Presumably because Johnny Depp has an awful lot of quality to fall back on (Pirates of the Carribbean, Sleepy Hollow, Edward Scissorhands, etc). Most, if not all actors make some absolutely stonkingly bad films. If you're lucky, you can prove you're not an awful actor by way of showing your back catalogue!

wasn't the decision to make Ripley a woman about pandering, presumably, to interested female audiences in the late 1970s? Folks who went to see Julia and The Turning Point?

If anything, that's even better, though. They didn't cast him because they said "oh, we've got to cast this guy, he's black." They said, "oh, we've got to cast this guy, he's good," and his skin color never even came up.

Abbie Mills

First episode and plow forward. A lot of things get set up there that the show touches back to, esp. with the main characters. Also, the movie? That's pretty much episode 0.5. They pick up a year after the movie timeline.

It still says something that he chose the best guy overall, instead of the best of the white guys.

Yeah, sometimes these things just happened. Sometimes it is better that they just happened. It is like Ripley in Alien. The role was written for a man. It was not originally conceived to be this feminist statement at all.

"Pelvic sorcery" really needs a more prominent place in the world's lexicon.

In the opposite direction of Takei we have Michonne: The super smart and badass black woman with a sword who used to be a lawyer and a very happy new mom in a serious relationship.

Walter Bishop, Fringe. Starts out as one stereotype (sweetly whacked out eccentric genius), turns into another (Mad Scientist whose mad science-related douchebaggery included but was not limited to experimenting on children, trans-universal child abduction and pretty much being directly responsible for the…

Fat people actually exist in the future and they can even be fighter pilots!

George Romero made an African-American man the lead in Night of the Living Dead (1968). He wasn't some ethnic stereotype. He was a rational pragmatist who held everything together as everyone around him fell apart. He was the one guy you would definitely want on your side and would trust with your life. This was at a…

What about for those who have never seen it? Yes, those people (of whom I happen to be one) exist.

That, and the WHOLE of Children of Earth Jack's decisions were very subversive:

I have to agree with you on Sam Carter, fantastic character, she was all that she was, but was still identifiably a WOMAN, she had the strengths and weaknesses of a woman, yet she was a soldier, scientist, leader, etc. Fantastic choice.

Their quiet romance really is one of my favorite on TV.

Edge of Tomorrow: The badass female soldier teaches and motivates the untrained male soldier who wants no part of combat. The fact that the male is played by one of our generation's preeminent action stars makes it even better.

Captain America: The Winter Soldier

Sooo Button's cathecism is purple will goat tired of seine the seam thang ova and ovum?

Soo Burton's criticism is people will get tired of seeing the same thing over and over?