Sisters Doing It For Themselves, or Sloppy Seconds? The Coming Trend of Gender-Swap Remakes
I'll admit it. I thought the remake of GHOSTBUSTERS, going out of it's way to gender-swap the characters, was a film with an idea shoehorned into it (quod vide: gimmick). I wasn't vehement about it, I didn't feel the need to pan it heavily before it even hit the screens. I was just overwhelmingly nonplussed by the concept. Then the reviews came out, and it turned out to be a good movie after all.
Katie bar the door, because Hollywood will take that as a holy sign.
It turns out that there's already another remake in the works with the cast thrown into distaff. OCEAN'S EIGHT, a remake of OCEAN'S ELEVEN, which was itself a remake, boasts a cast including Sandra Bullock and Cate Blanchett -- which in and of itself is enough for this to have "Blockbuster" written all over it. (The good kind, not the bankrupt business model of videotape rentals.) And when it becomes a financial success -- and it will -- we can expect Hollywood to take it's self-fulfilling prophecy and run with it, churning out a series of films that were previously male-dominated with female-dominated remakes.
| Earth-11 is the fictional alternate reality of DC Entertainment where all the heroes have been gender-swapped. Just for fun, let's imagine what other films Hollywood might consider remaking with an all-female cast: - The Dirty Dozen - 12 Angry Women - Reservoir Dogs - Saving Private Ryan - Lord of the Flies - The Great Escape |
What's your opinion? Is this starting trend women getting their due, or is it a serving up of leftovers from the feast men have already finished? Sound off in the comments section.
