Tank Girl is a 1995 American post-apocalyptic science fiction film directed by Rachel Talalay and written by Tedi Sarafian. Based on the British comics series created by Jamie Hewlett and Alan Martin, the film stars Lori Petty, Naomi Watts, Ice-T, and Malcolm McDowell. Set in a drought ravaged Australia years after a catastrophic impact event, it follows the antihero Tank Girl (Petty) as she, Jet Girl (Watts), and genetically modified supersoldiers called the Rippers fight Water & Power, an oppressive corporation led by Kesslee (McDowell).
After reading an issue of the Tank Girl comic she had received as a gift, Talalay obtained permission from the comic's publisher Deadline to direct a film adaptation. She selected Catherine Hardwicke to be the production designer, and worked closely with Martin and Hewlett during the making of the film. Tank Girl was filmed primarily in White Sands, New Mexico, and Tucson, Arizona. The film's critically praised soundtrack was assembled by Courtney Love, and the Rippers' makeup and prosthetics team was headed by Stan Winston. Winston's studio were so enthusiastic about the project they cut their usual prices in half to meet the film's budget.
Financially unsuccessful, Tank Girl recouped only about $6 million of its $25 million budget at the box office and received mixed reviews from critics. Martin and Hewlett have since spoken negatively of their experiences creating the film, and Talalay blamed some of the film's negative reception on studio edits over which she had no control. Despite the box-office failure of the film, it has since become a cult classic and has been noted for its feminist themes.
Plot
In the year 2033, after a decade-long global drought in the wake of a comet striking the Earth, the little remaining water is controlled by Kesslee (Malcolm McDowell) and his Water & Power (W&P) corporation, which subdues the population by monopolizing the water supply. Rebecca "Tank Girl" Buck (Lori Petty) is a member of a commune in the Australian outback that operates the last water well not controlled by the corporation. In an attack on the commune, W&P troops kill Tank Girl's boyfriend, Richard (Brian Wimmer), and capture Tank Girl and her young friend Sam (Stacy Linn Ramsower). Rather than killing her, Kesslee enslaves and tortures the defiant Tank Girl. Jet Girl (Naomi Watts), a talented but introverted jet mechanic who has given up trying to escape W&P, urges Tank Girl to make less trouble for their captors, though Tank Girl refuses. Among other forms of torture, W&P personnel push her down into a long pipe to induce claustrophobia.
The mysterious Rippers slaughter guards at the W&P compound, then escape. Kesslee uses Tank Girl to lure the Rippers into the open, but they gravely wound him. Tank Girl and Jet Girl escape during the attack. Jet Girl steals a fighter jet from W&P, and Tank Girl steals a tank, which she modifies heavily. The girls learn from the eccentric Sub Girl (Ann Cusack) that Sam is working at a sex club called Liquid Silver. They infiltrate the club, rescue Sam from a pedophile, Rat Face (Iggy Pop), and then humiliate the club's owner, "The Madame" (Ann Magnuson), by making her sing Cole Porter's "Let's Do It" at gunpoint. W&P troops break up the performance and recapture Sam. Tank Girl and Jet Girl wander the desert and find the Rippers' hideout. They learn that the Rippers are supersoldiers created from human and kangaroo DNA by a man called Johnny Prophet. Tank Girl befriends a Ripper named Booga (Jeff Kober), while a Ripper named Donner (Scott Coffey) shows romantic interest in Jet Girl. Despite the objections of the Ripper T-Saint (Ice-T), who is suspicious of the girls, the Rippers' leader, Deetee (Reg E. Cathey), sends the pair out to capture a shipment of weapons. The girls bring the weapons crates back, though most are empty. After finding Johnny Prophet dead in one of the containers, the girls and the Rippers realize that W&P has tricked them.
The girls and the Rippers sneak into W&P, where they are ambushed. Kesslee, whose body had been reconstructed by the cybernetic surgeon Che'tsai (James Hong), reveals that Tank Girl has unknowingly been bugged. Deetee sacrifices himself, damaging the generator, and in the darkness, the Rippers turn the tide of the battle. Jet Girl kills Sergeant Small (Don Harvey), who had earlier sexually harassed her. Kesslee reveals that Sam is in the pipe, her life endangered by rising water. Tank Girl kills Kesslee, then pulls Sam out of the pipe. The film ends with an animated sequence showing water starting to flow freely. Tank Girl drives down rapids, pulling Booga behind on water skis, then takes them over a waterfall, shouting for joy.
Themes
Writing in the 1997 book Trash Aesthetics: Popular Culture and Its Audience, Deborah Cartmell states that while the comic showed Tank Girl to be "unheroic or even [an] accidental antihero", the film sets her up with "classic western generic" emotional and moral justifications for her liberation and revenge on W&P, as she witnesses the slaughter of her boyfriend and her "trusty steed". She also sees one of the commune's children being abducted and is herself captured and enslaved. Cartmell also says Tank Girl holds parallels with other "contemporary 'postfeminist' icons", as she displays dominant female sexuality and a "familiarity and knowing coolness of 'outlawed' modes of sexuality", such as masturbation, sadomasochism and lesbianism.
