Actress Ana de Armas called for more original female-led action films and rejected the modern trend of gender-swapping male-driven action franchises.
Speaking with Variety at CinemaCon to promote her John Wick spinoff movie Ballerina, Ana de Armas said that male action icons should still be cast as men, allowing women to chart their own course.
“Let James be James and John Wick be John Wick. We’ll do our thing,” the former Bond girl (No Time to Die) said. “When you get a woman fighting, you’ll be surprised the things she can pull off.”
The actress said that the James Bond universe may open up now that Amazon MGM has taken creative control of the franchise from longtime producers Barbara Broccoli and Robert Wilson.
“I’m sure that Barbara Broccoli and Robert Wilson made the best decision for James Bond. Whatever happens, that can go anywhere [creatively],” she said.
The sentiments expressed by Ana de Armas have become more popularized in recent years, with actors and actresses of different persuasions publicly coming out in favor of more nuanced female-led franchises. Actress Emily Blunt, for instance, said in 2022 that she had grown “bored” of the “strong woman” lead trope.
“It’s the worst thing ever when you open a script and read the words ‘strong female lead,’” Blunt said. “That makes me roll my eyes. I’m already out. I’m bored. Those roles are written as incredibly stoic, you spend the whole time acting tough and saying tough things.”
Speaking with The Guardian that same year, actress Tatiana Maslany of She-Hulk fame called the trope “frustrating.”
It’s reductive,” Maslany said. “It’s just as much a shaving off of all the nuances, and just as much of a trope. It’s a box that nobody fits into. Even the phrase is frustrating. It’s as if we’re supposed to be grateful that we get to be that.”
Academy Award-winning actress and screenwriter Emma Thompson also previously criticized the prevailing trend of making women act like men. Speaking on CultureBlast podcast in 2020, the Love Actually star said that it’s not “good enough” to simply give a woman a gun and have her act like a man, even going so far as to say that movies should utilize a women’s femininity as a source of her heroism.
“So all the women screenwriters I talk to, I say, ‘Well, what’s the story?’ Because it’s not good enough simply to give the women the guns, and then make the women badass, as well,” said Thompson. “Now women have to be badass — if they’re feminine in the way that they used to be, and they’re not badass, then they’re not welcome. Also, they’re not allowed to cry, apparently, anymore, because we’ve just got to be like the men.”
Thompson said that screenwriters and directors need to explore the feminine to find the heroism inherent with it, such as giving birth.
“And I remember thinking, ‘Well, that’s not what we meant,’” the actress continued. “When I got a group of women together in my thirties, and I said, ‘Okay, what’s the female heroine? Who is that? What does she do?’ Because she hasn’t got the wherewithal to do the Superman, to do the Godfather, that’s not the point. That’s not where our heroism lies. So how do we make it heroic?”
Paul Roland Bois directed the award-winning Christian tech thriller, EXEMPLUM, which has a 100% Rotten Tomatoes critic rating and can be viewed for FREE on YouTube, Tubi, or Fawesome TV. “Better than Killers of the Flower Moon,” wrote Mark Judge. “You haven’t seen a story like this before,” wrote Christian Toto. A high-quality, ad-free rental can also be streamed on Google Play, Vimeo on Demand, or YouTube Movies. Follow him on X @prolandfilms or Instagram @prolandfilms.
