Back in 2019, a feature film reboot of Charlie's Angels hit theaters, and it didn’t do so hot. Elizabeth Banks, who directed the revival film, spoke out against the misconceptions that she believes caused the film to fall flat.
Sony's Charlie's Angels, which was first released in the 1970s as a television series, followed three women who worked as spies under a boss named Charlie. Following the success of the television series, the story of Charlie's Angels was then crafted into a film with the same name starring actresses like Cameron Diaz, Drew Barrymore, and future Shazam 2 star Lucy Liu. With the first film performing well, the angels teamed up once more for a sequel in 2003 titled Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle. The 2019 iteration of the film starred Kristen Stewart, Naomi Scott, and Ella Balinska in the role of the crime-fighting angels and even had Barrymore attached as an executive producer. However, the film still failed to live up to its potential and Banks is revealing why she thinks it didn’t perform as well as it could have.
In an interview with The New York Times, Banks expressed that she felt her Charlie's Angels project was not represented the way she intended. She made it clear that she had an “incredible experience” crafting the film, but went on to address the misconceptions around the film. “It was very stressful, partly because when women do things in Hollywood it becomes this story. There was a story around Charlie’s Angels that I was creating some feminist manifesto," Banks said. "I was just making an action movie. I would’ve liked to have made Mission: Impossible, but women aren’t directing Mission: Impossible.”
Banks went on to elaborate that she believes she was only able to direct this action movie “because it starred women” and she’s a female director, going on to add “that is the confine right now in Hollywood." Banks added that she wished the Charlie's Angels reboot hadn’t been marketed in a way that made it seem to the public that the film was only meant to reach women and that she didn’t make the film for one specific gender. Banks made her directorial debut in 2015 with Pitch Perfect 2, stating that she feels “in a rarefied category” being a filmmaker who is female.
In a male-dominated industry, Banks is bringing to light the hurdles many women filmmakers face when it comes to being able to expand their craft in Hollywood. The topic has been brought up time and time again by other female directors, but these types of problems and stigmas continue to surround women when they make movies, with assumptions that female directors are trying to push a feminist agenda when they are really trying to just make art and entertain a theatrical audience.
Charlie's Angels (2019) is available on Amazon Prime Video.
Source: New York Times