Are these female lead remakes are getting out of hand now?
 

After the all female remakes of Ghostbusters only broke even at the Box office, Hollywood thought that they would give it another go with Ocean's 8, and then that only broke even.

Now I read they planning on doing an all female lead Terminator movie, as well a new all female remake of The Expendables.

https://metro.co.uk/2016/07/12/sylve...-name-6001860/

But I feel like now after the first couple of failures, that enough is enough, and it feels like if they go ahead with these movies, that they are just trying too hard.

I feel no one really wants to see a female lead Terminator or an all female Expendables. I don't want to, and I asked all my male and female friends and they all said no.

I think that making an all female Expendables is loosing the target audience.

Cause that's like making an all male remake of Pitch Perfect and hoping viewers will have a huge interest in seeing that.

But what do you think, am I being too hard or cynical perhaps?

Pretty sure The Terminator has been female led from the start.

I guarantee you that the target audience for The Expendables would be very interested in a movie that’s just chicks blowing **** up.

Or even **** blowing chicks up. Oh wait, that's actually prolly for a slightly different market even if there prolly is some crossover.

YASS!

Even "Evil Dead" (2013) - technically speaking - is a female-fronted remake.

I'm just so tired and bored.

Re: Are these female lead remakes are getting out of hand now?
 

Yes. The answer is yes.

I think the problem with them is that when cashing in on an old idea, you are not getting any supporters. I'm all for more female diversity, but it should be movies with ORIGINAL ideas. New heroes, new action stars. It's been done in the past, and it can be done again. This has all to do with Hollywood scrambling after excuses to still put out millions of remakes, and nothing to do with actual diversity.

They will reboot Dexter making him a black girl.

It's interesting reading all these reactions because my first thought, as an ex-Doctor Who fan, went to Jodie Whittaker's first female incarnation of the Doctor. I'm very interested to read viewers' reactions when the series airs, and ultimately whether the decision will produce results.

It's just a promotional stunt IMHO.
Why changing the Doctor into a woman? No real purpose or fun.

It's a very, very complicated subject to get into. While I personally disagree with the move I've come to the conclusion that there's no way the character can survive without diversifying.

Re: Are these female lead remakes are getting out of hand now?
 

In fairness, there's no real purpose in having this alien's supposedly random changes of appearance coincidentally make it look like a white man thirteen times in a row.

Re: Are these female lead remakes are getting out of hand now?
 

There are unnecessary remakes all the time. Are you saying remakes are not getting out hand, but remakes with female leads are getting out of hand?

Re: Are these female lead remakes are getting out of hand now?
 

I think that's a bit of a different case. Just like the James Bond franchise, they can do pretty much however the hell they want and it doesn't break the formula.

He is a timelord though and it's been established that there are timeladies. He can change his appearance but hasn't been established that he can change sex.

Re: Are these female lead remakes are getting out of hand now?
 

Female remakes are just a lazy excuse for a remake, allowing the freedom to keep as much as they like or chuck what they want out of the window. No one can excuse them of just doing a knock-off because it’s got women in it so inevitably that will bring a different vibe.

Also, you will get people going out and supporting it and loads going to criticise it- either way, it is a talking point.

https://fandomfactory.files.wordpres...rs1.jpg?w=1280

There is a distinction though.

In Doctor Who, change is part of the narrative. Aside from the Peter Cushing films, which are separate to the TV series, it's never actually been rebooted. It's all one long, uninterrupted piece where every lead actor is playing the same person, albeit with a different face and personality.

In the Bond franchise we turn a blind eye when Bond is played by a different actor. Often M, Q and Moneypenny stay the same, so it's almost like a soft reboot. GoldenEye came the closest to a full one because everything was different apart from Q :).

Surely Casino Royale more than Goldeneye. In a significant way, I mean. Not just casting.

Oh I don't know, I was having this conversation a month or so ago about how different GoldenEye was at the time. New Bond, Moneypenny and M; very different music, updated graphics etc.

Siddon's montage above is great, but it's a shame to miss out these lads :D:

http://i779.photobucket.com/albums/y...pst4b8vrpk.jpg

Peter Pratt, Geoffrey Beevers and Derek Jacobi.

