All-Female Reboots Are Great. But Isn’t It Time We Had More All-Female Originals?
If you can, remember back a few years ago, before we had purged all vestiges of sexism and misogyny from the Internet and our lives. Back then, Paul Feig announced that he was going to be rebooting Ghostbusters, only instead of using a bunch of hot, young, British dudes — which is what had been happening in the superhero world (Henry Cavill as Superman, Andrew Garfield and Tom Holland as Spider-Man) — he was going to gather an all-female cast. From the perspective of our present peaceful, post-gender existence, we know that it was a fine idea. Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wigg, Leslie Jones, and especially Kate McKinnon, were frankly just as funny, if not as groundbreaking, as their 1980s male counterparts. But, groundbreaking isn’t really baked into the notion of a reboot.
But, if you can, you’ll recall that a certain, very vocal minority of men on the Internet received the news with wounded, small-membered rage. The women — who also, it should be noted, had the audacity to have bodies that didn’t conform to that time’s specific beauty standards — along with their gender-confused director (look at his suits! They were dapper!) — would erase and replace all signs of their favourite movie the same way newly-elected presidents come into office and destroy all the achievements of their predecessor, erasing them from the history books.
Only, ha ha. That didn’t happen. Not the president thing, or the Ghostbuster-emasculation thing. Instead, since those dark days, we all Woke Up. You remember the Great Awakening of 2016, of course. No need to rehash how it all went down. Good times. But the point is: we now live in a world where we realize that gender has nothing to do one’s ability to tell a joke, kick ass, bust ghosts, pull off a heist, or win the White House. Anything a man can do, a woman can do, too!
RELATED: If You’re Worried About the New ‘Ghostbusters,’ It’s Time You Grew Up
Just look at the upcoming Ocean’s 8, an all-female version of the Clooney-Pitt-Damon-et al heist classic, which just released its first official photo this week. It looks good! Just as good as a similar movie starring dudes would look! Equality!
Only, wait. Of course, we aren’t living in a world of cinematic equality, and movies like Ocean’s 8, while certainly a step in the woke direction, are proof. While it’s heartening to see studios take an admittedly pretty safe gamble on an all-woman version of a classic heist story, it demonstrates that Hollywood still has a Batgirl problem.
When comic book writers wanted to add girl superheroes to their respective universes, they did what they had done when they added kid characters: they made new versions of their most popular characters. Easy! Superman got Superboy, then Supergirl. Batman got Batgirl. And while the female versions of those characters have, especially recently, become full and complex in their own right, they still exist in relation to their male counterpart: the original, stronger version.
It’s a little sad that these all-female reboots (or whatever they’re called) are in the same situation. To be clear, this isn’t a sign of weakness. The women involved aren’t to blame: it’s not like they couldn’t handle their own movie, so they decided to grab onto Clooney’s coattails. In part, the reticence of the studio is part of the problem. It’s almost redundant to still point it out, but Hollywood doesn’t like making movies if they aren’t tied to an existing property. Women aren’t the only ones affected by it. It’s just the reality of show business.
RELATED: Paul Feig Is a Man Among Women
But, still, it’s not like audiences are completely without blame, either. We get bombarded by entertainment choices, and as a result we categorize our options, sometimes without thinking. A white dude sees a trailer for a Tyler Perry movie, and immediately thinks “that’s not for me.” (Full, if unsurprising disclosure: I’ve never seen a Tyler Perry movie, unless you count Gone Girl). The same dude sees a movie with all those women, and he assumes, wrongly, that it belongs in the same category as The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. It’s not rational — in fact it’s bullshit, because The Devil Wears Prada is a damn fine movie — and it’s changing (just look at Hidden Figures), but it’s how we’ve been trained.
And so, in that sense, these Batgirl movies are important. They disrupt our classifications, ease us into a world where the gender of a main character is less important than, say, the plot. But, still. It’d be cool if we didn’t have to be trained like that. And, while no one should pay attention to the misogynist trolls anyway, it would give them less to complain about. If only they understood their plight was their own fault. But really, what isn’t?
