anthro saint !

saint recently graduated as a theologian, while he is interested in all the different religions and their histories, personally he is buddhist. saint is patiently awaiting for a theologian prof nearby to perish so he can take their place and become a theology professor. (it’s kinda one of those roles you can only get if someone else dies or retires cuz it’s a bit niche)

he is also vegan, and is generally very disciplined in his personal life. making sure to remain healthy mentally, physically and spiritually! he can get very upset when his routine or schedule is disrupted.

also he cannot see shit without his glasses. poor thang.

all the downpour scugs done!! only the og three left.. and …. sofanthiel…….

*clap clap* Movie review

So yeah, Charlie’s Angels, the 2019 reboot of the TV show. A  feminist movie but really just a clichè action movie with a mediocre plotline, relying on it’s ‘woke points’ to be watchable.

First, let’s talk about the movie itself and why it did so badly.

The 2019 Charlie’s angels is an action comedy movie about three female super spies trying to retrieve a weapon of mass destruction from the wrong hands directed by Elizabeth banks, the guardian calls this a ‘weaponised feminist frenzy’. This movie hit the theatres at the start of the year and went on to fail so badly, the financial loss can only be explained by claiming there’s a wage gap. Charlie’s angels is originally a TV show from the mid 70s, but nowadays, no one would consider the show ‘feminist’. The entire plot of the TV show existed around the three main female characters being hot, and near naked. Nevertheless this sleazy show was successful and had a few movies coming out in the years 2000 and 2003. And on November 15 2019, the latest Charlie’s angels came out from Sony studios. Sony, the same company that has brought you: Ghostbusters 2016 and the Emoji movie. Now don’t get me wrong lots of movie companies use nostalgia to try and sell tickets, but no one does it quite as poorly as Sony. The movie tries too hard to be some sort of woke feminist statement, but it ends up just being really forced. One of the main actresses, Kristen Stewart has commented that this movie is ‘taking down the patriarchy’ Ah yes, this feminist reboot of a non-feminist show, is taking on the patriarchy head on! C’mon, no one will believe that this mediocre action film is making is making any kind of significant social impact. It would have made a much bigger impact if the movie was not only made by women, but also, enjoyable to watch. The movie was, unsurprisingly, a massive flop shattering Elizabeth Banks dream of turning it into a franchise. It had a budget of $50 million and ended up making $8 million in it’s opening weekend. No one cared to see it, and for those who did, they hated it. Like, seriously despised it, 4/10 on IMDB? Even shark tale is rated better than that. But Elizabeth Banks wasn’t ready to admit that maybe, just maybe, her movie wasn’t that good. No, instead she was bracing herself for a box-office flop, by blaming men.  Prior to the movie’s disastrous opening weekend, she had said that if the movie didn’t do well, it would reinforce a stereotype in Hollywood that men don’t go to see women do action movies. Here’s a little thinker for ya, if people don’t go and see your movie, it may not be because all men are sexist pigs, but people would rather watch a good movie. Regardless of whether or not there’s a female character in it. Not to mention other medias with female leads have gone on to be extremely successful.  Alien? Kill Bill? Tomb Raider? Both Frozen’s? Metroid series? Mulan? Wonder women? Bank’s counters this by saying that the female comic superhero movies are only successful because they are tied into a larger, male genre of movies. Wait so, the successful movies starring women are successful because men are sexist, but your movie isn’t successful because men are sexist? What are you babbling about? Look, I understand it sucks to see a movie you directed, produced and acted in fail, but this weak finger pointing is not going to help.

Now let’s analyse the movie and see why people hated it so much.