You bring up an interesting point about remaking mainly female dominated movies into only male roles, like Pitch Perfect. Like a remake of Clueless, but with dudes. I think the only way a movie like that would even make its money back would be by making it into a spoof of the original, like Naked Gun or Scary Movie.



I think you are right, these subsequent re-imaginations with women are not going to sell or be as popular as their original counterparts. Nowadays, instead of making a story just naturally have women, it's like they are going overboard with continually shoving women into what were normally male dominated roles to get it into the audience's subconscious mind that it's just "normal" that women have these powerful roles. I have no problem with women being in these positions or a full on cast of women, if that is what the story is. What is annoying is the push by movie makers trying to fill some "void" by doing this just for the sake of doing it rather than organically. No clearer example of this is exist, to me, than in The Last Jedi.

Right but, in my opinion, at least, CR does much of that as well and better and more drastically. Goldeneye fits in with the preceding entries in the franchise more than Craig’s first outing. It certainly makes Bond feel new in a way that the former couldn’t.

Re: Are these female lead remakes are getting out of hand now?
 

This thread makes me happy that something like Widows exists and looks as great as it does.

This is the driving force at the moment, especially with colourblind casting.

It was quite funny for me at the time because Daniel Craig reminded me of Timothy Dalton a lot in places (my favourite Bond). I particularly liked it when he was getting annoyed with the "office boy" prior to the crane scene :).

Widows?

Re: Are these female lead remakes are getting out of hand now?
 

As a wise man once said, "That's the fact Jack!" But seriously I hate female driven remakes

Re: Are these female lead remakes are getting out of hand now?
 

hmmmm?:suspicious: did somebody mention me:p

Dalton was excellent as Bond - too bad rights issues ended up putting the franchise on hold, eventually forcing Dalton out of the role.

A third Dalton film would have been very interesting to see, but not if it was the same GoldenEye story they did for Pierce Brosnan.

Actually when I watch A View to a Kill I always think Dalton would have been good in it, especially in the Eiffel Tower sequence.

The problem with View to a Kill was that Moore was just too damned old for the role at that point. The love story came off as forced and unbelievable, and Grace Jones' character realistically would have handed him his ass in any altercation. It was rough watching him lurch and putter around trying to be suave when it was clear he needed to be retired to the golf course. Definitely would have been cool to see Dalton in that one instead.

Dalton was my favourite Bond. I read the books when I was a kid, and he matches the physical description the most, and I liked his take on it. He just...fit.

His flicks were made at an interesting time, too. In The Living Daylights, he was pretty much riding around on horse back with Al Queda fighting the Russians. Whoops!

Well, Bond is a bit inappropriate.

Just like Rambo :D

As to whether women are getting out of hand just now, taking over and ****.



Well, YES.

https://78.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m...8x31o1_400.gif
http://junkee.com/wp-content/uploads...h-say-what.gif
http://www.gurl.com/wp-content/uploa...dCU1qip5r2.gif

*FINGER SNAP*

Re: Are these female lead remakes are getting out of hand now?
 

You're an enigma, cat_sidhe.

Re: Are these female lead remakes are getting out of hand now?
 

Yea...my wife is this bizarre trad-girl metal head that gets into arguments with feminists all the time... most of them are her good friends, so lately, they just avoid the subject for the most part. I tend to stay out of those talks. ;)

http://i1282.photobucket.com/albums/...psflortilv.jpg

http://i1282.photobucket.com/albums/...pstbnsmqmn.jpg

Oh okay interesting. Are you saying that The Last Jedi was organic, or was forced, when it came to having a couple of main female characters?

Question isn't directed at me, but i will take a shot. I think Rey as the main character didn't really feel forced, but characters like Rose and Vice Admiral Bozo definitely did.

I thought the actor playing Rose was cute, but her character was at times very questionable. As for the Admiral, that was a complete waste of Laura Dern.

Re: Are these female lead remakes are getting out of hand now?
 

