Research: Into representation of gender in thrillers

In thriller movies, female characters roles have changed dramatically, "Alien" 1979, was the first movie to have a women as its protagonist. This was an introduction to change the "rules" of the way gender represented. Moreover, they are no longer confined to stereotypical roles as housewives. Nor are they placed as sexual objects in movies. Before, in the early ages, in movies whereby the women has no sexual scene, people would label the women as lesbian. Sometimes in thriller movies the female has some sort of past, they are represented to be scared, vulnerable however, end up finding inner power to fight, examples, of these types of movies are: "Scream". "Dark water", and "I know what you did last summer". Another way females are represented is, the supporting characters is often killed off which emotionally torments the female character. This technique is also used to change the protagonist's attitude. During the movie the protagonist is usually depicted as being scared but after a certain character is killed off, the protagonist amasses enough courage to face the antagonist. Moreover, the female character is shown to be loving and caring in some thriller movies. Furthermore, females in thrillers are represented to look pretty. In my opinion i believe that the way females are represents has not had a massive change in thriller movies. They are still seen to be less powerful and most thriller movies usually is dominantly situated around a male character however, one thing that has changed is, women are no longer seen as sex objects and they can be the dominant character in some movies.
Males in thriller movies are usually stereo typically are represented to have instrumental roles for example, strong, muscular, brave and the main characters however, now some thrillers portray them as being confused, and caring for example, "Batman" is very in love with his lover. I strongly think that the representation of males have not changed as much, yes they have moved away slightly from them being represented to having the instrumental role however, they still in most thriller movies are portrayed to find some soft of inner power.