Above all, Charlie’s angels is a comedy spy action movie that doesn’t work as a comedy, spy or an action movie. The plot is basically this high-stakes mission about retrieving weapons of mass destruction. But the problem is that the movie never bothers to actually visually establish as dangerous or as anything really. All we see is one of those devices killing one guy right beside it and then being automatically self-destructed. Then there’s the “action”. It’s mostly just noise without any meaningful character moments or choices or obstacles or any real sense of danger. Most of the time the action sequences don’t even serve any purpose plot-wise. On top of it the physics of it are so illogical they just make no sense. Like just watch the car falling out scene. But all that aside what I wanna focus on is the aspect of Charlie’s angels that is probably the main cause of it’s downfall more that anything else; it’s relentless obsession with gender. There’s a difference between a good female-led movie and a movie so blindly obsessed with the feminist agenda that it gets to the point of being destructive to itself. A lot of times with a certain agenda of gender or social class or whatever they tend to feature a core theme that empowers the group or demographic that it’s about. And with Charlie’s angels the care theme is obviously female empowerment which is made very clear from even the first line in the movie “I think women can do anything”. Basically the core theme of Charlie’s angels is that women, by nature, can do anything. In itself, it’s a great message for younger female audiences. The problem is that the movie quickly grows so obsessed with this theme that instead of it being positively empowering, it actually becomes negatively degrading. Because when Charlie’s angels claims that women by nature can do anything, it doesn’t mean that women can do a certain specific set of things they set their minds to, it means that women, by nature, can do literally everything. And before you say that I’m saying it’s a problem because I hate women, hold on. There’s actually a major character issue that comes with this obsession; it makes every female character and main hero shallow and superficial and takes away their individual uniqueness that’s supposed to make them who they are. To show what I mean let’s look at our three main angels; one of them is this tall angel who initially is established as the physical brawler of the team, she’s powerful and likes to solve obstacles by running straight at it and punching them until their no longer obstacles. And that’s great that’s something that gives her character individuality and can delve much deeper into the movie. Thats who she is but then, she makes this smart science trap using chemicals, then all of a sudden this physical brawler turns out also to be a super-smart chemist, and to be clear; she doesn’t become that, she doesn’t learn to be that she already is that because again, women by nature, can do and be anything. So what exactly is the issue with this?  Well at first she is this one specific thing, but then turns out to be an entirely other thing and suddenly, we don’t really know who she is anymore. To build on this example look at the Kristen Stewart’s angel, the way the movie tries to establish her is that she’s this confident improvisor of the team who uses her wits to gain an advantage over others. But the movie also presents her as just as competent of a physical brawler aa the tall angel, which not only makes her witty hustler personality kind of pointless, it also destroys her individuality it’s hard to know who Kristen Stewart is as a person when she can do and be the exact same as the person right next to her, and if we don’t know who she is it’s hard to get into or develop her as a character when we’re not even sure what it is we’re getting into or developing. The only character difference seems to be that Kristen Stewart says what ever haha ‘funny’ she has on her mind. Then we have princess Jasmin’s angel who is this super smart technology nerd thrust into this world she doesn’t belong in. And she could be a pretty Interesting character, if not for the fact that the movie has already presented the tall angel as super-smart as well, and the fact that Jasmin seems to be able to handle herself in a fight too. So, what makes her different? Who is she compared to the others? Who is she as an individual person? And pretty much with every female character the movie is so unhealthy obsessed with this agenda of female empowerment that it just ends up being a weakness. The characters don’t struggle, they don’t have any flaws or depth they don’t have anything that would make them individual people that the audience can care about and watch grow because in a world where everyone is special, no one is. When women by nature can do or be everything, the one thing they can’t do is be unique.