Oh okay I didn't mine Rose and Vice. I mean in Star Wars, half the characters are aliens and robots, so I don't know what to expect; so to have a couple of women characters did not seem weird to me in that universe :)

Re: Are these female lead remakes are getting out of hand now?
 

I don't mind the idea, but they need to be well-written. Rey is a very good lead, but Rose was like I said sometimes questionable, the Vice Admiral was pointless, and Captain Phasma was a very useless villain who seems to have been created entirely for toy market sales.

Re: Are these female lead remakes are getting out of hand now?
 

"In that universe."

Re: Are these female lead remakes are getting out of hand now?
 

I tend to agree with those who say it's stunt casting. If they manage to do something interesting or distinctive with the new take, it may be worth it. I haven't seen the new Ghostbusters or Overboard (which offered a switch in the roles played by the male and female leads), so I can't say if they were worth it. Anyone else seen those or the black or female versions of The Odd Couple in television and theater and care to comment?

As for Doctor Who, I think it's reasonable that he could become a female or person of another race. But I think there's something distinctively British about the character, even though he's not actually supposed to be British, and that shouldn't change.I feel the same way about James Bond and Sherlock Holmes.

Haha, "forced."

Definitely Admiral Bozo was forced.

Re: Are these female lead remakes are getting out of hand now?
 

BTW, we all know Sean Connery was the best Bond. :D

Re: Are these female lead remakes are getting out of hand now?
 

He was but roger Moore was the funnest. You know it.

Yeah, he was ok, I like how he parodied himself in Cannonball Run (1981).

Re: Are these female lead remakes are getting out of hand now?
 

no

I think that might be because male is so frequently treated as the "default" gender that you can easily swap in women to play the characters and it won't be too different, but female-centric narratives tend to emphasise gendered specifics to the point where you can't just straight-up rehash them with men. Maybe that's why nobody tries to do all-male remakes of female movies - because that would genuinely lose what makes those movies distinct whereas there are countless movies where the characters' (male) gender is purely incidental.

But where exactly do you draw the line between a story "naturally having women" and "going overboard"? In one sentence, you think it's "going overboard" to put women in powerful roles in order to make the audience think it's quote-unquote normal (your quotes, not mine), then in the next you say you have no problem with women taking these roles as long as it's done "organically" even though that appears to be a very nebulous standard (and, if you're going to provide examples of how you think it's forced, you should also provide examples of instances where you think it is "organic"). Using Last Jedi as your clearest example of forced diversity is questionable because there are only about half a dozen women of any major prominence in that narrative (which is more than balanced out by the male characters anyway).

Why?

I feel like this could use further elaboration, but I figured they all served their purposes within the narrative - Rose and Holdo are key foils for Finn and Poe respectively while Phasma always struck me as a flat character by design who Finn fights as part of his arc.

Re: Are these female lead remakes are getting out of hand now?
 

Good points. But when it comes to a movie like The Expendables, I don't think you can easily put an ALL FEMALE swap on it. It seems that most Navy Seal types and special ops types are males. Like in the movie Zero Dark Thirty for example, the teams that leads the assault on the suspected terrorist compound are all male for example. It just seems rare to have as many women in a group like you would in The Expendables. Some women in the group, perhaps, but not all.

Where as other movies you could do a gender swap no problem in a remake. Like if you were for example to remake Basic Instinct, you could swap the genders, and have a homme fatale seduce a female detective, and that would work fine and naturally, as an example.

BTW....the Thesis statement of this post was wrong.

Oceans 8 did not break even...it had a 70 million dollar budget, 40 million opening and 140 million dollar domestic run. So the film had a three time multiplier...domestically.

It then made double that with the foreign grosses...so it brought home over a quarter of a billion dollars(288 million) on 70 million dollar budget.

Their is about a 95% chance we're going to get Oceans 9 and 10

Overboard cost 12 million opened at 14 million made 50 in the US and 40 overseas so that was also a huge hit.

Re: Are these female lead remakes are getting out of hand now?
 

Oh okay, I read that it only broken even and was considered to be a box office failure on some sight before. Maybe Hollywood expects more from it's movies to become successes.

