It’s difficult to imagine the ethereal beauty that is Michelle Pfeiffer as anything other than a sassy uber vixen, yet when we’re first introduced to her Selina Kyle in director Tim Burton’s noir expressionistic return to the Batman universe, we’re goaded to squirm with pity at her bumbling patheticness – she’s literally unable to serve a cup of tea without letting her quivering nerves get the better of her. Of course it doesn’t help that she’s an assistant for the psychopathic boss, Max Schrek, played by the ever exquisitely unhinged Christopher Walken. Selina Kyle’s desperation to impress him unfortunately backfires as she accidentally uncovers Schrek’s evil super-villain plans to suck Gotham dry of its power and before she can even say “cats have nine lives”, she’s flying out of a 20th floor window, plunging to her demise. That’s a tough day at the office for anyone!

Fortunately, her fall is broken and her ragged lifeless body lands on a snow-covered ground – alive – barely. But stray cats begin to surround her. Are they attacking her? Or are they summoning her? Willing her to rise again. Her eyes finally open – but the emptiness behind them tells us that Selina Kyle is no more. Her catatonia turns maniacal when she arrives home and violently trashes her apartment, smashing her cute little pink ornaments, macerating her stuffed animals and vandalising her walls with angry black paint. As soon as she starts to fashion that catsuit from that shiny patent leather raincoat and attaches those tantalizingly brutal razor claws – we realise at that moment that we are not worthy!! Many will cite this iconic scene as a watershed moment for their own sexual, queer and/or kinky awakenings – her shiny red lips, that long cracking whip and all that… shiny... leather... licking. A bold, brash and unapologetically sexual woman emerges from a vessel that once commanded zero agency. Her voice will now be heard, she will take what she wants, when she wants – and she will take revenge on all those that did her harm. She is a woman in all her primal animalistic power. SHE IS CATWOMAN – HEAR HER ROAR!

Believe it or not, the hefty weight of saving all of humankind from extinction hasn’t always rested on Sarah Connor’s petite yet buff shoulders… it’s easy to forget that when we first meet the young preppy and devastatingly ordinary Sarah Connor she’s riding, carefree, on her scooter to her waitressing job at a diner full of obnoxious customers that easily give her the run around. When you think of Sarah Connor from the Terminator franchise, the fierce, muscular, rifle-donning, camo vest-wearing, no-nonsense soldier in Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991) would likely come to mind, but rewind to the first film of the franchise, The Terminator (1984), Sarah Connor is essentially a damsel in distress for most of this film. What starts off as an innocent movie night when she’s stood up by her Friday-night date, turns into an all-out race to save her life as she learns from a man, Kyle Reece, who has travelled from the future to protect her from a cyborg Terminator (yes, our Arnie) who has also been sent back in time to kill her because her future son, John Connor, will grow up to be the leader of the resistance against the Skynet AI system uprisings that will go on to wipe out all of humanity by nuclear warfare. Did you get all that?? It took her a while too.

Sarah Connor is initially a woman in need of protection. She’s scared, visibly shaken, and as the veil of reality lifts she’s wracked with confusion and self-doubt – hell, she can’t even balance her own checkbook! (her words) “Some legend, huh? You must be disappointed…” she says to Kyle. But the resourcefulness of the future soldier that she’ll become is innate – revealing itself in small slivers. When she pulls Kyle from car wreckages, dresses his wounds for him, and drags him away from sudden death. As The Terminator nears his target in the climatic finale, Sarah Connor takes charge, hoisting up a limp and dying Kyle, screaming with a guttural might that would raise the dead: “ON YOUR FEET SOLDIER!!”. And there she is! The Sarah Connor that we all know. The sharp, tough, decisive, commander has arrived and no man will ever be left behind – not on her watch.

Back in the early waitressing scene, a fellow waitress says to her “put it this way, in a hundred years, who’s gonna care?” The answer is: us. We will care. Because it’s Sarah f*cking Connor. Legendary Mother of the Skynet Resistance. An she has a world to save.

It’s an absolute travesty the time it took from when we first met Scarlett Johansson’s Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow in Iron Man 2 all the way back in 2010 to when she finally gets her own film Black Widow in 2021. Eleven long years. In that time we got whole trilogies for her male counterparts: Captain America, Iron Man, Thor, even Spiderman… sometimes, all you can say to that is a good old fashioned “f*ck the patriarchy”.  

But there is consolation in waiting the 11 long years that we did for the Black Widow film – not least because we got Florence Pugh cast to play Natasha’s sister. Black Widow’s origin story finally explores Natasha Romanoff’s murky past as a secret Russian KGB operative before she joins the forces for the greater good, S.H.E.I.L.D and the Avengers, to fight and protect mankind. Until now, we had only  been offered morsels of her dark past throughout her appearances in the MCU - “I’ve got red in my ledger” she’d often say in moments of vulnerability, defining her existence as purely redemptive. In Black Widow we finally learn that her abominable past actions as an agent hadn’t quite been what we had been lead to believe – she had been chemically brainwashed by forces beyond her control, her childhood robbed as she’s forced into servitude as a child soldier. Despite finding out that none of her past was her fault, we’re confronted by a realisation of how deep Natasha’s traumas run. I can’t help but go back and re-evaluate her entire contribution to the MCU – her wry sass and her soldier-like stoicism that clearly mask the deep sadness beneath – and we finally get to understand why it was so important for her to find her friends after The Blip, why she never gave up the search when many just accepted the disaster and moved on. She would never give up the good fight – even if it would cost Black Widow her life.

