Rewatched the awful 2005 Elektra film starring Jennnifer Garner. Neither the writing nor the acting in that film got Elektra right. She had no edge. Elektra is supposed to be this wild, dangerous, edgy, sexy, ruthless, passionate, conflicted character. Garner's performance was utterly flat. There's a scene where she's telling the girl Abby how her mentor Stick can raise people from the dead and her deivery is so flat she might as well have been reading off a shopping list. And Garner couldn't play a deadly super-ninja if her life depended on it. She's a strongly-built athletic woman with a solid jaw, but the expression in her eyes in her performances conveys weakness. Also blandness. She gives Elektra none of the passion and danger the role requires.
One thing I noticed in Garner's Alias work that pops up in places in the Elektra film is that she goes in for overly frightened or disturbed facial expressions when her character is in dangerous situations, in a way that does not fit a seasoned profesional assassin, ninja or super-spy. Basically she looks like she's running scared when her character should look strong. It doesn't fit Elektra and it doesn't fit what Alias's Syd was supposed to be. Tough professionals like that learn to keep it together, because if you lose it in a firefight you're dead, and that would apply to all such people, regardless of gender. To suggest tough women would be any different from tough men in that way is to impose sexist stereotypes on female characters. Alias was clearly a ripoff of the La Femme Nikita show (1997-2001) starring Peta Wilson. In that show, Peta showed plenty of vulnerability and humanity, but she knew how to be strong when strength was required. Past the first episode (when her character was untrained), you wouldn't catch her looking like she was going to pee her pants in a scary moment the way Syd often does and Garner's Elektra sometimes does. Garner's habit of portraying action heroines like that implies a sexist assumption that all women, even the tough ones, are scared and vulnerable as per sexist stereotype, just because they're women. That really pisses me off.
Garner was terrible as Elektra in the Daredevil film too. People think she's good as an action heroine because she's athletic, but she has no clue. Nor can she act in general. Too stiff. Elodie Yung, who has a Karate black belt and considerable acting talent, was much better as Elektra, when she played the role in the Netflix shows Daredevil and Defenders.
Oh and Terence Stamp was pretty crap as Stick in Elektra. Scott Glenn in the Netflix shows was much better.
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