When The Doctor appeared as a British, white male thirteen times in a row, why in the world would you assume that it was random? The basic facts would show that it was anything but random; that Britishness, male and white was part of who he is.

While you are not incorrect in your numbers, you may be forgetting advertising costs and kickbacks (percentages) to both the actors/directors and the movie theaters.


Because of these factors, just because the movie made more in total box office proceeds than it cost to produce does not mean that it made a profit.

I might be forgetting 210 million dollars in costs and kickbacks..c'mon.


And kickbacks go both ways Oceans 8 basically had four commercials in it(Cartier, Hotel, Met, Vogue) and a lot of product placement.



https://productplacementblog.com/tag/oceans-8-2018/

They were used as key foils, but that doesn't mean it was a good idea or good writing, and it made for a lackluster movie. Both Finn and Poe's characters were effectively trashed and put on the back burner for less interesting and (IMO) less important characters. Those two character threads represent some of the biggest missteps of the movie. For a film that managed to perhaps the most visually arresting of all the Star Wars stuff, the issues with these characters, combined with the useless casino planet subplot (both of which seemed designed to take specific social jabs), made it all the more frustrating of a watch for me. There is a more subtle way to use social commentary - I kept getting pulled out of the film by these characters.

I will say that from reading your posts in the other thread, I dislike the film a bit less than I initially did, but I still find some pretty glaring weaknesses with it.

You're thinking along the same lines as I did. There was that constant until now: male and white but with randomness of age, size, appearance, accent and personality. The Britishness is really as much of a disguise as the Police Box. Labelled as British in the TV Movie the Doctor's response is the vague "Yes I suppose I am".

Alternating sexes is a piece of new series continuity (2005 onwards) where the notion has infrequently been seeded into the show with the ultimate aim of it becoming standard. The female Master was a dry run, played by Michelle Gomez, and has been very successful. Now it's the Doctor's turn.

When I called Rose and Holdo foils, it was also meant to reflect how their individual development is also meant to inform the development of Finn and Poe - as such, I don't see how Finn and Poe are "trashed' merely by being challenged by Rose and Holdo to be better than what they are at the start of the movie or by failing to meet said challenges (to say nothing of DJ acting as an evil/amoral counterpart to Rose that also makes Finn question his choices for the wrong reasons). That's a key element of character development, after all, which is I have trouble thinking of them as either uninteresting or unimportant or imagining what the film would be like without them.

As for the casino subplot...what can I say? Some anvils need to be dropped, and it's not like subtlety is all it's cracked up to be either.

I don't know how out of hand they're getting, but I did watch Oceans Eight last night and loved it.

There are probably better ways to foil the characters than relegating one to prop status (Finn) or using one as a whipping boy (Poe). Especially since both the characters used for these purposes were making decisions worse that the one's made by Finn and Poe, which led to poor results in both cases. Rose knocking Finn off his heroic run into the giant gun in a effort to allegedly teach him to save people they love, while simultaneously allowing a bunch of people they loved to be killed was ridiculous. Hey, at least we have fun parody videos that point out this exact problem, like this one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCB8DUGpYQQ


Holdo's emasculation of Poe was senseless, and again, rang hollow with her questionable actions during and after the fact. Meanwhile, she reduced the rebellion to one old freighter with a handful of freedom fighters on it. Good thing she was in charge!

Then why start a thread?

There was no guarantee that run would've worked, though, especially when Poe - who originally got a whole squad of bombers destroyed at the start during a similar situation - realises (thanks to his own arc involving Holdo) that trying to take out the gun is a waste of resources and people so he calls off the attack, which Finn ignores in much the same way that Poe originally ignored Leia's orders. The comparison I'd make is to the "let it go" at the end of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, which also involves one character convincing another that love is better than the supposed gratification of a fatal victory.

Speaking of YouTube, it sucks how it's been poisoned by all these damn Last Jedi videos that regurgitate the same sh*t over and over again about how they'd "fix" it or whatever and it's just...why.

I'm sensing a pattern between "heroic run" before and "emasculation" here...but anyway, I question what actual choices she had in this situation where the Order quite simply started off with superior resources and firepower (and wasn't helped by how Finn and Poe's attempt to save the day behind her back only made things worse).

