The All-Female Expendables

by RFP

If you haven't seen The Expendables yet, then clearly you are a flimsy girly man, afraid to bask in the unadulterated testosterone and overwhelming machismo of several manly men doing manly things.

After seeing all the explosions and gunfire and computer-generated blood, only one word floated in my otherwise vacuous head: awesome. You tend to block out the horrible dialogue and paper-thin plot and focus on the carnage. If I wanted to think, I would've have went to Inception. I tried to find out how many blank shells were used during filming, but my search came up empty¹

It's not going to be an Oscar candidate, but it's everything you would want and expect out of the greatest action heroes of the last 30 years.² 

It would've been a mess of a story and completely impossible due to rights issues, but wouldn't it have been great to see the greatest badass characters in film history team up?³

For the record, my dream team would be: Conan the Barbarian, Rambo, Mad Max, Lee (Bruce Lee from Enter the Dragon), James Bond (Sean Connery style, please), Leon the Professional, Shaft (Samuel L. Jackson style, please) and special consultants, Indiana Jones and Walker, Texas Ranger.

Why, Walker, Texas Ranger? Because Chuck Norris could still kick any of our asses. And when you're in Texas, look behind you. Cuz that's where a ranger's gonna be.⁴

In keeping with the equal rights movement, women should get their chance to kick ass on the big screen as well. I've drafted up my version of an All-Woman Expendables. The rules for inclusion on this team are as follows:

1. The woman must have kicked sufficient ass on the big screen.
2. The woman must have a certain amount of sex appeal because I am a shallow pig like that. I wouldn't kick any of these ladies out of bed for eating cookies. 
3. The above statement applies to all but one of the ladies on the team. It's sad that I have to state this explicitly, but I do. One of the ladies on the team is a 12 year old girl. Don't be gross. Again, she is exempted from Rule #2, but none of the others.
4. We're going with fictionalized characters here, like the "dream team" I presented a few paragraphs ago. Although, even these women presented as themselves as new characters could carry an all- female Expendables squad.

The List.

Red Sonja (Brigette Nielsen)

The Red Sonja Brigitte Nielsen is a far cry from the monstrous old woman who pounced on Flavor Flav. Even before she was Ivan Drago's bride, she was swinging a sword and vanquishing evil. Despite the fact that Red Sonja's world was the same time period and world of Conan the Barbarian and DESPITE the fact that Arnold Schwarzenegger was in Red Sonja and played Conan in two previous movies...his character was not Conan the Barbarian. How disappointing. Again, probably a pesky rights issue.

While looking for this picture of Nielsen as Red Sonja, I discovered that she took a few promotional pictures dressed up as She-Hulk, the Hulk's cousin. At the time, Marvel Comics had turned the popular Incredible Hulk TV series (starring Lou Ferrigno and Bill Bixby) into a series of made for television movies. 

I'm sure someone thought that they could spin-off She-Hulk into its own entity. 

Hit Girl (Chloe Moretz)

This is the aforementioned 12-year old girl that, as stated before DOES NOT APPLY TO RULE #2.

Her inclusion on this list is obvious to anyone who has seen the movie, Kick Ass.

She's a miniature version of Batman, trained from a young age to fight and kill. While most kids her age were playing with Barbies, she was getting shot in the chest while wearing a bullet proof vest, just so she knows how it feels.

She's the closest thing to a super hero in Kick Ass, albeit a super hero that slaughters countless criminals, gets switchblades⁵ for her birthday, and curses joyously the whole time.

The Bride (aka Beatrix Kiddo) (Uma Thurman)

Could you do this list without Kill Bill's main protagonist? Beatrix slashes her way through the gang that left her for dead on her wedding day.⁶ She can fight AND she knows the Five Point Palm Exploding Heart Technique.⁷

Wonder Woman (Lynda Carter)

Not many people could pull this costume off. Lynda Carter sure does. Wonder Woman is super strong. She's an Amazon and lived with women the majority of her life. Hot.

She also has bracelets that deflect bullets, which seems rather useless. Like, couldn't you use that same material to cover her whole body? Thank God, they didn't. Like I said, that costume.

Wonder Woman also has a lasso, which is basically truth serum in rope form. That lasso gets ahold of you, you cannot tell a lie. That makes her impossible to date, but still fun to look at.

Based on my knowledge of "Super Friends" cartoons, she had an invisible jet, which seems pretty useless. "Look, up in the sky! It's Wonder Woman! Look out, she's squatting down like she's going to poo!"

That's what someone sitting on an invisible seat in an invisible jet would look like. Hopefully, that jet's been vanquished from current Wonder Woman tales.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Sarah Michelle Gellar)

As stated before, I am not a big fan of vampires these days. 

She's got the standard fighting skills to take down vampires, werewolves, demons, and all sorts of supernatural creatures of the night.

Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton)


If she can survive Schwarzenegger-skinned, metallic exoskeletons and dripping liquid cyborgs that look like Mulder's replacement on The X-Files, then she can survive anything.


Except leukemia.⁸




Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver)

Predators hunt the Aliens for sport because they are dangerous and formidable, or so the Aliens vs. Predator series would have you believe.

Ripley can take them out all by herself. That makes her a tough broad and she makes the team.

Catwoman (Michelle Pffeiffer)

No offense to Halle Berry, but Pffeiffer is my current day Catwoman of choice. Something about that costume. I know that the leather and whip theme makes it seem like some S & M fetish, but c'mon. What male that grew up in the '80s and '90s didn't fantasize about this Catwoman?

Xena, Warrior Princess (Lucy Lawless)

She's got razor sharp frisbees and a battle cry that comes straight from mid-coitus. She tangles with gods (like Ares, god of war) on a regular basis and beds Hercules like it's no problem.

That's my team. There's probably a few more I could have included, but I will let you do that in the comments section.

-RFP
www.miserableretailslave.com





<sup>Footnotes:


1. I did however find this link: a weapon-by-weapon guide to the arsenal used in The Expendables. Pretty cool.

2. God, that Dolph Lundgren is looking like a hideous wreck of a man these days. Can't remember the last time that I saw him, maybe around Masters of the Universe and The Punisher, but, man, the years have not been kind.

3. Maybe it wouldn't have been too hard. Just copy the premise of Predators. Have the Predators kidnap all the BA guys throughout time and space, deposit them on a planet to hunt, then watch the total armageddon that is bound to occur.

4. This will explain.

5. She doesn't get a switchblade. At least, I don't think that's what it's called. I don't feel like looking it up, but you get the gist.

6. Sometimes when I'm in uber-dork mode, I see parallels between two completely unrelated pieces of fiction. In this case, I was instantly amazed between the superficial parallels between Scott Pilgrim and The Bride. Both had to fight these groups that stood in their way (Bride = Deadly Viper Assassination Squad; initially for revenge for what happened to her fiance, then to rescue the unborn child that she thought had died) & (Pilgrim = League of Evil Exes; to continue dating Ramona Flowers, but ultimately to gain some self respect).

Both groups consist of seven members (Vipers = "Copperhead" Vernita Green, "California Mountain Snake" Elle Driver, "Cottonmouth" O-Ren Ishii, "Sidewinder" Budd, Sofie Fatale, Johnny Mo, "Snake Charmer" Bill) & (Deadly Exes = Mathew Patel, Lucas Lee, Todd Ingram, Roxy Richter, Kyle and Ken Katayanagi, Gideon Graves)

Both films feature over the top fight scenes.

Just an observation.

7. No relation to Five Finger Death Punch

8. According to Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, she died from that very thing.</sup>