Why did Jason Statham, the handsome model turned gut-buster, become Jason Statham, but not Jessica Alba? Not just Netflix’s new action movie Activate alert Allowing the 2000s icon to blast his way through machine gun-toting goons reminds viewers that Alba should have been doing this all along.
James Cameron knew it and gave Alba her big break at age 19 by casting her as a super soldier on the run in Fox’s 2000 TV series Dark angel. Hollywood took notice right away – kind of? When Dark angel In 2002, Alba broke through in films, playing a dancer with dreams in them Honey; a stripper born from a tragedy in Robert Rodriguez’s Shame city; Sue Storm, a character steeped in 1960s gender role logic, in Fantastic four; and a diver turned treasure hunter In blue, a role that seems to revel in the fact that the protagonist could logically wear a bikini for 95% of the runtime. Alba felt the beckoning. “The scripts I get are always for the whore, or the biker girl in leather, or the horny girl,” she says told Page Six in 2005. “I don’t think this will happen to Natalie Portman.”
Over the years, a few filmmakers discovered Alba’s true physical potential, which went beyond just good looks. In the sequel, Rodriguez had her character Nancy go on the attack Sin City: a lady to kill for. In 2015, in what felt like a heel move for a hero arc she never got, Alba played a villain in the action comedy. Hardly fatal. She even hooked up with Jason Statham Mechanical: resurrection, where she takes a few punches (while in a bikini). Yet no one seemed to see Alba as he truly should be: a destroyer, a murderer, and a worthy colleague of the Expendables.
Activate alert stars her as Parker Calvo, a Mexican-American Special Forces soldier who returns to her hometown to investigate a series of crimes tied to a larger arms trafficking operation and corrupt local politicians. Parker wants to make things right and get revenge on her father. It’s a setup for grungy action that Alba, no surprise, executes with extreme brutality. Polygon spoke to Alba and Activate alert director Mouly Surya, an Indonesian filmmaker making her English-language debut, about breaking out again. With knives.
Image: Netflix
Polygon: Jessica, it was great to see you Activate alert. But I was wondering, around Dark angel or Shame city or Fantastic fourDid people talk to you about making a down-and-dirty action movie? There were clearly male stars getting these offers.
Jessica Alba: I always wanted to be Jason Bourne. And I always wanted to be Bond. And I always wanted to be the character in Tom Clancy’s novel. But they were always written as guys! And so this was kind of a wish fulfillment that I got to be in a gritty action movie, but really embraced the feminine and this fierce woman.
I think this genre is so male-dominated that when you see women, you often see them through the lens of what a “badass woman” looks like, if you’re a guy. Often she is quite stoic, not many emotions. She usually has some kind of bob. She will carry stilettos. She will probably wear a form-fitting dress that is not appropriate for action or practicality. Or she’s a damsel in distress, and she needs to be saved by the man. So when I came into this film, it was really important that there was a more feminine take on this genre.
Mouly and I, along with the female producers, were like, “What do we really want Parker to become?” So we brought in a female writer and really built out this world and the characters so that you can get a lot of layers and levels for everyone, so that the bad guys aren’t just nameless and faceless. (Parker’s) and not just some random person from somewhere. Everything feels very nuanced and rooted in a reality that was important to us.
Mouly, you come from the Indonesian film scene where action is an important space, but my impression is that it is similar to Hollywood in the sense that it is still dominated by men. So what are your touchstones for making a film that’s great, but fits the specificity Jessica was looking for?
Mouly Surya: When I was growing up, there weren’t many Indonesian action films. There were a few, and now more than ever. You’ve probably seen it The robbery, which was great, but I grew up watching a lot of Chinese martial arts movies. That’s what I’m actually very familiar with. And I think I tried to inject that into the film. There’s a certain dramatization, there’s a certain kind of awareness of space that I’m trying to get in this film.
Photo: Ursula Coyote/Netflix
Jessica, op Activate alert, you fight a man wielding a chainsaw. When you’re producing your own action movie, do you make requests like, “I want to fight a guy who wields a chainsaw”? What was on your personal action wish list?
Alba: My two things I really wanted to do were hand-to-hand combat and I wanted to utilize more of a dirty, gritty combat. krav maga style. I wanted it to feel really grounded and messy and not so buttoned down. I didn’t want a lot of weapons, in terms of what Parker uses throughout the movie. Sure, if she has to defend herself, it would just be more interesting to see hand-to-hand combat, I felt, and (Surya) agreed. We felt like a more realistic way to take out an opponent, especially a guy who can be twice my size, is to have knives. So I was able to train with many different types of knives. That was new and fun. And it was very different to be able to use knives in hand-to-hand combat; it almost felt like a return.
There are a lot of movies these days, especially action movies, with a lot of special effects and a lot of computer-generated stuff, but this was quite hands-on. We were in a real hardware store. I really let the boys off the hook. I really had to hit it. I had to learn how to whip it properly! And I did all that in real life. It took a lot of coordination, but I think it looks great and feels very original.
Not only do I think you both brought out the feminine in an authentic way Activate alert, but there’s room to wrestle with other xenophobic action figures. I thought of Rambo: Last Blood from a few years ago, which saw Stallone take on Mexican cartels in what amounted to banal, jingoistic garbo. Meanwhile, Parker is a Mexican-American war veteran who tracks domestic terrorism in her hometown. Were you planning some sort of retaliation against these types of films?
Alba: I don’t know if it’s a retaliation for that particular film, but for us it was a clear retaliation for all the stigmas and stereotypes that had been placed on women and certainly on the Mexican American community and Latinos and how they’ve been historically depicted. . It was just fun to make a hero out of the person this town would least suspect. They undervalued her and undermined her powers, these corrupt people in this city. We thought it would be very inspiring to have a hero like her.
Surya: From the beginning, when we had Jessica attached to the script… I’ve always loved her as an actress – I’m sorry for saying it in the third person!
Alba: Wow thank you! Never heard of it, this is good news. (laughs)
Surya: She has such a quality; the emotional part is what Jessica really brings to the role. Parker has always been strong, on paper, physically and mentally. But Jessica brings us a lot of emotion – an anger, I would say. That makes the character interesting, layered and real! That’s what I wanted, that specificity. She embodies the character. She is fiery. I don’t really see things like that in other action movies. This has a bit of a retro feel to it, like it wasn’t made in the ’80s, but it feels like something that could have been made in the ’80s. But you don’t see an action movie from the 80s with a main character who is a woman.
Activate alert is now streaming on Netflix.