My Super Ex-Girlfriend is the reverse of last summer's hit Mr. & Mrs. Smith, in which Jolie and ... Pretty, tough women...

My Super Ex-Girlfriend is the reverse of last summer's hit Mr. & Mrs. Smith, in which Jolie and Brad Pitt were a married couple tired of each other's blandness until each discovers the other is a covert assassin. The volatility brings them together. In Ex-Girlfriend, the volatility is part of the initial appeal, and the neediness when she loses that strength is part of the joke.

Playboy magazine editorial director Christopher Napolitano says fearsome beauty is a male fantasy. "It's an exciting thought for a guy to know that a sexy woman can turn on a dime and offer more than he can handle," he says. "They like the idea of being challenged. On the physical level, that's what men understand, while an emotional challenge might weary them in some way. It's mysterious in some way."

Kate Bosworth's Lois Lane in Superman Returns was slammed by some critics for being in constant need of rescue, with little of Margot Kidder's bravado from the Christopher Reeve era. Film critic Roger Ebert wrote that Lois "has lost her dash and pizazz."

Producers see fiery heroines as potentially win-win. It's a way to appeal to both men, tempted by the dangerous sex symbol, and women, who like the concept of an empowered babe.

"Movies reflect modern culture, and these films take female empowerment to the extreme," says Sanford Panitch, production chief at New Regency Productions, which made Smith and Ex-Girlfriend.

"She was bemoaning it on some political level. 'Gosh, she was great, but does she have to be such a cloying (brat)?' " Thurman says. "But would it be funny if she was a superhero who was invulnerable and fabulous?"

Characters such as Jolie's Mrs. Smith, Garner's Alias spy, Evangeline Lilly's outlaw castaway on Lost and Knightley in Pirates of the Caribbean (who gets more sword fighting time in the new hit sequel) strike a nerve with guys because they clearly don't need the men in their lives, but they still want them — maybe.

Thurman and director Quentin Tarantino pushed that dynamic even further in Kill Bill Vols. I and II. Her bloodthirsty Bride didn't want any man, having lost her fiancé in an attempt to kill her, but guys — from the characters she preyed on to the male moviegoers who flocked to the theaters — couldn't get enough.

With the Bride, "there is something steely. She was not asexual at all, there was something quite sensual about her, but there was complete disinterest, a complete alternate focus. You see it in male characters so often, but in a dynamic athletic woman in the prime of the character's strength, it's a different thing entirely."

Not all action babes are a hit. Garner's Elektra and Halle Berry's Catwoman flopped, but most believe that's because the characters and stories were as thin as the barely-there superhero costumes.

Producer Garner says a film has to deliver more than skin to get men and women into the theater. The sexy character also has to be fun, smart, maybe even mean. He's now working on a sci-fi thriller called Next, which stars Julianne Moore as an FBI agent hunting a psychic (Nicolas Cage) whom she thinks can help fight terrorism.

"She's very tough, very by-any-means-necessary," Garner says. "She's gorgeous and sexy and intelligent and there's a moral ambiguity to (her).

Thurman wanted her costumes to be more conservative than the usual superhero garb. "You think of supergirls, and they're letting it all hang out, promoting a very male vision of sexuality."

So instead of fluorescent, skintight spandex that is "pushed up and strapped up and huggy," Thurman chose dark colors, pleated skirts, big belts and tank tops.

For every teenager who shows up to gawk at a scantily clad female hero, a character who comes off as trashy or exploitive turns off many other moviegoers and redirects couples looking for a date movie they both can enjoy. Emphasizing both sexuality and strength "helps you tell a story that broadens the demographic," Garner says.

Similarly, writer/director Neil Marshall toned down the jiggle factor for his horror thriller The Descent, opening Aug. 4. The movie features female spelunkers who get trapped in an ancient cave and discover predatory subterranean creatures.

"They're all physically attractive, but we didn't have them in wet T-shirts running around," Marshall says. "Instead they're strong and independent, and for certain people, myself included, that is very appealing."

Shauna Macdonald, who stars in The Descent, says: "It's not that men are finding stronger women sexy. I just think women are getting stronger."

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