In addition to empowering the group their about, the other thing these movies with social agendas often do is villainise the demographic opposite them and show how they need to struggle to overcome obstacles set by this opposite demographic. And since Charlie’s angels is about women, obviously here the point is to showcase men and the evil they’re capable of. Which again, is made very clear, even from the very beginning. Basically, all male characters in Charlie’s angels are in some way douchebags who treat women in a derogatory sense. There’s a total of three good guy men in this movie. One of them dies, another one is cleansed of his whatever sins by a women beauty, and the last is like the perfect man from a dystopian world where women have enslaved men. So the message is that men can be a bit of an annoying obstacle to women. I personally don’t like this message, but it has potential to explore some really deep themes with it. But the problem again, is that this movie is so blindly obsessed with it’s agenda of having men be evil that it inadvertently destroys the very message it’s trying to explore. Firstly, just like the female side, all the males are diluted down to unrealistic caricatures nobody can take seriously. The security guard for example, his character is supposed to portray men abusing power against women, and it could have been a very powerful message, but the reason that moment doesn’t work whatsoever is because we’ve never even seen the security guard before, and so we have no perception of why he would do this. He’s not being evil because he’s jealous of Jasmin’s career, he’s not being evil because he’s hurt inside or anything, the movie is saying he’s being evil just because he’s a man. All men in this movie are being evil just because their men and that’s all there is to it.The movie doesn’t give us any reasons or explanations, no explored internal fears or flaws or motive or anything under the surface and that’s not how real life people function, that’s not how to get anything done with your message other than it being scoffed off as shallow and dumb. Secondly, this men are evil obsession creates a big narrative problem. In the sense that the plot of the movie quickly becomes very one-dimensional and easy to predict. For example, near the midpoint of the movie there’s a twist that Elizabeth Banks, who is the leader of the angels, might be evil, she might have some evil plan that involves  tracking Patrick Stewart’s good guy character. But then you remember that this movie has just spent it’s entire runtime  proposing that all men are evil just because their men which would then mean that OH WOW WHAT A SURPRISE THE MAN IN A FEMINIST MOVIE IS EVIL. The problem is that it’s really not that much of a surprise to anyone because from the start the film has done everything in it’s power to condition the audience to believe that women are all good and that men are all evil. Having a message criticising men or a whole demographic can be great and powerful. But you can’t let yourself be so blindly obsessed with it that you don’t even bother delving deeper into it.You can’t have women be good just because women are good and men be bad just because men are bad. That’s not realistic, that’s not how the world works, that’s not a message that will get anyone to listen and above all, it’s not good writing.

Another danger that can very easily come true in movies with social agendas is that the message they’re pushing becomes very one-sided. To the point of alienating a certain section of the audience. And with Charlie’s angels, wether the filmmakers intended it or not, the fact is that the movie altogether as a whole is very anti-male. I’ve already commented about all male characters being portrayed as shallow evildoers, but there’s also an underlying theme that men as people are objectively sinful creatures who deserve bad things to happen to them. It docent matter who they are or what they have or haven’t done, if something bad happens to them, it’s okay because they deserve it. For example, there’s a long-running ‘joke’ where the angels continuously injure a bunch of guys and then make quips about wether or not they’re gonna wake up. But there’s nothing inherently wrong with this, when your making a movie,  you are allowed to portray any group of people or entities in whatever positive or negative way you want. So if you want to make a blatantly obvious movie where a specific gender as a whole is portrayed as the worst possible thing in the universe, that’s fine. But you also need to understand is that there’s also gonna be financial consequences from that specific audience. See, before Charlie’s angels hit theatres, it was clear it was gonna be a flop. And knowing this, director Elizabeth Banks had said what I had put above: “if the movie didn’t do well, it would reinforce a stereotype in Hollywood that men don’t go to see women do action movies” and wether or not the statement has truth(which it doesn’t) is irrelevant. The importance of the statement is the implications that Elizabeth Banks doesn’t understand the concept of biting the hand that feeds. Now I don’t really like the anti-male stuff in Charlie’s angels, but as I’ve said, you’re allowed to do whatever you want in your show. So I understand why male audiences didn’t go out of their way to pay money to see their own gender be continuously criticised and called evil. For example if you make a whole movie ridiculing females and calling them the scum of the earth in a very on-the-nose way, you can’t just expect females to swarm in and support it. Thats not how it works. Whatever message your movie has, you have to be smart about how you deliver it. Don’t just say ‘Women good, men bad’ find a way to imply what it is you wanna say through metaphors. As a filmmaker, you would want everyone to enjoy the film, regardless of gender or race or whatever. I’m not criticising Charlie’s angels because I hate female-led movies. I’m being critical of Charlie’s angels because superficial agenda movies like Charlie’s angels are the reason why we still have so relatively few female led movies. And I’d like to think that by now we’re past one-dimensional messages like this.