Elizabeth Banks is Wrong

First off, go to this link and read the article.

I'll wait.

Ok, now before I start my rant, I want to make to things absolutely clear:

1.) If a filmmaker, whether large, small or somewhere in between, wants to make an action flick with one or more female leads, their right to do is absolute. If it's their money and their movie it's their choice. I will stand by that statement always. If, by my life or death, I can further the cause of free speech by movie makers, I will do so. I mean that.

HOWEVER...

1.) Their right to make a movie does not equate with a responsibility on the part of men to see them. Seriously. What I decide to spend my time and money on is a choice that belongs to me and not Elizabeth Banks.

If you read the article as I urged you to, then you already know that she mentioned that female lead superhero movies succeeded because they were part of a broader universe. I'm not convined tgat she's right but I'm also not sure she's wrong. I'm willimg to be comvinced either way. If you have a link drop ot in the comments.

Having stated that she may be right about those movies, I won't use them in my argument. It's very rare for people who make these kinds of arguments to have the self awareness to acknowledge that there may actually be an exception. I congratulate Ms. Banks on her self awareness. It's a breath of fresh air.

But...

This is Ripley. She was the lead of the 1979 movie Alien. She is very obviously female. To this day, Sigourney Weaver's most famous role is Ripley. Now it is true that Alien later spawned a franchise. There have been multiple movies, novels, comics, board games and video games that I'm aware of. But that came later after men and women alike supported it in a major way.

Alien was most definitely an action movie. It features guns, aliens and a nonstop plot. So yeah, this one had male support.

Oh and by the way...

This is Sarah Connor. Astute fans will recognize her from the Terminator franchise where she is the lead of just about everything they've ever done. (Except for Alien vs. Predator which doesn't count because it sucks.) The film has since turned into a franchise, but it was not part of any other universe for decades. It was (and remains) wildly popular among dudes, not the least reason for which is that Linda Hamilton is a spectacularly attractive woman.

Terminator is another franchise, with not only multiple movies, but also books, comics, a TV series, toys and only God knows what else. Toy collectors, in particular, are overwhelmingly male. So how did that happen? It happened because men support this female led action series.  They love it. I'll be honest in stating that I came to the Terminator franchise late (my parents wouldn't let me watch them when they first came out because I was a wee little Jimbo, and I always start from the beginning) but that's my bad, because The Terminator is an awesome franchise.

I hear you working. Someone out there is thinking:

"But... but... Jimbo, maybe it's just an SF thing? I mean seriously, those are both Science Fiction franchises and arguably so are the superhero movies."

Given what I've written so far, that would be a valid point...

Except that this is Beatrix Kiddo of Kill Bill fame. There's no Science Fiction here. This is just a straight up ass-kicking delivered by a badass, pissed off female. And look, she has every right to be upset. I mean, they tried to kill her. I'd want some payback, too.

Kill Bill has at least one sequel with rumors of another on the way. There is Kill Bill line of merchandising. I didn't see this one when it first came out because it's not SF/F and was ordered to do so by my cousin Ron. He was right. Don't tell him I said that. At any rate, men have supported this franchise since it came out and any rumor I've heard about a third movie (hmm... remember that thought) has been on a comic book related website. Men love this movie because men love badass women.  Oh, and by the way...

This is (from left to right) Alex, Natalie and Dylan. They are the crew from the 2000 movie Charlie's Angels. Of course, there was also the TV show that the movies were based off of. Both did very well. Both had and audience that was primarily male. The TV show spawned a movie franchise.

Now I want to be careful here. Elizabeth Banks was quoted in the article as stating that it's okay for Charlie's Angels to have a remake given the amount of times Spider Man has and, on that point, she's right. My only quibble would be that she could have added Super Man, Batman, Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica... I could go on. I don't have a problem that this is a remake.

My point is that men supported the previous iterations of the same franchise to the point where the previous movie spawned a sequel: Charlie's Angels Full Throttle.

"So," I hear you thinking, "What is the difference this time, Jimbo? Why did this Charlie's Angels  fail where the others succeeded?"

In my opinion, there are two reasons for that.

1.) Lack of marketing.

Look, I'm one guy and that's really too small of a sample to produce any conclusions, but I will say this:

I'm plugged into everything. I watch SF/F sites. I watch nostalgia sites. I follow movie trailer sites. I am everywhere and I have shared trailers that I was excited about in the past, right here on Jimbo's. I found out that Charlie's Angels was coming the day it was released. Seriously. I was researching movie times for Midway and Charlie's Angels came up when I pulled I checked my local theater. Seriously. Maybe I'm wrong and I just somehow missed it, but I'm guessing part of the fizzle was the fact that no one knew that it was coming.

2.) People like Elizabeth Banks.

Yes, I mean that literally. I'm too young to remember when Alien came out. I was born in 76 and it came out in 79. I mean, I had been born but I was far too involved with issues like potty-training and thumb-sucking to watch any movie, really.

I do, however, remember the release of The Terminator in 1984. Yes, it had a female lead. When people talked about it though, they didn't talk about "Oh, look, the lead character has a vagina." They talked about how good the movie was. The only person I knew who cared about Beatrix Kiddo being female was me, and that was because I have a major thing for Uma Thurman. Being a heterosexual male, that never would have occurred with a man.

The thing is that times have changed, and not for the better. It used to be that when you went to see an action flick you went to see an action flick. If the star of the movie was female, then that was really kind of irrelevant as long as it was a good movie. Fans went to theaters and bought pops and popcorn. They watched the movie and they told all of their friends how good it was. It was a good time. That is no longer the case.

In the last few years, we've been treated to not just Charlie's Angels, but Oceans 8 and the Ghostbusters reboot. I have heard precisely nothing about the quality of Charlie's Angels. To the best of my knowledge none of my friends or family have seen it.

I heard bad things about both Oceans 8 and, especially, Ghost Busters. Listen ladies, I hate to bring this to you, but your attitude needs to change if you want female driven action movies to succeed. What you are doing is treating action flicks with female leads as homework assignments. When an action flick is no longer a form of entertainment and instead becomes something you have to see to avoid being accused of mysogyny it is no longer worth our time. Seriously. Oh, and just as an aside, Oceans 8 was part of an existing franchise and it still tanked.

If you haven't seen Alien, then do so. It's a wild ride. We spend an entire movie watching people die and rooting for Ripley to make it out alive. It's a pulse pounding, high adrenaline action flick. That's what made it worth watching.

My point here is this: If you want a female driven action flick to succeed, then here is the two-step recipe:

1.) Market the thing.

I mentioned this earlier. Even if I would love your movie, I can't go see it if I don't know it exists. I'm not blaming Elizabeth Banks for a marketing failure, because marketing wasn't her job, but the fact remains that no one knew it was coming, or at least no one I knew was talking about it.

2.) Make a good movie.

When the Ghostbusters reboot dropped, I was skeptical. The trailers all looked kind of meh. All of the online commentary I saw about the movie was about how little girls needed heroes too. None of that focused on anything about the movie other than the fact that the main characters had boobs. So I waited because it was well marketed and I knew that some of the people I knew would see it. Most of my friends online that went to see it hated it. One of my friends took his sons to see it. They all hated it. I decided to save my time and money for something that was worth my time.

So seriously, come off your pedestal. Understand that if you want our money you need to give us a good product that we know is coming. When that happens, as it has in the past, we'll support your movie. If you make crap and don't market it, that's your bad, not ours.

Some products related to the above named movies can be found below. I receive a percentage of all money spent if you use the links.