Because OP wonders why these movies keep getting made if moviegoers (supposedly) don't want to watch them.

I have it in my Netflix Q & expect to like it.

You’re speaking for him?

This brings up another issue. How is it that The Empire was defeated, and then we get to see all the big parties on all the worlds while the Ewoks play music from The Lion King, but somehow the remnants of the Empire become The First Order and are suddenly a superior force with all the resources and another even bigger and deadlier Death Star by the time we get to The Force Awakens.

That doesn't bother me as much. as I am usually fine to just lose myself in the mythology of it all and enjoy the story. I find it harder to do that in TLJ though.

Anyway, I don't want to hijack this thread with more back and forth on TLJ - I feel like we covered all this already in the TLJ thread.

I know, I wondered about that too. Maybe we were just overly optimistic :).

I can’t imagine any situation in which a faction of right-wing fanatics could conceivably return to power through the manipulation of iconography aimed at a younger generation or with the promise of purpose and heroism, even during a time period perceived by many to be an era of peace and progress.

Not. At. All.

To answer your first part:


That is interesting that female-centric movies would be thought of as distinct. It does seem to be a bit of a one-way street with that though. Perhaps it's because, by and large, women will watch action movies, spy movies (or some other normally male dominated movie) whether they are male or female dominated or both and of course men will too. But with female-centric movies, like something on Lifetime, by and large, men would rather chew broken glass then sit through that. I think that is why Jerry Macguire (1996) was such a big success because it was balanced blend of romance for the women and sports for the guys.



I do think there are distinct male-centric movies though. The Hunt for Red October (1990) is the first one that comes to mind. There are only two women with basically cameo roles throughout the whole movie. The movie wouldn't work or be realistic if most of the characters were swapped for women. But maybe there is a difference between fiction and non-fiction and/or time period piece?




Secondly, I'll try to further explain what I was meaning:



My idea of women being "forced" into a role is clearly like the Dr. Who franchise wanting to turn the doctor into a woman (without getting into the sci-fi of it all and his molecular structure of the doctor, etc.). The Doctor has been male for the last 50 some years. This is a clear example, to me, of turning the doctor into a woman just for the sake of doing it. I want to tell the writers, "It's OK for the role to remain a male." It will still be the same charming story as it always has been without doing a swap and the views and fan-base will still be forthcoming. In fact I think doing so disrupts that charm for no other reason than to satisfy filling that "void" that there should be a woman in that position. Further, you run the risk of losing your fan-base in the hope to recruit new fans. If it's not broke, don't fix it.
"Organically" may not have been the right word, but to further convey my point, if Doctor Who, from its inception had always been a woman then I would think it should stay a woman. After 50 years to swap her out for a man would be doing the character a disservice.


If I were to continue using "organically" my clearest example would be The Walking Dead. In there we have a mix of characters and no one cares whether male or female. We start off with a mixed cast. As the story progresses people die off and new people are introduced whether emerging from the woods, at a farmhouse, or on the side of the road, whatever. In this case we have an organically developing story and that is part of the formula for this particular story. Some of the men are tough like Grimes. Some of the women are tough like Michonne. And it's ok because that is what has come to be expected throughout the story line (sorry if you haven't seen the Walking Dead. I'm sure some other TV series would work as well).



To add to my Star Wars example: Star Wars (IV, V, VI), for the most part, it's been a normally male dominated show, aside from Leia, Mon Mothma, and later Amidalla in the prequels. Even though these movies were mainly male dominated, no one cared. The story resonated with both men and women alike. It was beyond popular. Star Wars defined a generation and has had a lasting impact throughout our culture. It was set apart from our reality here on Earth. It took us on a ride to another galaxy with its own story.

Contrast that with what's being dished out from Disney by injecting its modern day cultural sentiment and bias while trying to balance the character gender ratio so as to be fair throughout the story we know and love - it feels forced. It is the inverse of Star Wars influencing the culture. It is now the culture influencing Star Wars.

