Cheesy, breezy, beautiful: in defence of franchise reboots

By Sarah Jasem 

Reboots are being churned out of Hollywood with mass produced slickness, their selling point being the mystery of how this product from the past has transformed as it churns out into the present. 

With the new Charlie’s Angels reboot out in cinemas, and a Lizzie Mcguire, Legally Blonde 3 and maybe even a Zoey 101 movie about to emerge from the assembly line into the present, there’s something that must be said about the expectations tied with their transformation. These commercial reboots of franchises, although female-centric and advertising the changing notions of girl power, will never solve sexism  or issues of female representation in Hollywood. 

Rather than this being a cynical take, it is a take that tries to make going to the cinema to see these films less shame-ridden and more freeing. Rather than ringing in expectations of these films as perfect encapsulations of feminism or sitting with an arsenal of defence in favour of their feminist politics, we should just be able to bring popcorn in for the big reveal. These films shouldn’t be burdened with a sophistication that they need not possess. Watching a Charlie’s Angels reboot should not be the analogical equivalent of sitting in a pizzeria in Italy where less-is-more cheese, these films should be appreciated for what they are- a golden pizza slice slicked with grease, a gorgeous trashy indulgence appreciated for what it is and not what it is not. They’re both tasty, but one needn’t try to be the other. 

The male dominated 2019 release, Fast and Furious: Hobbs and Shaw, was criticised because it was supposedly missing the ‘cheesy, breezy sincerity of its predecessors.’ Its sincerity being grounded in its cheesiness is not something which transfers to franchise films with greater female involvement. Feminism is the sincerity that the film must plough onto its audience, and cheesy trashiness merely demerits it. It is as if women making women-led films and having a seat at the table is under the conditions that they abandon the very natural unrequited passion for cheese to become very responsible lactose intolerants, reportedly difficult and no ruddy fun. 

There’s a lack of female director representation in franchise or highly commercialised Hollywood movies, so much so that high female attachment to movies defines the film before its release. Franchise or commercial Hollywood films originally made by men now being directed by women, like Charlie’s Angels, increases the sentiment that these films are made to demonstrate a shift in female representation on screen as great as the seismic shift of women directing more commercial well-known films, in a system where ten years ago, this was definitely less common. The change in the industry is political and economic, taking shape most potently from the #MeToo movement and greater expectations of representation on screen as we all carry around our own. However, with this change, we have assumed on female directors and female-centric films a huge responsibility to perfectly and sincerely personify the broadness of contemporary feminism as a measure of the films worth, almost its justification for being made by a woman. 

Elizabeth Banks, who writes, directs and stars in the film stated to The Atlantic: ‘I don’t want the movie to be politicised, like I had some grand statement. The movie is not a grand statement, and I specifically made sure it wasn’t a grand statement.’ More women attached to the film like Chaka Khan, who collaborates with Ariana Grande in the song ‘Nobody,’ for the soundtrack also dismisses the songs political power. After an interview containing buzzwords like ‘empowerment’ she laughs it off, shrugging, ‘It’s a cute song, its not going to change the world, okay?’ That’s the thing: women make female centric work then feel like they must distance themselves if it doesn’t serve profound intellectual feminist purpose. These films, purely for the fact that they star and employ women are supposed to perform some sort of obligatory educational lesson to teach people how to take women seriously. For anyone who has seen these movies, which thrive off campy sequins and action sequences like Angels, or a sassy tiny animated id of the titular character, like in Lizzie McGuire, it’s just another hoop to jump through. This tension is shown in Charlie’s Angels as Banks deliberately decides not to introduce the women’s unique capabilities leading them to have angel status, as they have nothing to prove. At the same time however, Sabina (Kristen Stewart) flips her blonde wig in the first few minutes and smiles coyly into the camera with a reaffirming statement, ‘women can do anything.’ 

By asking a movie to have a serious message of feminist empowerment over enjoyment, light and fun, the audience is undermined. It assumes that empowerment and representation must be instilled by the film, because the audience need to be convinced or won’t understand it. It assumes that most of the audience is stuck in a different time, negating the rightful position of these films in the present as fun, action filled entertainment. Who are these people though? Will this possible demographic of, say basement incels, ever even watch these films? Probably not, as they know of only two types of women, but we know from the late 2000s female dominated films that there are at least seven or eight. 

The male gaze is supposedly substituted for the female gaze, and you can see that through the love the angels have for each other in the film. Most of all though, as Barrymore stated in her Sydney press tour for the 2000 Charlie’s Angels film, ‘it’s light and fun and we had the best time making it.’ 

The integrity of feminist politics in commercial Hollywood franchise films shouldn’t lie in making the equivalent live action version of a feminist essay for the uninformed. If these expectations are placed on them even for a second, perhaps it is more political to make something that is cheesy, breezy, beautiful, without having to apologise for it.