Darwin’s soldiers: Gender, evolution and warfare in Them! and Forbidden Planet

The classic 1950s sf films Them! (1954) and Forbidden Planet (1956) draw on Darwinist plots of future warfare and sexual selection to represent men as natural soldiers and masters of technology, limiting the roles of women to romantic interests for the military men. However, they differ from other contemporary films in their representation of the roles women should play in the military and in their attitudes toward violent evolutionary masculinity.