If Jean-Luc Godard really meant it when he said “All you need to make a movie is a girl and a gun”, how come he never made a movie with just a girl and a gun? Vivre Sa Vie might just about scrape through, but Godard basically took it as read that there would be a guy in the mix.

Hollywood, on the other hand, has started to take Godard’s maxim literally. We have had countless “girl and gun” movies recently, and virtually none have stuck. It’s as though the studios looked at Bourne, Bond, John Wick and all the other franchised-up action heroes and all had the same bright idea: “Make the hero a woman!” Often that becomes a woman wearing next to nothing, such as Salma Hayek in Everly. Sometimes, a proper fighter gets cast, like Gina Carano in Haywire. Sometimes our hero is a teenager (Hanna); sometimes it’s a Bourne-like agent (Noomi Rapace in Unlocked). Often, it’s Angelina Jolie (Tomb Raider, Salt, Wanted). And sometimes it’s a chemically enhanced superhuman, such as Scarlett Johansson’s Lucy. That one worked; the others, not so much.

Watch the trailer for Atomic Blonde.

Maybe action really is a man’s game. Not in the sense that women can’t kick ass, just that it’s a genre that has evolved to cater to fantasies of macho manliness. Sticking to the same template and simply switching gender (literally in the case of Salt: Jolie’s part was written for Tom Cruise) was never going to accomplish much.

Enter Charlize Theron. Her chic, smart, combat-ready action spy in Atomic Blonde combines elements of pretty much all the above. She morphs identities like Salt, improvises weapons like Bourne, sports underwear like Everly, and bangs heads like John Wick, especially in one cartoonishly violent combat scene that pretty much justifies the entire exercise.

It is telling that the really successful action women – such as Milla Jovovich in Resident Evil and Kate Beckinsale in Underworld – tend to flourish in other genres. The same is true of Jennifer Lawrence in The Hunger Games or, indeed, Theron in Mad Max: Fury Road. Which brings us to the movie that might actually shake things up: Wonder Woman. That movie’s box-office success proves that the problem wasn’t a lack of appetite for action women. Again, our lead isn’t simply a modified male hero: she’s got her own gynocentric backstory, her own pacifist fighting style, she doesn’t even need a gun. And she’s getting a sequel. Has Wonder Woman changed the landscape and opened up a new era? It feels as though Atomic Blonde is the first real test. It could be the start of a beautiful franchise, or the final proof that you need more than just girls and guns.

Atomic Blonde is out on Wednesday 9 August