100% agree with this. The recent gender reversal trend to me isnt about diversity at all, it's about making films for women, but Hollywood is so insecure about make a film that might flop, instead of simply making something original, they have to go down the reboot route. Im not for one minute saying there are no good films made any more, but the vast majority of good exciting new films these days are indies with investment. Hollywood is basically becoming a sequel/ reboot machine. I was driving past a local cinema the other day, where they still have an old fashioned 'now playing' board outside, so i always have a glance when I stop at the traffic lights. About 3 weeks ago, 10 of the 12 films listed were sequels, reboots or franchise films. Is this all the 'summer blockbuster season' is now? Just more of what we've seen before?

I watched Ocean's 8. I didnt enjoy Ocean's 11, and basically only saw 8 because my friend wanted to see it but I enjoyed it a lot. Basically nothing in that story needed Ocean's 11's existence for the story to work, it was a very tenuous link to the original work, that could easily have been cut from the story without hurting the film. But Hollywood, scared of taking the risk of making a female-centric heist film, already a genre rarity, instead made one with a tiny link to an existing franchise. It is highly likely that the film still would have succeeded, especially with the star power involved. But it was still a risk they always refuse to take. To use a video game example, there are a lot of similarities between the Tomb Raider and Uncharted series. The female led Tomb Raider obviously has been around much longer, but when Uncharted came out, there was nobody calling it 'Tomb Raider for boys,' or a 'male led Tomb Raider.' It was just a great game series in it's own right.

Diversity and representation matter, and unfortunately, there is a large ignorant movie watching demographic, who simply have no interest in any story that does not represent them. As such, basically any film that doesnt feature a mainly white male cast is instead seen as a niche that white men wont necessarily watch. I think I read that Girls' Trip was the highest grossing film of all time that featured a predominantly black female cast. Black Panther is the third highest grossing film in the MCU after Avengers Assemble and Infinity War. The audiences are out there, but the only way they can make it in the big films is when it is done as a specifically *insert non white non male minority here* led film. A black film. A girls film. A gay film. An Asian film. More often than not, when these minorities appear in your blockbuster male dominated franchises, they are there to fill an expected stereotype. The gay sidekick trope. The magical Asian or black man. The dead lesbian. The femme fatale vs the virginal plain jane. They are there to be the butt of a joke, to fill a role for our heroic male lead.

But aren't white men evil?

The Thing (1982) is another example.

That would be intriguing wouldn't it – I wonder which would have been the bigger jolt :)?

My thinking about it runs basically the same. I remain of the opinion that the Doctor should have stayed male. Parallel to that (imagine the tension) I concede that the series has outgrown itself to such an extent that it's no longer sustainable to keep the Doctor confined to one "type". What if there were 30 Doctors in twenty years' time, all "skinny white men" to quote Christopher Eccleston? In the classic series we knew that Time Lords could only regenerate 12 times, but with the series' resurrection that had to be thrown out of the window pronto. Someone compared Jodie Whittaker's arrival to that of Patrick Troughton. Troughton was the first 'replacement' Doctor, taking over from William Hartnell and it had never been done before. It certainly is as critical a moment for the series.

Sounds like the Republican party.

Re: Are these female lead remakes are getting out of hand now?
 

Hmm. The "Not. At. All." is, really, pivotal to my post.

Re: Are these female lead remakes are getting out of hand now?
 

Its a way to make a lazy remake while also pandering to feminism and being able to call critics of the film sexist.

Re: Are these female lead remakes are getting out of hand now?
 

The actual ‘professional’ critics are also too scared to give negative reviews because of this so out of the bat you get a critically praised film no matter the standard.

I will concede that there are nominally acceptable contexts such as military-based narratives, but I'll definitely say that genres like sci-fi or fantasy are a lot more malleable in that regard - like the quote goes, you don't create new worlds just to give them the same limits as the old.

Why assume that the change is intended solely to draw in new fans when it could just as easily be intended to keep existing fans from getting bored with a stagnating status quo? Maybe the fans who would quit the franchise completely over this change weren't big enough fans in the first place. Besides, it's been established the Doctor is part of an alien race that undergoes these sorts of changes all the time so it's not like it's ruining the show's internal logic by going through with it anyway.

