Image from 'Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle' courtesy of Sony
"In this day and age, a film about female action heroes must refuse to take itself even remotely seriously in order to be accepted by the masses. American audiences can accept Tom Cruise breaking into a highly secured vault, but Cameron Diaz doing the same thing must be presented as a campy joke." - Scott Mendelson discussing Charlie's Angels back in 2000 for his college newspaper.
That quote comes from my original (mostly positive) review of McG's initial Charlie's Angels theatrical adaptation from back in 2000. So yes, I really have always been kind of obnoxious about this stuff going back at least fifteen years. I bring this up because, as you've probably heard thanks to The Hollywod Reporter,
And while there was talk about her possibly chatting with Marvel about helming Captain Marvel, it's not a zero sum game. The notion that Ms. Banks is getting her very own action movie (possibly two depending on how Red Queen turns out) is a relatively positive one. And while I could again whine about old-school franchise being endlessly rebooted, a Charlie's Angels movie means that at least three actresses who otherwise might not get the chance to play action heroes on screen are now going to get that opportunity. And that we're getting a female-centric action franchise helmed by an actual female director no less is another bonus. So in this case, the positives far outweigh the negatives.
For the record, I liked the first Charlie's Angels quite a bit. The cast was game, McG clearly knew how to shoot and edit a flashy action sequence (and he loves those long takes), and it had a nice assemblage of colorful heroes (Drew Barrymore, Cameron Diaz, and Lucy Liu) and colorful villains (Sam Rockwell, Kelly Lynch, and Crispin Glover) with a Tim Curry cameo to boot. The film is lively, colorful, and clearly a labor of love for producer Drew Barrymore (who insisted that her angels not use guns). Despite a troubled production (among other things, Bill Murray and Lucy Liu didn't get along) and a delay from summer to November of 2000, the film snagged a $40 million debut and eventually earned $264m on a $93m budget.
The sequel, which offered slightly harsher action while retaining the camp and severely upping the cheesecake factor, was one of those classic "flops that wasn't" films. The picture cost $120m and earned a little less in America ($100m vs. $125m), but actually earned more overseas ($158m vs. $139m) than the original leading to a near identical $254m cume. It opened to $39m in the summer of 2003, which was written off as a disaster by pundits who inexplicably thought it was going to pull a $69m debut weekend and/or that a campy Demi Moore (as the villain) was somehow going to spawn her own spin-off movie. Yes, that was a major "learning experience" in my growth as a future box office pundit. The franchise was ended and that was that, save a short-lived (and unwatched by myself) television series in 2011.
If you want a Charlie's Angels riff that is surprisingly good, track down the first season of the surprisingly witty She Spies which aired in syndication in the early 2000's. But, anyway, you can't keep a vaguely recognizable franchise down in this day-and-age, so Sony is attempting to bringing it back. If I have one piece of advice, it pertains to that quote above from my 15-year old review of the first film. You don't need to make a Charlie's Angels that self-reflexively and/or defensively winks at the audience any more. In 2000, moviegoing audiences probably wouldn't have accepted an action thriller featuring three female heroes with a relatively straight face. The initial admittedly arch teaser, which gave no hints that the film would be anything other than a straightforward Charlie's Angels action picture with a potentially comedic Bill Murray performance, was infamously laughed at and/or belittled in theaters back in 2000. It was only when the second trailer premiered, one which reassured audiences that it would be a campy and cheesecake-laced romp, that the successful sell was made.
But a lot has changed in fifteen years. We have grown up not just with periodic female-centric action movies like The Hunger Games (Lions Gate Entertainment), Sony's Underworld and Resident Evil, Paramount/Viacom Inc's Tomb Raider, Hanna, Weinstein's Kill Bill, and Universal's Salt, but television shows like ABC/Walt Disney's Alias and The CW's Nikita. There is no longer a need to shroud the very concept of Charlie's Angels in a campy, self-satirical blanket of artificiality. Now that doesn't mean the world needs a hyper-violent and gore-drenched Charlie's Angels movie that will depress its audiences while making them ponder the post-9/11 security state or the horrors of the drug war. Although, for the record, I liked the last Miami Vice movie. But that does mean that a new Charlie's Angels film can be at least as serious this go-around as a Mission: Impossible film or a James Bond picture. That makes the Charlie's Angels franchise the rare property that might actually benefit from a slightly darker and/or grittier reboot.
Of course, the pitch may be more comic, maybe even self-satirical in the mold of Sony's 21 Jump Street franchise. And if it's a good movie, that's all well and good. But, I do think the world is ready for a Charlie's Angels film that takes itself a little more seriously, because the world is ready for a female-centric action franchise that doesn't have to apologize for itself. Elizabeth Banks is getting an all-too-rare opportunity here, as will whoever ends up joining the cast. All of the above makes this one franchise reboot I will abstain from complaining about. So for now, I will merely ask who you think should play the title characters this time around? I vote for Kristen Ritter, Constance Wu, and Tessa Thompson, with Anna Kendrick, Paz Vega, and Gugu Mbatha-Raw as the villains, but that's just me.
