What gets your goat? All-female movie remakes

We need original movies starring women, not gender-swapped remakes

By Jessica Berget, Opinions Editor
There is something to be said about the film industry when their idea of female representation or “strong female roles” is just casting women in movie remakes that originally starred men.

As much as I like to see women play leading roles in major movie blockbusters, when they roles they take on were originally written for men, it leaves a bad taste in my mouth. The problem I have with these movies is that they don’t represent women or give them “strong female roles” to play, it just places women in roles that were originally written for men. Some people will praise this trend of gender-swapped remake movies, regarding them as a “Female representation win!” but how exactly do these movies represent women when the roles weren’t originally written for them? These roles don’t represent women in any way because these were roles made for, and by, men. They’re women playing a man’s character, and to me, that’s not representation.

We recently had an all-female Ghostbusters, and an expansion on the male-dominated Ocean’s 11 franchise with the all-women Ocean’s 8, it looks like this may be a reoccurring trend in Hollywood, with the next gender-swapped movie remake being The Expendables (renamed as The ExpendaBelles, just in case you forgot it’s starring all women). To take it even further, there has even been talks of remaking The Lord of the Flies with an all-female cast, which completely misses the point of the story. The point was that it was a group of boys and that they succumbed to toxic and violent aggressions. If it were all women, I feel like there would be a completely different outcome and story, so it makes no sense to make the same movie with a female cast and not change the story at all. I worry if this all-women reboot pattern keeps up, more classic films will have their ultimate story points and morals misconstrued.

Can’t movie producers make original films about a group of female friends battling some supernatural force, or a story about a class of teenage girls stranded on an island? Surely this would be more interesting than the same movie continuously regurgitated and gender-swapped in the name of female representation.