/Response: Your Favorite Female Badasses In The Movies

(Welcome to /Response, the companion piece to our /Answers series and a space where /Film readers can chime in and offer their two cents on a particular question.)

Earlier this week, the /Film team wrote about our favorite female badasses in the movies. We then opened the floor to our readers: who is your favorite kick-ass lady to appear in a film? And you let us know!

We have collected our favorite answers (edited for length and clarity) below. Next week's question, in honor of It Comes At Night: what is your favorite cinematic end of the world? Send your (at least one paragraph, please) answer to slashfilmpitches@gmail.com!

While it would easy to go with fantastical physical badasses like Black Widow, Alice and LeeLoo or Mother-figure badasses like Sarah Conner or Ellen Ripley, I'm going with Clarice Starling from The Silence of the Lambs.

From the first sequence, we see that Clarice is in top physical shape running the FBI training course in Quantico, but we also know that she is human. We immediately see that she isn't intimidated being the lone woman in a "man's world" and continues to push boundaries and "lean in." She's whip-smart and refuses to quit her investigation at any point. She's resourceful to the point of using a car jack to gain entry into Louis Friend's storage unit.

She's a badass for being not afraid to stand up to patriarchal authority, whether it's a local sheriff, an ME, or even her own boss. Her retort to him regarding his infantilizing of her in front of the local cops was perfectly badass. She descends into the lion's den and goes toe-to-toe with Hannibal Lector. Her fear is palpable on many occasions, yet she presses through it as a true, real-world badass would. She works out who Buffalo Bill actually is (while her boss is on a wild goose chase) and in True Hero fashion, kills the bad guy in a shootout and saves the girl (and the dog). Clarice Starling is just a normal woman asked to do extraordinary things, possessing only her wits, a .38 revolver, and a trainee badge. And she's a badass for surviving it all. (Christopher Schera)

Adam Wingard's 2011 horror-comedy does such a great job of playing with home invasion and slasher tropes that we've seen hundreds of times in horror movies, but the best thing it does is subvert your expectations with it's main character, Erin (Sharni Vinson). When we're introduced to Erin, she's accompanying her boyfriend Crispian to his family reunion in an isolated country house, and the set-up for a seemingly standard home invasion horror movie is underway. As we're introduced to the other characters and Erin meets her boyfriends family, we don't learn too much about our heroine. She seems like another quiet, meek girl that could easily fit into the 'Virgin' archetype that The Cabin In The Woods expertly described as the final girl that so many slasher films have used as their main character.

It's not until shit hits the fan and the family quickly starts being picked off that we begin to understand how formidable and resourceful this woman actually is. Erin's the only person that seems to be able to act calmly and rationally while being hunted by crazed killers, is the only one who can think on her feet and come up with smart, creative ways to escape death, and is the only one capable of taking out these killers. We see her take charge and lead the rest of the family in setting up traps and devising plans to survive the night.

About halfway through the movie, it's revealed that Erin grew up on a survivalist compound where she learned combat training and survival skills. This reveal flips the script, because now we know that the most dangerous person in the film is not the armed murders, but the badass woman fighting for her life. Most horror movies will have the villain killing the good guys in creative, bloody ways that make us squirm and cower because we feel bad that these good people are dying at the hands of madmen. But the second half of You're Next has us cheering and applauding as Erin takes out these killers in gruesome, bloody, and sometimes hilarious ways. We even get one of the best kills in horror movie history, with the fantastic blender-to-the-head scene. (Jack Hallett)

She's pint-sized and she packs a punch. Little Mindy McCready can take a hit...in fact, she can take a bullet. Not to be outdone by her Big Daddy, she can kick more ass than the titular Kick-Ass. Enough wordplay. Hit-Girl would hate that.

Mindy was born to be a killer, literally. Her dad trained her to take out bad guys at an early age. As such, she's an expert in all weapons, hand-to-hand combat, oh and she can do this. She has the best one-liners and that's because she's the best character in the whole film. If you haven't seen her switch from sweet, little young lady to foul-mouthed death-bringer, you're in for a treat. It doesn't get more badass than a purple-coiffed, detachable sword-wielding pre-teen. If I was backed into a corner, I'd want her there with me. (Seth Finck)

In David Fincher's The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, we were introduced to a petite female hacker with a photographic memory and a hatred for men who hate women. Not only did she suffer a horrifying sexual assault and got just revenge, but she singlehandedly saved James Bond, solved a decades old murder/disappearance mystery, and stole all the dirty money from a crooked billionaire in the most legit way possible. Sony decided against green-lighting the sequels, which is a shame simply for the fact that most people won't know the full story of Lisbeth Salander, and are stuck with just this one film's story.

