The 1970’s TV show and 2000 movie were the highlights of the Charlie’s Angles franchise.
Like with many remakes with a contemporary spin–perhaps, to cover for a lack of new ideas–the new Charlie’s Angels hasn’t exceeded expectations.
Unenthusiastic moviegoers aren’t quite the reason for the movie’s recently flopping–but men are, apparently.
The movie’s director, Elizabeth Banks, made the following statement, according to Yahoo: “You’ve had 37 Spider-Man movies and you’re not complaining! I think women are allowed to have one or two action franchises every 17 years — I feel totally fine with that.” She added “Being in a big franchise allows you to have it all.”
Franchises such as Wonder Woman and Captain Marvel–which were both tremendously successful–appealed to the male moviegoer in a way Charlie’s Angel couldn’t.
Experts predict that the movie will be a huge loss for Sony this year.
According to Cheat Sheet:
Banks blames the film’s lack of success on the preferences of male viewers, contrasting the box office performance of Charlie’s Angles with the success of the girl power superhero movies Wonder Woman and Captain Marvel. “[Men will] go and see a comic book movie with Wonder Woman and Captain Marvel because that’s a male genre. So even though those are movies about women, they put them in the context of feeding the larger comic book world, so it’s all about, yes, you’re watching a Wonder Woman movie but we’re setting up three other characters or we’re setting up ‘Justice League.’”
Banks wanted superhero fans to know she has no qualms with the success of Wonder Woman and Captain Marvel. “By the way, I’m happy for those characters to have box office success. But we need more women’s voices supported with money because that’s the power. The power is in the money.”
In another interview, Banks predicted a possible flop where a dreaded male stereotype would be to blame for their refusal to watch female superhero.
Yahoo News reports:
Prior to the movie’s disastrous opening weekend, Banks gave an interview to the Herald Sun that is now proving to be somewhat controversial. The filmmaker, who also wrote and produced “Charlie’s Angels” and stars in the movie as Bosley, called out a potential box office bomb as being sexist. “Look, people have to buy tickets to this movie, too. This movie has to make money,” 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.”
Therefore, it isn’t the quality of the movie, which belonged to a franchise that enjoyed success for several decades, that is to blame–it’s the internalized misogyny of male moviegoers.
