“I’ll Be Back”: Will the Return of Sarah Connor and Laurie Strode Usher in a New Kind of Action Hero?

In the new Terminator movie, Linda Hamilton (right) will reprise her role as Sarah Connor and be joined by newcomers Natalia Reyes (left) and Mackenzie Davis (center).

When I heard Linda Hamilton and Jamie Lee Curtis were going to return to the movie franchises that made them famous, I was pretty excited. Hamilton is returning to the role of Sarah Connor in the sixth Terminator movie, and Curtis is returning as Laurie Strode in the latest Halloween movie this November. I’ve talked in the past how reboots are Hollywood’s lazy and unoriginal way to do a quick cash grab, but having the original actresses return to play such iconic characters is definitely intriguing, especially given the circumstances. Sarah Connor was actually killed off in the third Terminator movie (an off-screen death due to leukemia), and Laurie Strode was killed by her arch-nemesis Michael Myers in Halloween: Resurrection, the eighth installment in the series.

How is it possible to bring them back from the dead? Well, if Michael Myers and the Terminator can come back over and over again, why can’t Laurie and Sarah? And I say, it’s about time!

Even though several movies have come out in the franchises after their deaths, the new films will ignore them. The new Terminator movie will take place after the events of the second film, and the new Halloween movie has been described as a “reimagining,” where Laurie confronts the masked killer 40 years after the events of the first movie.

From what we’ve seen of the first promo pictures, the characters have also been reimagined. Although we don’t know much about the plots yet from both movies, Sarah Connor looks like she is still the tough mother willing to do anything to protect her son from the machines sent from the future to kill him, and Laurie Strode looks like she has been preparing for the day Michael Myers returns.

Jamie Lee Curtis returns as Laurie Strode in the new Halloween movie.

What I love about the images is that both women are depicted as their actual ages (Curtis is 59 and Hamilton is 61). They have gray hair and wrinkles, they have realistic body shapes, but they still look capable enough to kick some ass. They don’t look like your typical action/horror movie heroes, and that’s why I think they won’t be like your typical reboots.

Most of the time, with successful genre franchises, the female characters are killed off, recast with younger actresses, or ignored all together. But I think having Curtis and Hamilton return to the roles they originated will also come with a special kind of magic we don’t see often in movies. In a way, it’s coming full circle with these characters. When we first met them 30 to 40 years ago, Laurie was a teenager and Sarah was a college student. Seeing them now as older women displays their growth, their strength, and their determination. I know I’ve been waiting for Hamilton to reprise Sarah Connor since the last time we saw her in 1991 in the second Terminator movie.

With the return of Curtis and Hamilton to the big screen, I hope this ushers in a new kind of action hero — the older female action hero we rarely ever see in movies or television. If Liam Neeson (62), Tom Cruise (56), and Arnold Schwarzenegger (71) can keep doing action movies, I think older actresses are allowed to do so too. In addition to Curtis and Hamilton, we also have Peppermint, starring Jennifer Garner as a mother seeking revenge for the death of her family, Punisher-style, and the heist/action flick Widows set to come out in November. I hope these movies will change the landscape when it comes to action/sci-fi/horror movies, where we will continue to see more female-fronted movies with women of all ages, races, and sizes.

Images from IMDB.com.