MovieChat Forums > Charlie's Angels (2019) Discussion > Is the concept of 3 women becoming crime...

Is the concept of 3 women becoming crime fighters even radical anymore?


Thinking back to the original series it was a radical thing as most crime fighters were men back then. It made sense, choose 3 attractive women and let them use their feminine wiles. The other show from the same era was Police Woman.

It was fun for the movies as well.

But now? What is so exciting about 3 unattractive women, none of which seem all that physically capable playing crime fighter? The concept is no longer unusual. That coupled with the PC agendas makes it unsurprising that it flopped.

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Judging by all the genuine manbabies that keep crying and having meltdowns over modern movies spitting at the pc regressive agenda - even films that don’t take an overt political stance whatsoever but are still proudly girl power are enough to trigger the whining anti-pc crowd - which said manbabies wish would make a comeback in the entertainment world (fat chance of that happening -- yay!), I’d say so. Case in point.


Thank you, next!

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For this film to flop as badly as it has it indicates that not even women want to watch it. Sorry to trigger the whining PC crowd.

NEXT!

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They shouldn't be girl power for the sake of it. A good movie that happens to feature women is fine, but if your point is to be progressive, filmmakers deserve having it blow in their face.

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there's no point in making this movie now. in the 70's, it was unusual for women to be detectives. now it's commonplace. in the 70's, it was okay to make movies with hot women to ogle, now it's frowned upon.

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Yep my thoughts exactly.

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There's a big difference in the sexism though. In the 1970s films it was implicit, not explicitly stated, that men ran the show and women were there to support the men, even if just for sex. But unless you're talking trashy grindhouse films or wretched sex comedies, the male characters didn't go out their way to humiliate women and make it seem as though they succeeded in spite of the hopeless incompetence of women. On the other hand, these days women are apparently so insecure and self-centered that they need to see men portrayed as hopeless retards who would be absolutely lost without them. This has been the basic structure of every family sitcom for decades. It's now crept into the mainstream in cinema. It seems that somebody in charge thinks there's an audience for lame gender pandering like we saw in Ghostbusters and now this idiotic film. In these films there's typically not a single male character worthy of any respect, and often they're objectified as a hunk of meat (Hemsworth in Ghostbusters) in the same way women bitched about for decades. If it's all just about bloodthirsty revenge, ladies and soyboys out there, then just say so. I'll then guiltlessly await a return to the glory days when men were depicted as the experts and the ones who truly handle the dirty work of taking out the thugs (which in reality they generally are still), and women admitted to counting on men to do the heavy lifting in most everything of importance except housecleaning and squeezing out a brood.

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Honestly, the original series wasn't so much about women kicking ass as it was about women being role models for young girls. For some reason, everyone seems to have forgotten this, but Charlie's Angels was originally created to represent the ideal traits women were desired to have back then.

If you go back and actually watch the original show, you'll see that the Angels don't actually do a lot of ass-kicking in it. Instead, they spend much more time doing actual detective work. That was because the show was emphasizing the value of intelligence, rather than physical force. In the show's opening, it's mentioned that the three women were already bright, gifted graduates from the police academy who simply weren't allowed to fulfill their full potential. It was a very positive message back then to encourage society not to underestimate women, as opposed to today where female empowerment largely just boils down to "fuck men".

However, the most important aspect of Charlie's Angels that seems to have been forgotten among each new iteration they've done, is that the Angels were meant to represent the best of people. Once again, if you actually go back and watch the original show, you'll see that the Angels spend a lot of time just being really nice, wholesome people doing kind, charitable things when they aren't solving crimes. They don't even use seduction to get what they want, as that's a trait commonly associated with toxic femininity. More often than not, they just resort to putting on a smile and using sweet talk to get what they want out of men. That's why they were called Angels. Because they were pure, wholesome people. It wasn't just because they were hot.

If they ever want to make this franchise relevant again, they need to go back to the original show and try to get those aspects I mentioned right again. This is something the McG movies also failed at. Charlie's Angels is not about hot women kicking ass, it's about representing the best of what girls (and people, in general) can be while not denigrating men. Elizabeth Banks should have probably tried to actually sit down and watch the original show before directing this monstrosity.

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I find that is another common trait now days. Everything is made to be the same and loses what made it unique in the first place. I recall seeing the first Robert Downey Jr Sherlock Holmes film and they made Sherlock an action hero, do we need another action hero? Same with the 2009 Star Trek film it looked more like Star Wars.

Charlie's Angels as you describe it would probably be PC incorrect now, feminine women behaving in a feminine way?! Scandalous. It would have made a more interesting film though. I am not sure how many action films we really need.

And yes, the people who reboot these things should actually watch the originals to try and get a sense of what they are supposed to be like. Rather they just take the title and apply their own thoughts.

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Stunning and brave!

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It's the Fan4Stick situation. Where the movie seems more like a product being put out to keep the rights or ride a nostalgia wave. But they forgot to make a decent movie. But because the movie emphasized the 'girl power' in its marketing, people went apeshit over that instead of the fact that the movie itself just doesn't seem good on a technical level. Once again, people got mad about the wrong thing. This will be forgotten like Fan4stick or Ghostbusters: Answer the Call.

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https://www.datalounge.com/thread/25000822--charlie-s-angels-is-a-gigantic-flop!

The 2000 movie succeeded because it was a product made for a generation which still devoured MTV. It was directed by a music video director, McG, and had a tie in single by Destiny’s Child which was played relentlessly that summer. So, even though the IP had no relevance with young people at the time, the makers understood how to create an audience for it.

I don’t think there was any such motivation behind this one other than “Elizabeth Banks has deemed it important”.

by Anonymous reply 10 November 16, 2019 5:31 PM

Gen X was hungry for 1970s nostalgia, including young people who were raised on MTV. The cast included actors who were very popular with young people. A generation of young people grew up with Drew Barrymore. The 2000 reboot made sense.

by Anonymous reply 11 November 16, 2019 5:44 PM

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Feminists would dislike this concept upon hearing it. 3 women spies to match solo James Bond, is too much of a compromise; in addition to the Christain symbolism with the word "Angels". Thus a film like this failed.

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3 women working SUCCESSFULLY together will always be a radical concept.

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I don't think movies need to be 'radical' or groundbreaking in any way.

They just need to be FUN ESCAPISM. That's all. Make a movie fun and escapist, and people will watch it, guaranteed. It doesn't matter if it has three females or ten robots or two insectbeings from planet Coosbane, if the story is good, and the movie is fun, it's all good.

After all, that's what movies are for - entertaining you and making you forget your everyday troubles, by bringing you into a world where you can escape the mundane daily minutia for awhile.

I think Charlie's Angels 2 (Full Throttle, was it?) achieves this nicely. Just some mindless, cartoony romp, that's a lot of fun, if you take it the right way. Only if you EXPECT something different from it, can it disappoint you.

I don't care if the 'Angels' were angelic and doing good deeds or not. The premise is basically female cops that were bored, that now have a more interesting life, where they can sit on a couch and joke around with Charlie through a speaker on the table, and put down Bosley, the mandatory 'lesser man' to underline how magnificent the female heroes are.

It doesn't need to be more complicated than that, and the original show is not exactly showered with deep, philosophical thought that overwhelms the viewer. Pretty girls with great bodies doing traditional man-stuff in a more 'cute and bubbly way', cue 'the theme' and let people relax. That's about it.

There's nothing wrong with a movie or story being "just fun". Not every story needs to be an epic prose about fluctuating cosmic epochs.

(Sorry, I just wanted to use the word 'epoch')

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