The horror genre has long been obsessed with a good origin story – the question of what makes a killer a killer has fascinated audiences for decades (enter the true crime genre stage left). Horror gives a platform for the return of the repressed – the traumas that are so deep-set and disturbing that it can only manifest itself in our darkest nightmares. Director Ti West with inimitable actress, Mia Goth, can do no wrong with their horror pastiche-athon of films that, at the centre of them all, explore the monstrous female desire for something that is lost or unobtainable. Whether it is the loss of youth and time in their first film, X (2022), which sees a reclusive elderly farmhouse owner, Pearl, embark on a gloriously grindhouse murder spree of an adult film crew shooting a porno in her farmhouse; or the loss of recognition and glory in their follow-up film, Pearl (2022), a prequel origin story set in 1918, of the young Pearl as our budding murderous dreamer with Golden Age Hollywood stars in her eyes.

In Pearl, Pearl is crushed by the tediousness of her existence, living and working on the farm looking after her puritanical elderly parents as she waits for her husband to return from the war. Her only escape is into the movies of the silver screen, losing herself in the fantasy that one day she, herself, will be gracing the stage and screen and adored by millions. So when a local talent search comes to town it seems that her prayers have been answered – winning it would be her ticket out of her humdrum life, away from her parents, away from mediocrity. She HAS to make it – one way or another! Her wish for adoration and stardom edges further and further into a hideous desperation – shrouding her under a cloud of darkness and cruelty, which, after her first kill (one of the farm animals) sees Pearl in free fall. When she doesn’t make the cut her world implodes, and she gives in fully to her psychotic tendencies – upgrading to humans – sealing her fate. Pearl will make waves in her own way… and with Ti West and Mia Goth’s third instalment MaXXXine (2024) on the way, which will be a tasty pastiche of 80s video store horror, the X universe continues to giveth.

Shuri has never actually been a side-kick to anyone, not even to her brother, King T’Challa aka Black Panther aka King of Wakanda. Her gifted smarts for tech has always been the crux of holding together a plan – as demonstrated in the Marvel Phase Three 2-part finale extravaganzas Avengers: Infinity War (2018) and Avengers: End Game (2019) when the protection of her abilities to extract an infinity stone becomes the lynchpin of thwarting a plan of unleashing utter world carnage. Her CV can certainly earn a “works well under pressure” credit.

But after the untimely death of actor Chadwick Boseman who played the original Black Panther, the film makers chose to make an editorial virtue of this for the Black Panther sequel, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022), where King T’Challa/Black Panther is also dead and the people of Wakanda are mourning the loss of their king and their protector. And Shuri is mourning her brother and her role model. Initially, there seems to be no worthy successor but despite being just a teenager, Shuri’s virtuous leadership is taking shape nurtured by her ancestors. Her pre-battle conversation with her soon-to-be adversary, Namor, demonstrates her noble quest for peaceful resolutions in the face of conflict with the protection of the peace of Wakanda as her primary objective. World leaders, take note! Of course, this is Marvel (and life), and Wakanda is dragged into war and the literal and symbolic death of her mother, her last surviving blood family member, not only gives rise to a vendetta worth fighting for, but it is also the catalyst for Shuri to push through her own pain – to stand up and lead. She manages to generate the blueprint to create the Heart-Shaped Herb again which empowers her to step into the suit and become the almighty Black Panther. Wakanda has a Queen and a Protector once more!

One of DC Comic’s most infamous support characters and a cosplay outfit that would guarantee heads turning at any Hallowe’en party, Harley Quinn is often portrayed as a conniving, unhinged hot mess of a side piece to The Joker in the Batman franchise. Doesn’t sound very, um, progressive, right? But stay with me here. You may expect me to take us way wayyyy back to unpack Harley Quinn’s origin story at the point where she was the shy Arkham Asylum employee Harleen Quinzel, who was manipulated to fall in love with her former patient, The Joker, who then decided to push her into a vat of chemicals, which didn’t kill her but instead drove her insane and gave rise to the giggly, playful and sardonic creature that we’re all familiar with. That’s it, Harley Quinn’s origin story, I hear you cry. Well, you’d be wrong.

An origin story doesn’t have to start at the linear beginning. Sometimes you hit a renaissance later in your life to become the being you were meant to be. This is exactly where we find Harley Quinn in Birds Of Prey – played by a titan of many talents, Margot Robbie (who also produced this film). This origin story comes after breaking free from the toxic relationship with The Joker that has held her captive for too long. She must navigate a world that has a lot of men coming for their pound of HQ flesh (because you don’t go through life committing crimes and hiding behind The Joker without pissing a few people off) and with no family, no friends, and no social skills she’s literally starting over on her own. Early in the film she utters the heartbreaking line “do you know what a harlequin is? A harlequin's role is to serve. It's nothing without a master.” – yet Harley Quinn manages to narrowly escape the toughest challenges through her playfully bratty cunning as she becomes the mentor that she never knew she could be by saving the kid and makes the friends that she never knew she could make by uniting them against a common enemy. In her navigation towards true independence from The Joker, Harley Quinn is writing her own origin story – with the perfect egg sandwich in her hand.  

It also has to be said that in the cannon of superheroes movies, this one is CRIMINALLY underrated – it’s the best of all the DC films (has some really fun Tank Girl vibes) and is also directed by a woman too, Cathy Yan, so go watch as soon as you can and thank me later.