Fool of a Took! I said NO TV! You leave me no choice but to shoot Legolas in the face! The elf’s suffering is on your head, and–
:: pauses to read note, realizes that Dibble is talking about Val Kilmer movie ::
Oh, never mind.
And I’m going to shoot Legolas anyway.
*Divergent * has Kate Winslet as the head of the bad guys. She even gets punched in the face at the end.
The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe
The Manchurian Candidate - although maybe not enough fisticuffs and 'splosions to satisfy Skald.
Total Recall - not THE big bad, but one of the villains.
The World Is Not Enough - far from the best Bond picture.
I KNEW someone was going to mention MC. Ah well; all threads drift. At least no one’s mentioned that imaginary adaptation of THE LION, THE WITCH, & THE WARDROBE, which, by virtue of not existing, is obviously not an action movie.
Oh, and you forgot swordfights, Isildur.
X-Men 3: The Last Stand
Maltese Falcon was my thought, too, after I saw that Ursula from that abomination of an adaptation of The Little Mermaid was out. It’s interesting that Disney specializes so heavily in female villains, innit?
Calling TLM an abomination is an insult to kaiju.
Now that you mention it, if a giant robot had come in and beheaded Ursula with a mega-sword, the movie would be immeasurably improved. Assuming the head fell on Ariel and squashed her like a bug.
Sinbad And The Eye Of The Tiger
I am not quite sure if this counts. If it does, the big bad is definitely a woman.
Does nobody here remember Basic Instinct? Maybe not an action movie. Sharon Stone almost always gets to be the villain.
Dunno if Serial Mom counts as an action movie, but she kills a lot of people. She beats someone to death with a turkey leg.
O-Ren Ishii is the functional big bad villain for Kill Bill part 1.
The Ninth Gate
People have been playing kinda fast and loose with the concept of “action movie”, vis a vis what is one and what isn’t one, so I’m going to throw caution to the wind and nominate Mama Fratelli, from The Goonies.
The title character is not the Big Bad in this film, Kamal (Louis Jordan) is.
I’d argue that MISSION IMPOSSIBLE counts: Jon Voight betrays his team – kicking off explosion after explosion, and gun after gun being brandished, and scene after scene of Tom Cruise sprinting for all he’s got – because Vanessa Redgrave paid him to, after which she offers Voight up to Cruise if our hero will pull off the acrobatic heist of the century, after which she decides they’ll make the exchange on a moving train, thus setting up the whole Leap Onto A Moving Train From A Copter That’s About To Explode finale.
Also thought of:
The Hidden - the body-hopping alien criminal controls a human woman for awhile, and while doing so, basically fucks a guy to death. Great movie, really!
Body Heat - still probably not action-oriented enough for Skald.
Under the Skin - ditto as to ScarJo’s new sf movie.
Boy, talk about movies that didn’t actually exist. Jim Phelps is NOT, by DEFINITION, a bad guy!
Romeo is Bleeding.
