An Ocean’s 11 sequel is in development with an all-female cast. Yes, that may ring some gender swapped bells for you. Why? Well…. Oceans 8 was their previous attempt at an all female heist caper movie. It bombed, yes it did. It came out in 2018 and by todays standards, if it was successful, by now we would have had 2 further sequels (l’ll go out on a limb and guess Oceans 9 and 10?).
So, faced with this predicament Hollywood had a brain storm (a very light drizzle TBH) and come up with another Ocean’s movie…with an all female cast…again…but, wait for it…..set in the 60’s. That’s what was missing…yup…..the 60’s. Oh, and the script…an engaging story…the lack of an audience but no……shut it….the 60’s was what we needed all along.
Here’s a tip Hollywood…stop putting numbers into the titles of female re-booted movie ideas. It’s a recipe for disaster. It’s as if you’re ‘counting’ on failure.
So, back to the ocean. Now, we will have a prequel re-boot of a remake of another remake that had 2 previous sequels. Put that on the poster … I dare you. And we all know that the lead … let’s guess Margot Robbie? … will be George Clooney’s Mom or some such nonsense? Another Ocean’s?…nah, the tides out mate.
And there’s the next Pirates movie … a 5th sequel / reboot that will probably cast … let’s guess, Margot Robbie as the lead. It’s confusing, but I do know this, my favourite gender swapped movies exist, but they don’t exist. But they kinda do … in my mind. Terminator 2 and Alien / Aliens.
In my rapidly aging mind, they seem more like movies that had Arnie, Bruce, or Stallone in the lead role. But they didn’t and this male lead omission factor made these flicks genre legends.
They had Sigourney Weaver and Linda Hamilton in the lead roles kicking major ass and performing well let’s be honest… very male focused action type stuff. But here’s the major difference… Weaver and Hamilton infused their roles with something that the action dudes simply couldn’t do.
Their actions, motivations and drive in the story were unique. They were mothers first and this factor alone, their warrior no nonsense attitude to protecting their children, inspired their genre changing performances. So, they succeeded by following and upholding their maternal instincts in a very cinematic ‘shoot ‘em up’ fashion. Without the momma, you ain’t got the mayhem.
Ripley’s “Get away from her…you bitch” is a legendary line because it combines her warrior capabilities with her most vital element, her role as a mother and how she is fully committed to it, to saving her spiritually adopted daughter, Newt…with immense courage, love and bravery. This engaged the audience. I remember the audience going nuts when Ripley shook the floor in her Weyland Yutani exo-skeleton, faced down the rampaging alien queen and fired out those words.
Hollywood, those bastions of ‘moral behaviour’, creates CGI muscles for women but conveniently omits certain vital aspects of the feminine psyche.
Now studios seem to be happy stripping away these qualities and instead, present the new female lead as being traumatized and alone, often bitter. Devoid of hope. It doesn’t work. Compare Sarah Connor’s Terminator 2’s mother warrior role, protecting her son against killer robots, to the opening of 2019’s ironically named Terminator Dark Fate where her son John is killed off in the opening seconds, brutally murdered in front of the very same mother who had previously blazed a trail of pyrotechnic mayhem, protecting her son at all costs. This little traumatic hiccup doesn’t seem to faze her one bit. Emotionally, she was the exact opposite of her once legendary character that we had loved. A poor, empty, copy.
What are they going to do next? Have Arnie as a retired T – 1000 selling drapes? Oh…wait…we did. Yep…it’s curtains. So, keeping in cyborg step with the robots we can learn a lot from the titles of the Terminator franchise. Yes, our days are judged. We suffer dark fates. Because we allow it. And, perhaps we are distracted, fighting on either side of a cancerous culture war, we lose our souls not hearing the feint steps that grow, to become the rise of the machines.
What’s frustrating about all of this is the missed opportunity. Why can’t we write great roles for women? Why can’t we work with their genuine traits and write about that? Why do we make them masculine? Are we allowed to write such stories anymore, and if not, what are we losing?