I've seen an episode of two but I'm sure I'd get the gist from its whole zombie apocalypse premise alone, which makes sense since that's the kind of kill-or-be-killed world where everyone has to be tough enough to survive. The question then becomes why this particular world is your go-to example when I could argue that it also applies to Star Wars, which literally takes place across an entire galaxy at war where its female characters have to be tough to survive (especially when characters like Rey or Rose have to grow up in unforgiving circumstances). Just because a series starts off with a certain ratio of gender representation doesn't mean it has to stay at that level forever because, as noted with Doctor Who, it's not automatically a good thing to stay the same (especially on a show that's already gone for 50 years).

Star Wars isn't some divine text that came out of a vacuum and exists completely apart from our reality. The original film was always a mixture of cultural influences, whether cinematic ones (samurai movies, Westerns, Flash Gordon) or real-life ones (the Vietnam War, Watergate) and its sense of internal politics has evolved over the years to accommodate real-world developments (as evidenced by the prequels' Bush-era political commentary or the neo-Nazi iconography of the First Order). Saying that "no one cared" about the lack of female characters is still rather presumptuous and the series' popularity with all genders doesn't mean that it is completely above criticism in this regard. If the increase in female characters "feels forced" in recent installments, it's only because previous installments set such a low bar (intentionally or not) that literally any increase is going to be noticed (especially when Last Jedi has more main female characters than the first six films put together and it's still only a handful).

Re: Are these female lead remakes are getting out of hand now?
 

I liked Ghostbusters and Ocean's 8.

If it's in Miami, it'll be a hot Hispanic chick...and that's just fine with me.

You're as cynical as I am ;D.

To my mind social responsibility is the main factor. It's expected of those working in the industry to represent society accurately and it comes into the decision making. Maybe it will draw in new fans but I think it's there primarily for fans that have come in during the new series.

I'm smiling because the final straw for me was actually when they did it with the Master :). I hadn't been happy though for several years over various aspects of how the series was being written and run, so I decided to call it a day. Bear in mind that I was a classic series fan long before the new series came into being, so it's perhaps a question of one being incompatible with the other.

It's been established in the new series. The earliest example being in The Doctor's Wife where the Corsair is described as having male and female incarnations.

Re: Are these female lead remakes are getting out of hand now?
 

Perhaps so ^^ I still think about how Angry video game nerd James Rolfe was being callee sexist for refusing to see the new Ghostbusters even though none of his reasons he gave were because it had a female cast. He apparently didnt even know about the controversy until after it had blown over. Too busy working and trying to support his wife and daughter.

Oh God :). Well this is it – there'll often be the assumption of sexism where really that's far from being the case.

Re: Are these female lead remakes are getting out of hand now?
 

I can see two sides to the situation though, on one hand I think you need to concede that modern blockbusters are overwhelmingly based on existing properties with built in fanbases, properties that often tend to be male dominanted so if you don't shift things somewhat you greatly limit the potential for more balance.

Equally though I do think Hollywood as picked up on the idea that you can cynically piggyback on politics to cover for poor quality film making. Ghostbusters and the Starwars sequels for me are just bad films and I think would have been called as such much more without the politics involved.

Really though these films aren't "feminist" for me, something like Aliens or recently Fury Road are feminist and do actually have something to say politically. The Force Awakens has nothing to say politically at all, its just empty tokenism cynically covering for hackish poor quality film making which if anything harms the cause it claims to support.

Re: Are these female lead remakes are getting out of hand now?
 

What does Aliens and Fury Road have to say politically though?

Seriously?

One features a corporation exploiting the deaths of others and risking its workers for the acquisition of presumed valuable property. Cameron himself has said the he drew from the debacle of the Vietnam war for the marines’ failure in confronting the Xenomorphs. Fury Road has demagoguery, the withholding of natural resources, dehumanization of one’s own military force and of the opposite gender and that’s before you get into all the climate destabilization stuff.

Re: Are these female lead remakes are getting out of hand now?
 

