Jennifer Lawrence Says Women Were Never Leads In Action Movies - Twitter's Proving Her Wrong
When it comes to female action leads, Jennifer Lawrence apparently doesn't think any existed before 2012's "The Hunger Games" — and Twitter is ripping her to shreds over it.
"Soooo is Jennifer Lawrence super dumb or completely ignorant?" blasted writer Tim Young in a tweet that's been liked over 1,500 times. "Jennifer Lawrence doesn't watch movies," said @Bubola.
The Twitter pitchforks came out early Wednesday morning, December 7, after Variety tweeted out a quote from its "Actors on Actors" issue featuring Lawrence and "The Woman King" star Viola Davis. The quote was from Lawrence, with her proclaiming: "I remember when I was doing 'Hunger Games,' nobody had ever put a woman in the lead of an action movie ... We were told girls and boys can both identify with a male lead, but boys cannot identify with a female lead." The tweet lasted about an hour before Variety was forced to delete it due to the backlash it caused.
"Jennifer Lawrence got ratio'd IN ONE HOUR to the point they deleted the whole tweet," said Bleacher Report's Tyler Conway. Another Twitter user, @miltimore, wrote: "Variety just deleted this tweet, which contained a very stupid quote from Jennifer Lawrence, who apparently doesn't actually watch movies."
Now, it would honestly be low-hanging fruit for us here at Looper to list out reasons why Lawrence is, in fact, wrong to say that no other female action leads existed before "The Hunger Games." So we're going to let Twitter do it instead ...
'So what was Pam Grier, Sigourney Weaver, Uma Thurman and [Milla] Jovovich doing?'
As pointed out by Twitter users, Jennifer Lawrence is pretty brave to make such an assertion about female action leads not existing before "The Hunger Games," seeing how there have been countless women in Hollywood who've led not only action movies but entire franchises in the past — and the list should be obvious.
"Now how Jennifer Lawrence gon sit up here and say there wasn't a female actress in an action movie until her in hunger games...So what was Pam Grier, Sigourney Weaver, Uma Thurman and [Milla] Jovovich doing?" said Twitter user @heyjaeee.
"With the [utmost] respect to Jennifer Lawrence, these women (and more) have pioneered female representation in action cinema," tweeted Yoko Higuchi. "Can we be doing more? Absolutely. A lot more," they said. "But we have to acknowledge film history and how these actors have paved the way for film heroines today."
Other movie stars being listed online as female action leads before 2012 include Angelina Jolie, Charlize Theron, Kate Beckinsale, and Halle Berry. But it was ultimately Grier, Weaver, Thurman, and Linda Hamilton that users seemed to be the most shocked about Lawrence not paying her respects to.
"Dear Jennifer Lawrence: You need to see every 'Alien' movie that Sigourney Weaver has been in starting from 1979," said @sloyoroll01973. "Or Linda Hamilton...Terminator starting from 1984. Or Pam Grier...starting in 1972. Come on now," the user added. @Blackamazon summed it up nicely, telling Twitter users: "Jennifer Lawrence saying there were no female action heroes is even more annoying .. because she is a trailblazing millennial action hero. She absolutely redefined a genre and it's more interesting to talk about WHY she was necessary for that than the fake 'first.'"