How to Introduce a Female Version of an Established Male Superhero

I enjoyed the all-female Ghostbusters. I also enjoyed Ocean’s 8.

A lot of guys ask why the teams in those movies had to be all-female. It’s not hard to figure out. When your car is veering left into a ditch you don’t just straighten the wheels out, you steer to the right for a while first to get back on the road. All-female protagonist movies are us course correcting until we can straighten out and center ourselves in our lane (By that I mean, have an even mix of male and female protagonists in movies, the way we should have to begin with). Women are 50% of the population, why shouldn’t they be 50% of our heroes?

The question to ask isn’t why we have all female teams in film reboots now. The question is why the originals had to be all male. The original Ghostbusters had, I think, six speaking roles for women. Aside from Sigourney Weaver and Annie Potts, there were the frightened librarian, the student Venkman hit on, the realtor who sold them the firehouse, and Jean Kasem as the tall woman agreeing to dance with Rick Moranis.

It was a different time, and I hate to second-guess Dan Aykroyd, but if dealing with Gozer and Zuul was such an emergency, why not give Janine a pack? You can’t tell me Annie Potts wouldn’t have been funny in an ill-fitting jumpsuit.

I’ve written here more than once about my how much I enjoy Ocean’s Eleven (Clooney, not Sinatra), but why were all eleven men? Again, that movie had five speaking roles for women: two off-camera parole board members, a blackjack dealer who is going on break, a thieving stripper, and Julia Roberts as “The Prize.” (Tess doesn’t split eleven ways!)

There’s no one actor of the team I would single out as needing to be replaced, but almost any of the characters could have been a woman and it wouldn’t have changed the story.

This is only tangentially related, but if they ever do another Ocean’s movie, one where team members from 11, 12, and 13 mix with the cast from 8, I hope that they’ll have Thandie Newton play the wife of Basher (Don Cheadle), and that she will do a terrible American accent.

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