Well I feel the politics in those movies are put in the background in favor of action scenes. Fury Road is mostly a big chase sequence which is not bad at all, I just don't feel it's as politically charged, cause the politics are put in the background, and not explored as much. But I guess they are still there, compared to some movies. But it's not like they built to big political pay off and had a huge message in the end, that turns the audience on it's political ear.

One thing I felt about Fury Road, when it came to feminism, is that it feels like the women's make up was too good for slaves trying to escape, and they needed to look more messy and less kept. But the make up still stays on too well it seems, and I felt it was cause they wanted the women characters to still look pretty, even though it's a post-apocalyptic wasteland. The main female character (Charlize Theron), doesn't look all pretty in make up, but some of the others do.

Unless it was just me?

Re: Are these female lead remakes are getting out of hand now?
 

The film’s feminist viewpoint and message is undercut because the women look too pretty?

Re: Are these female lead remakes are getting out of hand now?
 

I felt the filmmakers were too concerned with the prettiness of some of the characters for such a post-apocalyptic wasteland where they wouldn't have access to make up and hair highlights like that most likely, yes. So that in itself made it feel undercut to a degree for me.

Re: Are these female lead remakes are getting out of hand now?
 

Well, considering that the characters of the wives are meat to be Immortan Joe’s “trophies”, it’s not totally beyond grasp to assume that he goes out of his way to make them look pretty. To “preserve” them in some way.

In any case, it’s an odd argument to make. Why would a female character’s appearance make or break the argument the narrative has them deliver?

That's exactly what I was going to say. They'd have access to things that the rest of Joe's cult wouldn't.

Regarding what you said about the message falling into the background, you realize that the chase that drives (pun intended) the narrative is entirely politically motivated. As in that the characters are only on the run because Furiosa decided to save the wives from their lives as the sex slaves to a tyrannical cult leader who proclaims himself to be a god and uses that influence to subdue the masses. The message doesn’t fall into the background or take a backseat (another pun intended) to the action at any point. It’s the very fuel of the movie (that’s three now.)

I suppose it depends on how you define politics in relation to cinema as an art form and how much they are connected to a film's overall quality. I daresay that saying "more people would think this film is bad if it weren't for the politics" doesn't work if you consider that said politics might actually be part of what makes the film good (or at the very least better than it would be otherwise). Hell, if you removed any trace of feminism from Aliens and Fury Road then they'd certainly be a lot worse too - sure, they'd be technically decent, but would they still be the classics we know and love? Of course not.

Re: Are these female lead remakes are getting out of hand now?
 

Oh well I just thought the politics were a stepping stone to hold the action scenes together but nothing more. Which is fine, I just didn't think of it as a political themed movie. It felt more like a sub-theme, and nothing more.

I think sometimes people will see a theme in a movie, but they think that the movie is all about that, when really a lot of times it's just a sub-theme. Like for example, I didn't think much of the first Alien movie, and in film school, a classmate told me that I got it all wrong, and that the movie's theme was about rape, and I missed all the rape themes.

Now I know there may have been sub-themes of rape, but he talks like the movie deals with the subject like on the same level as a movie like Mysterious Skin, or The Accused or something like that.

So I just felt that Fury Road, didn't deal with the subject on a deep level or anything, which is fine, I just didn't take the feminist qualities as deeply, because of it.

You don’t have to look too hard.

Re: Are these female lead remakes are getting out of hand now?
 

Yeah I know you don't have to look too hard, but the point I am trying to make is, it's not as big in the themes, as some others like some of the classmates, make it out it be.

It doesn't deal with the psychological consequences of rape, and it doesn't deal with the psychological and social subject matter and themes, the same way others movie do, where it's a bigger theme, such as Mysterious Skin and The Accused. Just like how movies like Fury Road and Aliens do not deal with their political themes, very heavily, the way other movies with bigger themes might.

Alien uses rape to fuel hide and seek horror sequences, the same way Fury Road and Aliens just uses political drive to fuel action sequences. Now not having heavy themes in a movie is not a bad thing, but let's not kid ourselves, when these themes are not really dealt with and just being used for fuel for action.