I am here to implore you to delve deeper. Not only is she one of the greatest badasses in cinema, but Salander is one of the greatest female characters in literature. While we only got to see one brilliant performance by Rooney Mara in the United States, Swedish audiences were fortunate enough to get three brilliant performances by Noomi Rapace. They both are able to showcase a woman who has every injustice imaginable thrown her way, and yet her determination allows her to rise up and persevere. She's socially awkward and resides in the grey area of the law, but her convictions are so strong and resolute that it's empowering to both men and women. You can't help but audibly cheer for her as she is seeking revenge. She's got the drive of a terminator!

While I'll always wonder how Fincher would have handled the rest of her story, I am encouraged that we are getting more Lisbeth from Don't Breathe's Fede Alvarez. Until The Girl in the Spider's Web comes out, however, I urge you to do some homework. Watch the Swedish trilogy on Netflix. Read the Millennium series (a fifth entry is out later this year). She may not have superpowers, but by the end you'll consider Lisbeth Salander to be an actual hero. (Chase Dunnette)

The 2012 adaptation of Dredd was an intelligent, unorthodox, ultraviolent comic book film ripe with rich worldbuilding and fantastic characters. While Karl Urban may be the titular protagonist, Lena Headey's Madeline Madrigal, aka Ma-Ma, is the real star of the picture. Don't let her warm maternal name fool you, Ma-Ma is nothing short of an amoral, sadistic, sociopathic, fascistic dictator and tyrant, a product of Mega City One's violent and anarchic environment. Ma-Ma bears a brutal facial scar (a reminder of her and the city's violent past), is built like a drug addict, and rarely bathes or brushes her hair. But beneath that grimy exterior is a cerebral and commanding persona, one worthy of taking down our heroes and anything else that stands in her way.

Ma-Ma began her ascent as a prostitute and finished extracting her revenge on the pimp responsible for her facial scars, taking over his criminal empire in the process. This kind of "origin story" contextualizes her own ruthlessness in the terror that is Mega City One. While inhumane, she wasn't born that way. She was socialized into a culture of cruelty through prostitution and violence. These life experiences imparted a crucial lesson for survival in Mega City One: one wields power in proportion to one's malice. Ma-Ma's ability to adapt to the rules of the game demonstrate her intelligence and resolve. As despicable as her actions are — she's introduced in a scene where she orders men skinned alive and thrown to their deaths — there's something undeniably admirable about her Hobbesian intelligence. She realizes that it's a "dog-eat-dog" world in the city, and accepts that her own demise will be as brutal as her life.

Which leads me to extol the beauty of her death. Great villains need great deaths, and few are given a more stunning or memorable exit. Dredd tells her the crimes she is charged with and throws her through a window to fall 200 floors to her death. The audience follows that journey mostly from her perspective via slow-motion, with Ma-Ma falling gracefully among the shards of glass, arms out to her side, with seemingly calm acceptance of her fate. It's visually arresting and mirrors the violence she herself has perpetrated. In short, Ma-Ma is a calculating and intoxicating presence; a genuine female badass worthy of the crown. (Mike Silangil)

When I think of a female badass, I think of a woman who is independent, powerful, doesn't-give-a-shit, and can, well, kick ass. I only had to think for two seconds who my favorite female badass in film is and that would be Ramona Flowers from Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. She is the definition of cool — not talking to anyone at parties because she doesn't have to, changing her hair color every few weeks because why not, and rollerblading through everyone's subspace highway in their heads like it's no big deal. You know, exactly what you'd expect from someone so cool. Ramona is a fickle and free-spirited female badass.

Scott is the protagonist in the film, but Ramona informs his actions. In fact, without Ramona, there would be no Scott and therefore no story. And though the movie mainly features Scott fighting Ramona's seven evil exes, the audience is treated to arguably the greatest fight scene with ex #4, and it is spectacular. Just when #4 is winding up to kick Scott in the face, the camera zooms out, and we see Ramona stick up her hand, stop the kick, and bring the scene to a standstill — all with the stunning visual effects surrounding it. And then the bass groove begins. It is an incredible shot and nothing short of amazing. Ramona reveals herself to be more than a capable fighter, serving up kicks, hits, and wielding a giant hammer to defeat her enemy. This is indeed the definition of a badass.

Mary Elizabeth Winstead plays this heroine with poise, mystery, and intrigue, and it is no wonder Scott is willing to go through such extreme lengths to win her heart. (Sam Schabel)