“John Wick 3”, “Aliens” and “Silence of the Lambs” — signs of a changing world.

1986 — ALIENS. Ripley made a promise to a little girl named Newt that she would protect her. When Newt is stolen to hideous purpose, Ripley ignores the countdown timer marking minutes to nuclear destruction, arms up and enters the belly of the beast to confront the Alien Queen, steal Newt back, and escape. But the Alien Queen follows her, and in one of the screen’s great hand-to-hand combat scenes, Ripley in an exoskeleton transcends fear and becomes a primal Mommy screaming “Get away from her, you BITCH!” to the applause of audiences around the world.

1991 — SILENCE OF THE LAMBS. Clarise Starling, young FBI agent, trembles as she invades the basement sanctuary of “Buffalo Bill” the man who has been killing women to steal their skin. Terrified out of her mind, but committed to saving his latest victim, she descends into darkness, Bill hunting her with infra-red night vision. She is helpless, hands shaking so badly she cannot aim. But when Bill makes a single mistake she pivots and empties an entire clip in his direction, blowing him away.

I walked out of “Silence” into the light, thinking “the world has changed.” I turned to my then-wife Toni and said: “I am SO happy for women right now. This is a different world.” I felt it. James Cameron and Jonathan Demme (and the writers, of course) had cracked the code on how to make audiences cheer for female action heroes in a way I’d never quite seen before. And it was obvious that a floodgate had been opened.