We all remember Elizabeth Banks’ Charlie’s Angels movie, right? Released months before the COVID-10 pandemic shook the landscape of the world and pop culture, Banks tried to reboot Charlie’s Angels, which was met with little fanfare.
Some of the backlashes towards the film was the marketing, which focused heavily on the “girl power” aspects of the film. As we live in a society where people like to comment “get woke, go broke” on anything to do with women these days, it’s not surprising that a feminist-leaning Charlie’s Angels would get some people upset.
Sadly, this wasn’t even Elizabeth Banks’ intended vision for the project; as she tells The New York Times, she is still “proud of the movie” but has some regrets about the film’s marketing.
“I wish that the movie had not been presented as just for girls because I didn’t make it just for girls. There was a disconnect on the marketing side of it for me. When women do things in Hollywood, it becomes this story,” says Banks. “There was a story around Charlie’s Angels that I was creating some feminist manifesto. I was just making an action movie.”
“[I] would’ve liked to have made Mission: Impossible, but women aren’t directing Mission: Impossible,” She continues. “I was able to direct an action movie, frankly, because it starred women, and I’m a female director, and that is the confine right now in Hollywood.”
Starring Kristen Stewart, Naomi Scott and Ella Balinska, 2019’s Charlie’s Angels made only $73 million worldwide from a budget of around $50 million; it went on to be one of the year’s biggest flops. The film sits at 52% on Rotten Tomatoes but does have a surprisingly high audience score of 78%.
