Charlie’s Angels director Elizabeth Banks is apparently still sore over the 2019 box-office disaster and is now taking her frustration out on the news media, claiming entertainment reporters unfairly presented the movie as “feminist” as part of their “gendered agenda.”
But anyone who has had the misfortune of sitting through the movie knows that the filmmakers went to great lengths to insert woke feminism into the storyline, including a girl-power montage that opens the movie and a surprise revelation that Charlie is a woman, not a man.
Elizabeth Banks chastised the entertainment news media’s obsession with gender in a recent interview with Rolling Stone.
“So much of the story that the media wanted to tell about Charlie’s Angels was that it was some feminist manifesto,” she said.
Elizabeth Banks, star of new film 'The Beanie Bubble,' talks toy fads, Hollywood strikes, and what she learned from 'Charlie’s Angels.' https://t.co/Q7GWwBwbDu
— Rolling Stone (@RollingStone) July 28, 2023
“People kept saying, ‘You’re the first female director of Charlie’s Angels!’ And I was like, ‘They’ve only done a TV show and McG’s movies … what are you talking about? There’s not this long legacy.’ I just loved the franchise.”
She added: “There was not this gendered agenda from me. That was very much laid on top of the work, and it was a little bit of a bummer. It felt like it pigeonholed me and the audience for the movie.”
Charlie’s Angels was a major box office bomb, grossing just $17.8 million domestically when it was released in 2019. The Sony release was a girl-power action comedy that played up female empowerment while deemphasizing the sex appeal that was the calling card of the original TV series and two previous movies.
As Breitbart News reported, the new Charlie’s Angels features a moment when Kristen Stewart delivers a woke lecture about how “women can do anything.” The movie even makes “Bosley” into a woman, played by Banks herself.
Self-awareness doesn’t seem to be Banks’ strong suit.
“To lose control of the narrative like that was a real bummer,” Banks told Rolling Stone.
“You realize how the media can frame something regardless of how you’ve framed it. I happen to be a woman who directed a Charlie’s Angels movie that happened to star three incredible women. You can’t control the media saying, ‘You’re a lady director, and that’s special!’ — which it is, but it’s not the only thing.”
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