I sigh as I look at the new “Mission Impossible” release poster. In front of an urban backdrop, Tom Cruise looks very professional as he crouches with a gun in his hands. Right behind him is a woman in a cleavage-baring tank top, looking huskily at the camera with a sly smile.

    This cliché portrayal of a woman as arm candy foreshadows an overused character development. She will likely be either a damsel in distress or a femme fatale. Either way, she is a sex object..

       This is a great waste of a potentially interesting figure. She could be the brains of the operation or the mastermind behind an attack or an investigation, such as Vittoria Vetra from the movie “Angels and Demons.” In addition to her work as a scientist at CERN, Vetra helps locate kidnapped cardinals by determining their locations using and rescue them using pagan symbolism.

When the “action movie girl” is reduced to the character trudging behind everyone else and falling on rocks because of her 8-inch heels — as Claire is in “Jurassic World” — the character loses its very purpose.

      I’ve seen the same problem in horror movies  — why is it always the girl who hears a scary noise, acts irrationally and ends up possessed or killed?

      Just once, I'd like to see the girl in a horror movie act logically and take precautions. This would make the movie more interesting and scary, because the viewer knows that she died in spite of her intelligence and common sense, not because of a lack of it.  

     Instead of the same movies that include cliché portrayals of women, I want to see more films that showcase unconventional views of women. One example is the recent release “Trainwreck,” where Amy Schumer, an outspoken feminist and anti-fat shaming advocate, plays a promiscuous magazine editor who doesn’t believe in monogamy — a role usually reserved for males. This “player” stereotype with a spin made me laugh throughout the movie.

           Hopefully next time, I won’t sigh when looking at a movie poster, but admire Tom Cruise standing next to, instead of in front of, his lead woman, both with guns in their hands.