Brow Beat

The Essence of Gender Roles in Action Movies, in One Supercut

It’s been more than a century since movie bad guys first started tying ladies to railroad tracks, but the damsel in distress is still a movie mainstay. And who can save them but a big, strong man and his big, pointy gun?

As chronicled at length by this supercut, this is still what so many action movies come down to—the woman in danger and the hero who demands that the villain “Let her go.” You’d think we’d have gotten over this by 2014—certainly we see the occasional female action star or man in distress—but with the blockbuster Taken franchise now entering its third chapter, I wouldn’t expect it to go away anytime soon. (To see the full list of more than 90 movies, head over to the Huffington Post.)