Books - 2 weeks 1 day ago
Sisters Doing It For Themselves, or Sloppy Seconds? The Coming Trend of Gender-Swap Remakes
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Submitted by RJ Carter on Thu, 08/11/2016 - 08:29
I'll admit it. I thought the remake of GHOSTBUSTERS, going out of it's way to gender-swap the characters, was a film with an idea shoehorned into it (quod vide: gimmick). I wasn't vehement about it, I didn't feel the need to pan it heavily before it even hit the screens. I was just overwhelmingly nonplussed by the concept. Then the reviews came out, and it turned out to be a good movie after all.
Katie bar the door, because Hollywood will take that as a holy sign.
It turns out that there's already another remake in the works with the cast thrown into distaff. OCEAN'S EIGHT, a remake of OCEAN'S ELEVEN, which was itself a remake, boasts a cast including Sandra Bullock and Cate Blanchett -- which in and of itself is enough for this to have "Blockbuster" written all over it. (The good kind, not the bankrupt business model of videotape rentals.) And when it becomes a financial success -- and it will -- we can expect Hollywood to take it's self-fulfilling prophecy and run with it, churning out a series of films that were previously male-dominated with female-dominated remakes.
| Earth-11 is the fictional alternate reality of DC Entertainment where all the heroes have been gender-swapped. Just for fun, let's imagine what other films Hollywood might consider remaking with an all-female cast: - The Dirty Dozen - 12 Angry Women - Reservoir Dogs - Saving Private Ryan - Lord of the Flies - The Great Escape |
The oft-quoted industry watchdog group, Some People, say that this is a good thing, that it's about time for women to get their due in an industry that's been so heavily biased. I could agree with this, if we were getting more female-centric hits like BRIDESMAIDS or even FRIED GREEN TOMATOES. Myself, I think that women should, at some point, start getting upset about getting the second-shot at something that has already been made successful by men. (At least be daring -- take some films that were male-centric that flopped and see if an all-female cast can salvage it. Get Melissa McCarthy and Rebel Wilson to remake ISHTAR -- and put that up against Tom Hiddleston and Kevin James in a remake of SHOWGIRLS, just for some fun competition.)
What's your opinion? Is this starting trend women getting their due, or is it a serving up of leftovers from the feast men have already finished? Sound off in the comments section.
