Gender-Swapped Reboots have got to stop
Hollywood’s next step in gender-equality is in the wrong direction
Last week Fox announced that they are developing a script for The Nice Girls, a spin-off television series derived from the 2016 film The Nice Guys. As the title would imply, the show swaps out dude protagonists for female ones. Unlike some prior gender swapped properties, The Nice Girls doesn’t even sound like a good idea on paper. The glaring development problems with the show demonstrate how “the gender swap,” Hollywood’s latest trend in promoting diversity, has gone off the rails.
The biggest issue is that The Nice Girls might be doomed to fail. The Nice Guys was well-reviewed by critics and well-received by the “film nerd” demographic. However, the movie earned a paltry $60 million dollars worldwide. A lot of people lost money on the film. So what economic sense does it make to spin-off a failed film?
While it’s true that female-led offerings not only match but often exceed male ones at the box office, I don’t think we can expect The Nice Girls to magically improve on the specific Nice Guys’ precedent. And given how rare female-fronted television shows are, it is actively bad to create a show that won’t succeed. If that comes to pass, it can only add to the troubling false narrative that female properties are “riskier” than male ones.
Even worse, The Nice Girls likely won’t earn any sort of cult status. One of the elements that stood out in the The Nice Guys was the 1970’s setting. Apparently, The Nice Girls is set in modern times. They’re ditching the stars and the style that made The Nice Guys an appealing film for it’s small but devoted audience.
With that in mind, The Nice Girls is simply another buddy cop comedy that happens to have two women as leads (and likely an acerbic Shane Black style of humor). However by explicitly tying the television to an existing, male-fronted property the television show doesn’t enter the pop culture consciousness at neutral; it’s starting from an unnecessary place of weakness. It has the shame of being a spin-off not an original property and another set of financial expectations too. The show would do better without any The Nice Guys association. But Hollywood was unable to conceive of such a thing.
Sadly, this is not the first time we’ve seen this particular situation.
When it comes to rebooting properties, the watershed moment is Ghostbusters (2016). The idea of a female Ghostbusters team wasn’t a terrible idea at first glance, especially given the cast. But the second the internet found out, meninist trolls tore the film to shreds for trying to “ruin their childhood.” The ensuing controversy completely changed the momentum of the film and once again added unnecessary pressures for the filmmakers — like racism and online sexual harassment.
If Sony had simply made a big-budget action comedy starring the same folks but without the Ghostbusters name attached, would actress Leslie Jones have been harassed online? I’m not so sure.
For the record, if I could go back in time, I wouldn’t prevent the making of the Ghostbusters reboot. That would be letting the trolls win. In addition, I liked the Ghostbusters reboot, and I imagine that the average person would too. Reboots aren’t inherently bad and Ghostbusters is an example of how to do a solid job from an artistic perspective.
Setting women up to fail is bad though, as is giving them “sloppy seconds” with good movie ideas. Ghostbusters (2016) wasn’t a bad movie, but the cast deserved a better property to use their talents on: one less fraught with cultural BS, unfair financial expectations, and more originality.
The next big gender swap coming down the pipeline is Ocean’s Eight. Unlike Ghostbusters, the online reaction hasn’t been too harsh. No one holds either previous incarnation of Ocean’s Eleven so dear that they can’t stand a version starring Sandra Bullock, Cate Blanchett, Rihanna, Mindy Kaling, Anne Hathaway, Awkwafina, Sarah Paulson, and Helena Bonham Carter.
The biggest controversy regarding Ocean’s Eight is that eight doesn’t eleven; if the studio heads really wanted to promote diversity couldn’t they have found three other actresses out there to fill some roles? Hell, start the new series at twelve woman and people would be really impressed.
This number nitpick is actually emblematic of the whole issue with gender-swapping. Rebooting a classic film even with the most exciting female performers will never be the same as equality.
We need groundbreaking female starring film just as often as male ones. That means not throwing women a bone with Ocean’s Eight, but writing a new exciting heist film.
If a studio wants to exploit a lucrative IP with a new reboot, by all means include women (in front and behind the camera, please) but don’t rely on “now starring women!” to hock second-hand material. The studios know that Sandra Bullock is hugely valuable; that’s why they think her star-power can cover up the sour stench of a “gender-swap” situation. If she’s that good, why don’t you just use her to create the next big hit?
Gender-swapping sends the exact opposite message than it intends. It doesn’t make audiences feel that they are being represented on screen. The shameless appeasement attempts make the bullshit ideology of Hollywood all too obvious.
To end on a semi-positive note, I’ll say that Hollywood occasionally stumbles into success. Somehow, the new Star Wars trilogy was launched with a woman and a black man at the lead. Yay! We just saw Wonder Woman tear up the box office. Plus, Jordan Peele (Get Out) and M. Night Shyamalan (Split) got the year started on a high note for non-white filmmakers. So change is underway, and if we’re lucky, the next great female-starring film won’t be the ‘female-version’ of anything. It’ll just be itself.
