I've now seen the original La Femme Nikita

The movie was good.

You can consider this post a follow up of sorts to my post on Leon: The Professional, which was kind of about the Nikita franchise as much as it was that film.

My interest begins with the film's status as a stated inspiration for Noir my favorite Anime.  I do see this film's stylistic and aesthetic influence on Noir, but I think like writing in depth on the specific homages would be easier for Leon.

As I also stated before a key difference between Noir and the Nikita franchise is that Noir is a show with no significant male characters.  A theme in Nikita is definitely the titular Femme's life being controlled by powerful men, a "Patriarchy".  That Theme is also relevant to Noir, but the patriarchy is at a distance, a faceless council of old white men.

Another difference is that Noir is not nearly as interested in how the main characters became such good killers.

I noticed Jean Reno in the opening credits and went "hmm an actor Besson likes to reuse it seems", but then he wound up playing basically the same character.  I mean there are a few reasons you can't actually imagine a shared cinematic universe here, but I watched a couple Video Essays on Leon and none mentioned how it was basically spiritually a spin-off of this movie.

Nikita has clearly been an influence on more then just Noir.  I actually deduced a certain scene would exist in this movie from the derivative media I'd seen first.  The sniping someone from a hotel bathroom scene has been remade at least twice, I imagine it's also in Point of No Return.  If I were to make my own remake of this scene I'd replace the Ham with Chickpeas just for the sake of a Meme only PLL fans would get.

The film is also more similar in genre to it's TV remakes then I at first assumed it would be.  It's a more "realistic" style but still essentially a morally ambiguous spy movie.

Ya know I always assumed the CW's Nikita show was more just a reboot of the 97 show that probably didn't go back to the original film for inspiration at all.  But I now observe that the CW's Michael looks much more like his film counterpart then the prior TV one.  The old IMDB forum spent a lot of time talking about how Amanda was basically the new show's version of Madeline but I don't think anyone ever mentioned Amanda being the name of a similar character in the movie.