood. But they're strong, smart, and very capable of dispatching killer robots or aliens when duty calls. These women, while carefully constructed to be "feminine" enough to appease a public that liked its gender roles predictable, were decisively not girly; their wardrobes were unisex, their style was military, and one could not imagine them shopping for anything but a more effective ﬂame-thrower. In a way, they were '80s career women—succeeding at a man's game, by men's rules. They just happened to be wearing robotic exoskeletons instead of suits with shoulder pads and built-in bow ties.

And then, we hit the '90s, and the third wave of feminism, and the genre exploded. Movies, television, and even video games were stuffed with action girls. Sarah Connor came back, with more muscles. Ellen Ripley came back, and shaved her head. The new recruits were often disposable or goofy—Lara Croft didn't make it into a movie until 2000, but her omnipresent Tomb Raiding started to grate well before that; those who remember the Tank Girl movie regret it—but at least they weren't rare. And some of them were genuine winners: Lo and behold, there was Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the unapologetically perky, fashionable blonde cheerleader who could ﬁght back the very powers of Hell.

So why have we ended up here? Why Sucker Punch? Well: Movies have to make money. And risks don't sell. After the '90s came the backlash; Strong Women survived, but they no longer got the attention they once did. In the absence of a widespread enthusiasm for Girly Power, misogyny—as always—crept back in.

The Strong Woman Action Heroine may have resonance for women, but she was always based on math: If watching violence is fun, and watching pretty girls is fun, then pretty violent girls will be fun squared. Filmmakers just reverted to that reliable formula. Sure, Quentin Tarantino got to make Kill Bill; he's Quentin Tarantino. But as for the rest of it, we got a slew of interchangeable Ultraviolets and Underworlds with interchangeable latex-and-leather clad heroines, and a revivified Charlie's Angels franchise, for those who preferred their action in a bikini. You could blame the shift on Lara Croft's skin-tight outfits, Tarantino's fetishistic recreations of the exploitation flicks from which female action heroines emerged, or even Buffy and her girl-power miniskirts. But at least two of those three things had redeeming value. And redeeming value is expendable, if you assume your audience would be satisfied with mini-skirts and exploitation.