Special to L. Neil Smith’s The Libertarian Enterprise

It seems like Hollywood is starting to lose the very thing that they used to be good at, which is the ability to make money. It’s not to say that there weren’t times where they had a few flops here and there because at the end of the day movies are nothing more than preverbal crapshoots. Though there used to be a time when movie makers were better at determining what their audience wanted to see. Now it seems as if they have completely lost that ability or they simply stopped caring. I have a feeling that it is probably the latter.

When Hollywood tries to reboot a franchise it’s because they know that there was a time when it was a big money maker. At the same time, they want to tinker with the formula that made that very franchise profitable. The problem is that the people taking over these franchises are SJWs that care more about advancing a political agenda than they do about making money. That is how we ended up with the failed reboots of Ghostbusters, Ocean’s Eleven and the Terminator franchises. Even more recent, was the Charlie’s Angels reboot, directed and produced by actress Elizabeth Banks.

Before I get to everything that went wrong with the latest attempt to revive the Charlie’s Angels saga, I want to point out that I have never been a fan of the series or the two movies that were made in the early 2000’s. The series aired a little bit before my time and I wasn’t too impressed with any of the reruns I saw later on in my life. I was even less impressed with the first movie, which I found downright painful to sit through. To me it felt as if this movie had been written by a brain damaged seventh grader with its lack of clever dialogue and a plot structure that was absolute garbage. I can appreciate a movie being tongue-in-cheek, since I am a fan of the Kingsmen and the pre-Daniel Craig Bond movies, but even by those standards I thought Charlie’s Angels was a failure. I also wasn’t a fan of the crappy fight scenes that were ripped off from the Matrix movies. I know that it was popular for movies in that era to copy fight scenes from the Matrix, but I have always thought it was stupid to have people drop-kick in mid-air and bend over backwards to dodge bullets when there is no reason for it. I was also put off by the way the Angels weren’t allowed to have firearms in the movie for politically correct reasons. Now, I will admit that I only saw the first movie, since I didn’t want to go through the pain of seeing another one.

The one thing I can say about the first two installments is that while they touted themselves as a “girl power” style action movies, they at least had sex appeal for their male audience. Back then, movie makers understood that most of the people who went to go see action movies, whether it was a female cast or not, were men. This is a concept that Elizabeth Banks can’t seem to wrap her head around. Her version of Charlie’s Angels was designed to appeal to feminists and SJW’s and not to the male population, which is why many complained about the movie lacking sex appeal. I think one of Banks’ biggest mistakes was casting Kristen Stewart with her morose demeaner which seems completely contrary to the warm and perky personalities that the Angels from the series and first two movies had. The movie ultimately crashed and burned at the box office, which was a surprise to nobody, except for Elizabeth Banks. It just goes to show that SJW’s are either unsupportive of movies geared toward them or there is simply not enough of them to bring up the grosses.

As a hardcore SJW, Banks refused to take responsibility for creating a movie that no one was interested in seeing. Instead she blamed men for her own short comings. Never mind that she made it clear that she was more interested in creating a movie that appealed to feminists and SJW’s, than one that appealed to half the world’s population. Then she has the nerve to act outraged when that same half doesn’t show up to the movie’s box office. What I find really amusing is that Banks tries very hard to explain why movies with female protagonists, such as Wonder Woman and Captain Marvel have experienced the very success that had eluded her Charlie’s Angels reboot. Banks claims that those movies were successful simply because they were attached to male driven franchises. I suppose she is sort of right in the case of Captain Marvel, but that is mainly because it was the most lackluster of all the movies in the Marvel franchise. If it hadn’t been attached to anything that was Marvel related, it likely would have flopped. Wonder Woman on the other hand is largely responsible for keeping the DC movie franchise alive. Let’s face it, when you compare it to the success of Disney’s Marvel franchise, Warner Brothers’ DC franchise has been slow going with the not-so-great Justice League and the atrocious Batman v Superman movie. Though the one thing that DC fans and movie goers considered to be the bright spot to the franchise was Gal Gadot’s performance as Wonder Woman. Granted we did get better DC movies down the line, such as Suicide Squad (despite what critics say) and Aquaman, but I think it is safe to say that it was Wonder Woman that kept it afloat. I would also like to hear Banks’ explanation for the success of The Terminator (except for the more recent installment), Alien, Tomb Raider, Resident Evil and Underworld franchises, which all had strong female protagonists.  My explanation is quite simple. Instead of trying to shove a feminist message down our throats, the makers of these franchises just gave us good movies with strong female leads. Hollywood could learn a thing or two from Joss Whedon. Keep in mind that Whedon is a self-proclaimed feminist and despite creating Firefly, the most libertarian show to ever hit the airwaves, he is also a staunch leftist. Yet, he doesn’t try to use his art to shove his beliefs down our throats. If he wants a movie or tv series to have a strong female protagonist, he just gives us one without giving us a sermon on feminism. Buffy the Vampire Slayer is a testament to this very sentiment. Take a few notes, Hollywood. That is if you are still interested in making money.