Guest post by Michelle Mastro.
There is nothing like a ‘90s action film. Their usually over-the-top action and special effects garner these flicks a special place in most audiences’ hearts. Their plots might have been cheesy, and their go-to actors obvious choices—the rotating leads often included Bruce Willis, Mel Gibson, and Arnold Schwarzenegger. However, rarely did these films actually center on heroines, save perhaps for the occasional Linda Hamilton or Milla Jovovich, who mostly stuck with their franchises anyway (the Terminator and Resident Evil series respectively),* and besides, some might even argue that these franchises lie more within the horror than action film genre.
When action films did feature heroines, the women felt more akin to those from videogames. Take for example, Leeloo (Milla Jovovich) from The Fifth Element (1997). Leeloo is, for her time, a great character and laid the foundation for future action heroines. But like many female figures from ‘90s videogames, she had powers and abilities unaccounted for. She didn’t speak English until the plot required her to, and she somehow knew martial arts without ever training. Of course, the plot provided the answer: she was the fifth element. But more or less she functioned as a helpmate for Korben Dallas’ (Bruce Willis) quest to save the world. We even learn near the film’s conclusion that what precipitates her special power to defend Earth is love, or more specifically, her falling in love with Korben Dallas. She seems to have very little of her own identity.
But neither did the ‘90s female heroines from videogames (and of these there were few). Lara Croft, for example, does not get fully fleshed out as a character until later installments. In the 1996 original game she hails from Britain, is wealthy, and works as an archeologist of sorts. In the 1999 Tomb Raider: Last Revelation it is revealed that she does have a family who, when she was a preteen, sent her to study under the tutelage of a renowned explorer. Not much else is known of her, and it is not until during more recent years, with the Tomb Raider: Legend 2006 reboot and following games, that we discover her backstory. Her reason for exploring crypts and tombs is not unlike a Gothic heroine’s: she is seeking out the buried secrets of a past involving the death of her mother. Regardless, in every game Lara is always running. Many missions involve a countdown. And if you wanted to take Lara off running mode, you had to hold down shift and forward simultaneously to line her up with cliff edges, making precise jumps possible, a cumbersome feature in the 1996 original.
This leads us to possibly the most remarkable example of a videogame-inspired heroine. While watching Tom Tyker’s 1998 German film, Run Lola Run (Lola Rennt in German), anyone who has ever played a videogame might easily spot the parallels between the two. The film follows the story of Lola and her mostly bungling boyfriend, Manni, as they recover cash meant to pay a Berlin crime boss. After a frantic call from Manni telling her about how he thoughtlessly misplaced the money on a subway train, Lola must now sprint across the city and get the boss his 100,000 marks, or Manni will die. All this she must accomplish under twenty minutes, and time is quickly running out. The unrealistic plot combined with the running and countdown gesture to the film’s exploration of popular mid-‘90s videogame heroines like Lara from Tomb Raider.
But it is the movie’s structure—prologue, runs one through three, and epilogue—that really solidifies the film’s status as videogame-inspired. Its style incorporates three “runs” whereby Lola must attempt to achieve her mission and beat the “level.” Two of the three cycles, however, result in either her or Manni’s demise, and the game is reset. Thus, each of Lola’s runs amounts to a videogame playthrough. Lola can go back to a certain point (getting the call from Manni) and replay, correcting any mistakes she had made. Many videogames contain checkpoints in a save system, and after a player dies, they are resurrected at the checkpoint, ready to play again and again.
Lola also has special skills not wholly accounted for. Like Leeloo or Lara Croft during the mid and late ‘90s, Lola can just do things. Her glares send men into cardiac arrest, she stops a large truck barreling down on her, and she can save a man’s life by simply holding his hand. However unlikely it might seem at first, Lola senses the game and can break beyond its parameters. She collects new skills along the way, just as gamers do as they play a level over and over. In the first playthrough, for instance, Lola does not know how to handle a gun. Moving into the second run, she does.
In the second playthrough’s animated sequence, she is tripped by a boy and dog on the stairs; by the final run, she has learned to avoid them both. Her last run beginning thus, she forgoes spending time on her cruel father (who helps run a bank). She instead takes a detour to a casino where she relies on herself and not the father, who has repeatedly positioned Lola as an unwanted outsider to the system he represents. (The bank’s guard, like her dad, also insinuates she’s a nuisance and unwelcome.) But in the casino she takes matters into her own hands, betting all her money on a game of roulette. She wins back the 100,000 marks with an extreme “will to power,” screaming a high pitch that breaks glass but also arrests the roulette table’s wheel at the random number she had bet on. A clock on the wall also halts in its revelation. She has stopped the clock. At this moment, it’s almost as if she is pulling from power within herself. She closes her eyes, musters all her energy, and lets out a scream. Onlookers can only watch, confused by how she is able to beat the system, the game they are all playing and where the house always wins.
Scholars have noted the parallels between Run Lola Run and videogames, discussing, mostly, their visual and stylistic similarities. However, they fail to observe the conventions of the ‘90s action heroine in videogames and how Run Lola Run presents a significant departure. Ingeborg Majer O’Sickey, for example, calls attention to Lola as “an extraordinary being” with superpowers, powers easily believed by millennial audiences due to Lola’s connection with videogames: “The belief in Lola as super-woman is a result of precisely her construction within the variety of realities, including virtual realities.”** O’Sickey’s description of Lola, “an extraordinary being,” unconsciously recalls terms describing other significant ‘90s action heroines. Leeloo in The Fifth Element is “a supreme being;” Buffy in Buffy the Vampire Slayer is “the chosen one;” and Alice in the Resident Evil series is unlike any others to encounter the T virus, her DNA perfectly blending with it. Why? Because she is just unique. Perhaps, in a way, a lot of these ‘90s action heroines pulled from videogame conventions. Why are the women special? They just are, with no backstory, no real hero’s journey.
We must remember, however, figures from videogames often lack depth. Perhaps as videogame characters, they are meant to be empty—a space in which players vicariously inhabit. Of course, this is no longer the norm. Female characters in videogames have become increasingly fleshed out. Evidence of this is in the recent Tomb Raider (2018), which has perhaps the most sophisticated backstory in its franchise.
Run Lola Run, itself a film about repetition, repeats many of the ’90s videogame tropes but with a definite modification. Lola can imbue her world with her own choices and alter the course of the narrative. Her story turns out not to be a repetition, but a progress. When an animated Lola runs through the opening credits punching the names that appear, she is not simply playing up the action of the film; she is replacing the creators of the movie with her own presence and reaffirms her own creative potential. After the first run, as she lies dying on the concrete, she says, “But I don’t want to leave. Stop.” The film stops and restarts at the last checkpoint when Manni calls. Lola has become the director of her own story.
*Moreover, Resident Evil did not come out until 2002.
**O’Sickey, Ingeborg Majer O’Sickey. “Whatever Lola Wants, Lola Gets (Or Does She?): Time and Desire in Tom Tykwer’s Run Lola Run.” Quarterly Review of Film and Video, Vol. 19, 2002, pp. 123-131.
Michelle Mastro is a PhD student in the English department at IU. There, she studies the development of the novel. Other topics and areas of research include horror films, gender studies, science and literature, the digital humanities, folklore, and childhood studies.