What’s a popular belief you’ll never understand?
By: Ravikant Negi
Tags: Life, Money, Hollywood, Understanding, Movies

I’m sure you remember this movie:

The reboot of Charlie’s Angels that came out in 2019 failed to leave a mark on the audience and flopped at the Box Office.

However, instead of looking for actual reasons why the movie didn’t work, director Elizabeth Banks decided to put a blame on men as a whole for the debacle. She said:

If this movie doesn’t make money it reinforces a stereotype in Hollywood that men don’t go see women do action movies.

She further went on to say that even when they watch Wonder Woman and Captain Marvel, she believes it is because those stories were a part of a larger superhero universe which focuses on males.

Even though she had said all this a week prior to the release of the movie, it’s pretty clear that she believes that it was all men’s fault that her otherwise ‘excellent’ movie failed.

The same thing happened with the Ghostbusters reboot:

The director, Paul Feig, claimed that the movie failed because misogynists and racists are afraid of women in power.

The thing with DC’s Birds of Prey isn’t very different either.

Although this time it wasn’t the movie directors, but the Internet that started blaming men for the dismal performance of this flick. See for yourself:

Guess what’s common among the arguments that blame men for the failure of these films? It’s that all these arguments are a pile of bullshit.

The vast majority of movie goers don’t give a flying fuck about the sex/race/orientation etc. of the characters of a movie. The reason they go to watch a movie is to get entertained. And if the movie fails to entertain or live up to the expectations of the audience, it fails (Justice League, anyone?).

That said, now let us analyse the arguments made above.

I’ve not seen Charlie’s Angels nor the female Ghostbusters (I’ve not seen the original Ghostbusters either) so I can’t give you my personal opinion. However, all the women that I know who’ve seen them say that these films were terrible. And about Elizabeth’s Bank’s statement that Wonder Woman and Captain Marvel succeeded only because of them taking place in a superhero universe that is male focused, I’m gonna say that this statement reeks of sexism not only towards men, but also towards women. On one hand Banks implies that women don’t watch superhero action movies while on the other, is trying to say that Gal Gadot, Brie Larson, Patty Jankins etc succeeded only because of the connected male superhero films in their respective universes.

Coming to Birds of Prey, yes I’ve seen it on Amazon Prime. Although, I really wanted this movie to be good (being a DC fan), it turned out to be a huge disappointment, not because of being a women-led movie, but because the story wasn’t interesting, the action sequences were below par, the dialogues weren’t memorable, and overall, it felt like the filmmakers weren’t very serious while making it so they turned everything way too cheesy. However, that’s not it. One of my biggest gripe was that the characters were nothing like their comic-book/animated counterparts. Allow me to explain.

This is how they portrayed Cassandra Cain in the movie:

A teenage thief with no fighting skills and is nothing but a damsel in distress.

Now look at the actual Cassandra Cain from the comic books:

Daughter of Lady Shiva who’s one of the best hand to hand combat expert in DC comics, this Cassandra Cain kicks ass. She’s not a pickpocket unlike in the movie, and neither does she need Harley Quinn and co to save her (pretty evident from the bad guys lying around her). Does the movie Cassandra Cain even come close to her? She doesn’t.

Moving on to the psychotic serial killer Victor Zsasz, this is what he’s supposed to look like:

The movie gave us this instead:

Some J Balvin (Colombian singer) lookalike.

Other characters weren’t very well done either (except Harley Quinn). Black Mask is supposed to be a cranky douchebag, and not a suave douchebag. Black Canary too was horrible (she did her Canary Scream only once in the entire movie, and that too at the end).

The movie had a lot of potential, but sadly, it was wasted.

You see, I laid out my reasons for not liking this movie. Does any of them look sexist to you?

Anyway, coming to the argument that women-led action movies fail because of sexism. Well, do you seriously believe that people don’t like the following characters and the movies they’re in?

and many more.

The last time I checked, people loved them.

I’d like to divert a little bit from the movies to video games to refute this dumb argument that women with action-packed story aren’t well received. Have you ever heard of Lara Croft?

(Lara Croft over the years)

Lara Croft is the protagonist of the Tomb Raider gaming series where she ventures into unexplored ancient ruins to look for artefacts. She’s portrayed as a very intelligent, fierce, athletic, strong-willed and compassionate archaeologist. She’s also very good at kicking the shit out of bad guys and even supernatural beings/monsters.

Now as per the logic of Elizabeth Banks and the “men don’t like strong women” group, she must be a hated character, right? Well, nothing can be further from the truth.

In reality, Lara Croft is one of the most iconic and beloved video game character of all time, ever since her debut in 1996. She also happens to be my favourite video game character. And no, I and most other gamers (both men and women) don’t give a damn about her appearance, how she dresses, etc etc. Instead, we love her because of her personality, her skills, her badassery, and overall the game itself (the puzzles, story-line, and the action are excellent).

These days it has become quite common to put a blame on a specific group whenever a multimedia product fails and trust me, this is very toxic. One can’t even criticise a movie without being labelled sexist, racist, exorcist etc. even though the said movie is genuinely bad.

Look, there’s no cabal comprising of men worldwide that’s constantly plotting to ensure that all female led movies underperform at the box office. Like I said before, most men and women who go to watch a movie do so because they want to be entertained. If they don’t find something entertaining, they’re not going to like it. And you can’t force them to like it either. Male-led movies flop too. But does that make the audience misandrist? It doesn’t. By the way, this isn’t me saying that misogynists who hate badass women don’t exist. They do. However, it’s a very small but vocal minority, and they don’t have enough influence to decide whether a movie fails or succeeds.

People like Elizabeth Banks, Paul Feig, and other such people on the Internet who constantly clamour about how men are responsible for the failure of the movies they think should have smashed the box office according to them, should stop doing so. Instead, they should analyse the actual reasons such as weak story, uninteresting character portrayals etc. that led to this failure, and strive for better products. Female characters are very much capable of being appreciated by people as long as they’re portrayed well, something that holds true for their male counterparts as well.

Image Sources: Google