Just had a thought for an action hero thing: 30-something woman hero is doing her ass-kicking thing. One day, her boss shows up at her door, and tells her she has to stand down, or there will be consequences. “Honey, it’s not that you’re too old. It’s just the public don’t like to see a woman of your age saving the day. It feels emasculating”.
So woman is stripped of her support team, fellow agents, and is pretty much put on the shelf. She tries to do heroing, but keeps getting cockblocked by younger women or superhero men she used to work alongside.
Just when she’s hitting rock bottom (and sitting in her house wearing pyjamas and eating ice cream), there’s a knock at the door. Judi Dench is standing there, and our heroine assumes it’s a charity collection.
“Oh no, dear,” Dench says, smiling. “We’ve come to recruit you.”
“Recruit me? For what?”
“To do what we do best: save the bloody world.”
And all at once she’s part of a covert ops team made of all the older women who have been retired and who currently are holding the reins of managing the world.
Of course, a few older women heroes and vigilantes don’t take the offer. Some are too embittered by the rejection they’ve faced and decide to show the world exactly why they’re still to be feared.
Enter Judi Dench’s arch-nemesis, Dame Helen Mirren.
