The 15 Hottest Damsels In Distress In Movies

Image via Complex Original

Tomorrow, director Oliver Stone will return to theaters (and some say, to form) with Savages, a gritty film based on Don Winslow’s equally gritty 2010 novel of the same name. Aaron Johnson and Taylor Kitsch star as a pair of pot-producing pals who share a decadent lifestyle and a girlfriend (Blake Lively). Their success captures the attention of the Mexican drug cartel, which swiftly kidnaps their mutual love object as a less-than-friendly means of convincing them to join forces, leaving the duo to plot how they'll reclaim her.

Sound familiar? It should. Savages returns to perhaps the most revisited theme in all of film—the damsel in distress. You know the routine: An irresistible woman gets caught in the clutches of evil, unable to evade harm without a man to whisk her away. Women's rights may have come, but this stand-by film scenario has not gone anywhere. Females in movies still manage to find themselves in the impossible position of being captured, bound, and gagged, helpless in the hands of some conniving henchman, and in desperate need of a good rescuing.

Blake Lively isn't the first pretty face that has inspired outlandish rescue missions. Here, we count down the most becoming of the ever-growing number of fictional women in who have landed in harm's way: The 15 Hottest Damsels in Distress in Movies.

Follow @ComplexPopCult

15. Rachel Nichols as Tamara in Conan the Barbarian (2011)

14. Liv Tyler as Betty Ross in The Incredible Hulk (2008)

13. Michelle Monaghan as Julia in Mission: Impossible 3 (2006)

12. Maggie Grace as Kim in Taken (2008)

11. Kirsten Dunst as Mary Jane Watson in Spider-Man (2002)

10. Carrie Fisher as Princess Leia Organa in Stars Wars, Episodes IV-VI (1977-1983)

9. Blake Lively as Ophelia in Savages (2012)

8. Robin Wright as Buttercup in The Princess Bride (1987)

7. Katie Holmes as Rachel Dawes in Batman Begins (2005)

6. Keira Knightley as Elizabeth Swann in Pirates of the Caribean: Curse of the Black Pearl (2003)

5. Naomi Watts as Ann Darrow in King Kong (2005) 

4. Cameron Diaz as Tina Carlyle in The Mask (1994)

3. Jessica Alba as Sartana in Machete (2010)

2. Rosie Huntington-Whiteley as Carly Miller in Transformers: Dark of the Moon (2011)

1. Ursula Andress as Honey Ryder in Dr. No (1962)