Alien
Director – Ridley Scott – 1979 – US – X – 116 mins 35 secs
*****
Blade Runner
Director – Ridley Scott – 1982 – US – AA – 117 mins 04 secs
*****
Thelma & Louise
Director – Ridley Scott – 1991 – US – 15 – 129 mins 22 secs
*****
At the end of Alien, Ripley (Sigourney Weaver), having defeated the monster, strips down to her underwear only to discover that she hasn’t defeated it at all and it’s still in the space shuttle with her in the archetypal Hollywood false ending of recent years. It begged the question, why did Ripley remove her clothing at this point if not for the obvious gratification of the male members of the audience (and, one should add, the accompanying box office returns)?
At the end of Thelma & Louise, the eponymous heroines (Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon respectively), on the run after the former’s rapist has been murdered after the event by the latter, find themselves trapped between the Grand Canyon’s gaping precipice on one side of them and massed hordes of police marksmen, ready to open fire if they don’t surrender, on the other. No pandering to male voyeurism here.… Read the rest