In her 2006 book The Modern Amazons: Warrior Women On-Screen, Dominique Mainon writes that the film has antiestablishment themes and, unlike many comic-book adaptation films which feature "gratuitous sexual objectification" of women, Tank Girl stands out as being "stridently feminist", with the exception of the "cliché victim/avenger complex". According to Mainon, the film makes fun of female stereotypes, as shown by Tank Girl's repeated emasculation of Kesslee with witty comebacks while she is being tortured, and by her response to the computer training device telling her how to present herself to men at the Liquid Silver club. The device provides seductive clothing and tells Tank Girl to remove her body hair and to wear make-up and a wig. Tank Girl completely ignores the advice and modifies the clothes to create her own style.
In the 2011 book Cult Cinema, Ernest Mathijs and Jamie Sexton discuss the issue of whether cult films purported to be feminist were truly feminist or "partly the effect of the performance of feminist attitudes in its reception". The authors consider Tank Girl to be a "'real' feminist cult film", as opposed to the feminist cult films of Kathryn Bigelow and Catherine Hardwicke, which they consider to be too masculine and too eager to cater to "hetero-normativity", respectively.
Production Preproduction In 1988, about a year after the launch of the Tank Girl comic in the British magazine Deadline, its publisher, Tom Astor, began looking for a studio interested in making a film adaptation. While several studios, including New Line Cinema, expressed interest, progress was slow. Rachel Talalay's stepdaughter gave her a Tank Girl comic to read while she was shooting her directorial debut film, Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare (released in 1991). Talalay read the comic between takes and became interested in directing a Tank Girl film. She contacted Astor and, after hearing nothing for almost a year, was about to give up trying to secure the rights when he gave her permission to make the film. Talalay pitched the film to Amblin Entertainment and Columbia Pictures, which both turned it down. Talalay turned down an offer from Disney, as she did not believe the studio would allow the levels of violence and the sexual references the plot required. An offer from MGM was accepted. Talalay worked closely with the Tank Girl comic's co-creators Alan Martin and Jamie Hewlett during the film's production, and selected Catherine Hardwicke to be the production designer. The studio was unhappy with Hardwicke, who was relatively unknown at the time, being chosen over more experienced designers, and Talalay had to meet with the producers to persuade them to allow Hardwicke to work on the project. Tedi Sarafian wrote the screenplay and Gale Tattersall was chosen as cinematographer. Believing that MGM would not allow the depiction of a bestial relationship in the film, the romance between Tank Girl and Booga was only written into the second or third version of the script, after the character was already established in the minds of people involved in the production. By this stage, Booga: "was a character and not just a kangaroo [so] it wasn't an issue anymore."
Casting MGM held open casting sessions in London, Los Angeles, and New York for the role of Tank Girl. According to Talalay, "two or three" of the Spice Girls met while waiting in line for the auditions; Victoria Beckham and Geri Halliwell can be seen standing next to each-other in footage from the event. There was skepticism towards the audition even at the time, and Talalay later confirmed it was a publicity stunt arranged by MGM; Talalay had already been asking the studio to cast a well-known English actress, Emily Lloyd. Talalay says she fired Lloyd after she refused to cut her hair for the role. Lloyd, who had spent four months training for the role, disputes this, saying production had been going well until Talalay found out she was staying at the same hotel as Sarafian. Lloyd says it was a coincidence and she barely spoke to Sarafian, and could only speculate as to why Talalay subsequently became "frosty with both of [them]" and then fired her, ostensibly for rescheduling her appointment with the film's hair stylist. Talalay cast Lori Petty, an American, because "she is crazy in her own life and [the film] needed somebody like that." MGM faxed Deadline asking them for an "ideal cast" list; they selected Malcolm McDowell for Kesslee, but never believed MGM would actually contact him. McDowell has spoken favorably of his experience working on the film, saying it had the "same flavour" as A Clockwork Orange, and praised Talalay and Petty. Talalay was approached by several people who wanted cameos in the film, but she did not want the film to be overshadowed by such appearances. Two cameos were settled on – Iggy Pop was given the role of Rat Face, and Björk was offered Sub Girl. She later dropped out, her character's scenes were rewritten, and the role was then given to Ann Cusack.
Filming Tank Girl was filmed over 16 weeks, in three locations; desert scenes were filmed in White Sands, New Mexico, the Liquid Silver club set was built at an abandoned shopping mall in Phoenix, Arizona, and all remaining scenes were filmed within 40 miles of Tucson, Arizona. Many scenes were filmed in an abandoned open-pit mine, where filming had to be halted one day due to a chemical leak. Permission was received to film the water pipe scenes at the Titan Missile Museum, near the mine, but the day before shooting, permission was withdrawn. These scenes were filmed, instead, in a tunnel at the abandoned mine. New sets were often found by simply searching the mine. Principal photography was completed on September27, 1994, two days over schedule, though still within the original budget.
Effects