In some sense it’s ironic that Zoe Saldana ended up in green body paint for her role as Gamora in “Guardians of the Galaxy.” No, no, I’m not speaking of her turn as the willowy blue jungle godess Neytiri in “Avatar.” No, this irony of the situation calls back to her role as Uhura in the rebooted “Star Trek.” In their academy days, James Kirk pursued Uhura, but, unable to crack her gruff exterior, instead romanced her roommate Gaila, played by Rachel Nichols…wearing green body paint and little else.
But Saldana now plays another badass chick in a comic book movie, capable of beating down the bad guys and looking good while representing the ultimate in postmodern popculture exoticism: the alien woman who looks different than us (i.e. is a different color than us, in her case with minor cosmetic differences, i.e. ridges around her eyes).
And that’s not to say the sexy alien is a new motif in cinema. Hell, “Star Trek” has been doing it for YEARS harkening back to OG Kirk’s conquest of the week on TV, through Persis Khambata in “Star Trek: The Motion Picture,” and capped off by Alice Krige’s haunting, alluring turn as the Borg Queen in 1996’s “Star Trek: First Contact.”
But “Guardians” goes even further, turning Gillian Jacobs (who already made fanboys lust after her in “Doctor Who”) into the blue-skinned villainess Nebula, shaving her head and hiding her behind black contact lenses and borg-ish makeup, going more for the stone-cold killer routine than for sex appeal.
With the criticism levied against Marvel for its marketing of Scarlett Johansson’s (ass) Black Widow during The Avengers, this could be viewed as progress. Sure, Saldana is still being marketed as the movie’s cheesecake (though, to be fair, the somewhat newly buff Chris Pratt is the beefcake, with ads copiously showing off his freshly-minted pecs and abs), but sexuality, at least in the marketing, has taken something of a backseat.
That’s not to say Marvel is getting out of the hot women business. It’s still a staple of the comic book genre, and the fanboy crowd still needs something to drool over. It’s just a little more intergalactic.
