Vote up the times action heroines were just as ruthless as any villain.
Some of the most ruthless kills in action films come from actresses who stole action movies, as in the action movies wouldn't kick as much butt as they do without the following evil action heroine moments. Much like the most cold-blooded villain moments, the scenes in question here concern heroines who make no bones about dishing out pain.
Audiences are used to villains and their henchmen wielding ruthlessness like a weapon, but by the '80s, female action heroes started to get straight-up cruel. This doesn't mean that you can't be on their side. On the contrary, the ruthlessness shown by these female action heroes is often accompanied by an entire theater full of fist pumps. Audiences want their heroines to be cold-blooded.
Don't get it twisted, not all of these cold-blooded action heroine moments are created equally. Some of these ruthless moments are carried out as acts of revenge, others seemingly come out of nowhere, and a few are born from necessity. It's up to you to let us know which cold-blooded action heroine moments show that protagonists can be just as cruel as their enemies.
Beatrix Kiddo, AKA the Bride, dishes out brutality throughout the Kill Bill films, but there's really only one moment that could be included here. It's not when she lays waste to the Crazy 88. It's not when she takes out one of her old assassin partners in front of the woman's daughter. It's when she leaves one of her worst enemies bleeding out in a trailer with a poisonous snake.
Elle lost her right eye after the martial arts master Pei Mei ripped it out due to her insolence. Kiddo finishes the job after going head-to-head with Elle in their old partner Bud's trailer. The two turn the place into kindling, literally ripping out the walls to destroy one another. Rather than simply whomping Elle to death, Kiddo rips the woman's eye out and leaves her flailing on the ground near an extremely venomous black mamba.
Hanna is full of cold-blooded moments that show just how ruthless a teenage girl can be, but the audience sees just how cold the film's hero can be early on in the film when Hanna lays waste to a group of operatives attempting to console her. After she's brought in by the CIA to be studied in an underground base, Hanna pulls the ol' cry card as soon as she comes face-to-face with a decoy version of Marissa Wiegler, the head of a military group that creates young super soldiers.
The decoy does her best to comfort the crying Hanna, and that's exactly when Hanna cuts the tears. She immediately snaps the decoy's neck without a thought before taking out the guards in the room and destroying all of the cameras recording her every movement. It's hard to undersell just how hard this scene rocks.
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Zoe Bell And Her Friends In 'Death Proof' Plant A Boot Right In The Middle Of Stuntman Mike's Skull
Out of all of Quentin Tarantino's films, Death Proof brings with it a cold-blooded protagonist that everyone can get behind. Literally, because Zoe Bell spends most of the movie riding the hood of a 1970 Dodge Challenger while Kurt Russell's Stuntman Mike tries to run her and her friends off the road.
Stuntman Mike's whole deal is assaulting women with his suped-up car, whether it's by wrecking the car while they're in it, or by taking part in a game of extreme cat-and-mouse until the women give up. Zoe and her friends don't give up. In fact, they turn the tables on Mike and smash his ride until he's laid out in a bit of twisted metal on the side of the road - but that's not the cold-blooded moment.
Zoe and her friends show how ruthless they are when they drag a barely responsive Mike out of his car and beat the crap out of him in a tornado of punches until they stomp his head in on the concrete. It's such a pleasing moment that you may not want it to end.
Photo: The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2 / Lionsgate
Katniss Everdeen is one of the most ruthless protagonists in recent history, but there's one moment that shows her flair for drama even in the midst of revenge. After Snow has been removed from power by Coin in Mockingjay - Part 2, Snow is put on display specifically so Katniss will take him out. That's not exactly how things go down.
Rather than execute Snow in public, she instead assassinates Coin in full view of everyone in the Capitol. This isn't just taking out a baddie - this is Katniss taking out a treacherous villain to remind anyone who would take Coin's place that they'll suffer the same fate if they play with the lives of the people in any district.
Furiosa is easily one of the most intense action heroes of the last 30 years - regardless of gender. She's so ruthless in Fury Road that she makes the titular Mad Max look like he's just along for the ride. Throughout the film, she pushes people around, outsmarts the genuinely unhinged and super creepy Immortan Joe, and tears through the desert with little regard to anything but the safety of the girls she's transporting, but the moment that proves she's the realest of the real comes at the end of the movie.
After discovering that there is no sacred "green place" as discussed in her clan's history, Furiosa returns with a vengeance to Immortan Joe's Citadel. In this climactic battle, Furiosa is thrashed so hard that her prosthetic arm is pulled off, but that doesn't stop her from making her way to the driver-side door of Joe's big rig, where she mutters, "Remember me?" before ripping his jaw clean off with the help of a chain and one of Joe's tires.
Ripley really didn't want to be brought back to life after taking herself out at the end of Alien 3, and while it could be argued that this Ripley is technically a clone named Ripley 8, for all intents and purposes, this is Ellen Ripley, and she is not stoked on waking up 200 years in the future to fight more Xenomorphs.
Aside from cloning Ripley, the military scientists aboard the Auriga also cloned a Xenomorph Queen using DNA from Ripley, which ends up birthing a Xenomorph that looks kind of like a human. This creature bonds with Ripley, not the Xenomorph Queen, which is what makes Ripley's disposal of the creature all the more cruel. To get this Xenomorph off her escape ship, Ripley uses her acidic blood to burn a hole in one of the ship's windows, which creates just enough decompression to suck it out into space.
