Oh FFS, here we go again:
Bosses at Warner Bros. are allegedly considering taking on a female actress to play the role of the iconic chocolatier, after two previous adaptations starred Johnny Depp and Gene Wilder.
Is any male role safe anymore? Dr. Who, James Bond’s “M”, Ghostbusters and countless other male roles have recently grown tits and vaginas — I mean, Jane Bond was even considered a while ago. (“I’d like a strawberry vodkapop… stirred, not shaken.”)
I really want some brave producer (I know, I know) to propose a movie project entitled “John Of Arc” : the story of a humble French shepherd boy who gets a message from God, becomes a fearless military leader and rallies an army to defeat an English occupation force. Then he’s captured and burned at the stake.
Nah, that’s just too far-fetched. Might as well just cast a chick for the role, to get the green light. Of course, the movie will bomb spectacularly and lose money — but who cares, as long as Teh Womynz get the gig?
Fucking bullshit.
It’s pretty simple: They’re just admitting that they don’t think it’s possible to write an interesting and dynamic female character.
I don’t think that is it entirely. Hollywood has had plenty of interesting and dynamic female characters (e.g. Ellen Ripley, and the Bride of Kill Bill fame). Even some of the teen fiction female leads haven’t been completely awful (e.g. Katniss Everdeen).
It isn’t that they can’t write interesting and dynamic female characters, it is more complicated than that. First, they can’t write interesting and dynamic woke female characters. Second, they’re trying to rewrite our mythology.
They can’t write compelling woke characters because no one wants to spend $15 to be lectured at about how this current wahman character is the bestest EVAR simply because she isn’t a dude. The woke scolds don’t want to be bothered with exposition and good story telling when that wastes time from the important dialog necessary to lecture us on good woke attitudes. Turns out they’d prefer to just pan up over the main character and when you see breasts, you automatically know she’s a good character. They check the correct intersectional checkboxes and the character is automatically good.
We also need to understand what these all female remakes are. They are an attempt to rewrite our mythology. In addition to hardwiring audiences to pay to see their woke nonsense, they have to rewrite existing mythology to force all stories into their mold. In their minds it just won’t do to have male protagonists who defeat the bad guy without the help of a single wahman so those stories need to be remade or retconned so negate or minimize the impact of the male characters.
This is why Star Wars became so hated. This is why Marvel, despite coming off a very successful year, has stalled. This is why these all girl remakes are being panned by anyone who knows anything about good story telling.
And that’s what killed the all-Womyn version of Ghost Busters. If the protagonist is perfect in every way, where is the character development or drama or the plot arc or dramatic character interaction?
Don’t knock Dame Judi Dench’s tenure as M. Any arse polish a seat at the HQ of MI-6, and hers filled the role admirably. “Casino Royale” was magnificent, and she had the best line when she told Bond in a tone barely above a whisper “Don’t ever break into my house again.” They both know it’s a death threat. It’s far more disturbing that they’re going to turn the next Bond into a female. Not the 007 code name, but the character itself. If the future really is female, why do they have to keep rebooting all the old franchises?
Seconded for Judi Dench’s “M.” Ministers come and go, so it is not unreasonable that an incoming head spook could be a woman. And she had just the right amount of antagonism vs affection for the character of Bond. I don’t like the recasting of every popular male character as a woman though. You are just hoping to piggy-back off of an established character. Try making a *GOOD* original movie with a strong (but not Mary Sue), interesting female character and you can and will succeed.
I also vote for Dench’s ‘My. Best line (officious twit) “What the hell is he doing!?” (M, snapping) “His job”.
For me, the question comes down to two issues;
1) Does the shift make any goddamned sense?
2) Can the actress in question deliver the goods.
There’s no reason a desk jockey can’t be female, and Dench delivered. There’s no reason The Doctor can’t shift sex. Whether the actress delivers is something I haven’t seen, yet. My gut is that a female ‘Willy Wonka’ changes the dynamic of the story in ways that won’t work, AND I can’t think offhand of a living actress who could pull it off. Maybe Kate Hepburn could have done it – she did a great eccentric – but I doubts she would have been interested.
In any case, let Hollywood continue this idiocy. The more they do it, the sooner they go bankrupt and get taken over by somebody with some sense.
I know you’re not into comic books, but Thor (in the comics) and Captain Marvel (in the movies) are also female now. Really, THOR?
This reminded me of something I read a few years ago. They found that when playing first-person shooter video games (the type where the character is on the screen, not the ones where you’re seeing thru the character’s eyes), given a choice teenage boys preferred to play the female character instead of the male. This brought up all sorts of thoughts of the boys experiencing gender confusion, trans-genderism, etc. It turned out the teen boys preferred looking at a girl’s ass instead of a guy’s.
Those are third person shooters.
Not a shooter, but Wave Race Blue Storm is one of those “play the girl” games. LOL
Boys will be boys regardless of what fucking libs want.
Well, the article did characterize Willy Wonka as the “titular chocolatier”…
It all falls in with my often spoken thought that Hollywierd has flat run out of ideas. They have done countless remakes of past good movies, now they’re trying the female substitute versions. So some suggestions: The New Wizard of OZ, where young farm boy Donald is transported to a magical land and meets the Cowardly Lioness, Lady Scarecrow, and Tin Woman? Or Melvin and Lewis? Or the Devil Wears Carhart?
One last point: Disney Studios has announced that they are going to do a film version of Hamilton. It’s their money, to be sure, but am I the only one who thinks that anyone wanting to see Hamilton already has? New York, Las Vegas, numerous traveling production groups; not sure there’s much of a potential audience left.
But the sexual re casting won’t be done in the opposite direction. It’s un-PC and against the feelings of the perpetually offended.
If a major production house announced they were going to do that, unless the male character was gay, out, and woke, there would be more screaming, gnashing of teeth, and rending of garments than there was many years ago when M Butterfly was announced as coming to New York or London (I can’t be arsed to check this now) and instead of a Chinese man playing M. Butterfly, a white actor was.
For that matter, the new Doctorette Who isn’t bad, but is saddled by horrible scriptwriting. An interesting internal contrast, though, is that a few seasons back, a long-running recurring character, The Master, who is another Time Lord, showed up as a woman. But the actress had clearly watched a lot of the old show that ended in the 80s, and was acting consistent with the earlier male versions of the character, and to me, it was fine, because they respected the character. If you watched Melissa Gomez play the master, and then Roger Delgado or Anthony Ainley, well, it’s the same person in a different body. (By contrast, John Simm played the character as a buffoon.)
You’re speaking Sanskrit again, aren’t you?
There’s already been a whole surfeit of Jane Bond parodies, complete with bad acting, risible scripts and cheap sets, props and production values. Just none that the current owners of the franchise want to talk about — and that blind eye will continue with the new versions.