Theresa Basile

Lately, I haven’t been writing my monthly “Movies I Won’t be Seeing” posts. (The last post of that kind was written in November.) Right now my brain is caught up with The Rom-Com Project and the Oscars and there’s very little room left for movie trailers. Don’t worry, though – I plan to eventually return to reviewing movies I haven’t seen. I’ll probably return to those posts in March.

In the meantime, let’s look at EW.com’s 25 Movies We Can’t Wait to See. I flipped through the slideshow of films and realized that I can wait – possibly forever – to see most of these movies.

Tyler Perry’s Good Deeds (February 24) – It’s a Tyler Perry movie. Need I say more? I can wait forever to see this. Also, I love that the movie description tells me that Thandie Newton’s character is a janitor. Last time I checked, janitors don’t have a habit of dressing up in skin-tight short minidresses. (Although that certainly would have made Scrubs a very different show than it was…)

John Carter (March 9) – A Civil War veteran is transported to Mars. Uh. Okay. At least that’s…different? But I feel like this movie is missing a big opportunity. The writers should go the route of Snakes on a Plane and give the film a title that tells you exactly what you’re going to see. A Civil War Soldier Goes to Mars would suffice.

Mirror Mirror (March 16) – This looks cheesy and stupid, but Julia Roberts looks like she’s having a hell of a time playing the Evil Queen and I bet she gives an enjoyable performance. I might go see this on a rainy day.

21 Jump Street (March 16) – I have no nostalgic attachment to the original TV show and I dislike Jonah Hill. There’s no way I’m seeing this.

The Hunger Games (March 23) – I can’t remember the last time I felt so unenthusiastic about an upcoming film adaptation of a book I enjoyed, but from the trailer, I think the direction looks uninspired, Josh Hutcherson’s Peeta looks like the much younger brother of Jennifer Lawrence’s Katniss, and none of these people look remotely hungry. I’ll see it. I’m just not very excited about it.

The Three Stooges (April 13) – I don’t even know what to say.

The Avengers (May 4) – It’s The Flinstones Meet the Jetsons but with superheroes! Still, Joss Whedon is directing, and that’s enough to put me in the audience.

Dark Shadows (May 11) – I’m over Johnny Depp, I’m over Tim Burton, I’m ESPECIALLY over the Depp/Burton combination, and I never saw the original TV show so the nostalgia doesn’t grab me. This is a loser on all fronts.

The Dictator (May 11) – Sacha Baron Cohen is undeniably talented, but I think he peaked with Borat, and he’s also gross. This film could be amusing but I’ll probably save it for a rental.

Battleship (May 18) – You cannot be fucking serious.

Men in Black 3 (May 25) – Even though this is a completely unnecessary sequel, I’m a little tickled at the idea of Josh Brolin playing a younger version of a Tommy Lee Jones character. I don’t know why.

Snow White and the Huntsman (June 1) – For the second time in this post, I feel the need to suggest an alternate title for a film. Let’s just call it Charlize Theron Rocks and Who Cares About Snow White? and be done with it.

Rock of Ages (June 1) – I can think of several Broadway musicals that I would like to see made into films. This is not one of them.

Prometheus (June 8) – I should probably get around to seeing the Alien movies before watching this, right? Oops, never mind – I forgot that I am a scaredy-cat.

Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted – Really?

Brave (June 22) – I’ve mentioned before that I’m a little tired of movies that are all about WOMEN FIGHTING AGAINST STEREOTYPES instead of, I don’t know, women living their lives, where the stereotype-fighting is in the background and a daily part of life (and not the main plot of the movie). But it’s Pixar, so it’s going to be great. Good on them for finally making a movie with a female protagonist.

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (June 22) – ” the adaptation of Seth Grahame-Smith’s 2010 novel, which blames a secret vampire cabal for the Confederacy’s fierce defense of slavery.” Um. Okay. I don’t know whether to think that’s very weirdly offensive and horrible, or way too ridiculous to be even worth mentioning. Anyway, at least it’s a quasi-original idea?

The Amazing Spider-Man (July 3) – Great. Instead of a movie where Peter spends the entire time having angst over Uncle Ben and M.J., now we can have a movie where he spends the entire time having angst over his parents (mostly his father because LOL mothers don’t really count in these movies!) and Gwen Stacy. On the plus side, I saw the trailer and I already like Andrew Garfield more than Tobey Maguire.

The Dark Knight Rises (July 20) – Smarter than the av-er-age superhero movies. I will definitely see this and enjoy it, even if I don’t LOVE the franchise the way many people do.

Total Recall (August 3) – Sigh.

Skyfall (November 7) – I’m Bored. James Bored.

The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 2 (November 16)  – Bella Swan turns into the mostest specialist sparkliest vampire that ever existed and gets everything she wants, and her best friend/second choice of love interest continues to fall in love with her daughter. I wish I were making this up.

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (December 14) – I will not cry when listening to the Shire theme, I will not cry when listening to the Shire theme…

This is 40 (December 21) – The Knocked Up supporting characters get their own showcase. I feel the same way about Paul Rudd as Jeff Winger does. At the same time, I think their subplot produced some of the most emotionally honest scenes of Knocked Up, so this could be fun. Let’s hope this is more Freaks and Geeks Apatow and less Pineapple Express Apatow.

The Great Gatsby (December 25) – Leo DiCaprio as Gatsby? Cool. Carey Mulligan as Daisy? YAY! Tobey Maguire as Nick? Meh. But why, why, WHY is this movie in 3-D?

Those are EW.com’s 25 Movies They Can’t Wait to See. As for me? I’ve counted one movie (The Hobbit) that I am unambiguously excited to see, eight movies I want to see but have some reservations about, and a whopping sixteen films I have no interest in seeing.

I also counted four female protagonists (and one female co-protagonist of a male co-protagonist), one non-white protagonist, two remakes of older films, two new adaptations of a fairy tale (the same fairy tale, no less), one franchise reboot, six adaptations of novels, three film adaptations of television shows, eight sequels, a film adaptation of a board game (which will NOT be as awesome as Clue), and three films – The Dictator, Brave, and Prometheus – that seem to be at least quasi-original ideas.

Yay! I am so excited for MORE OF THE SAME STUFF WE GET EVERY YEAR!

The Bechdel test (for those of you who aren’t aware of it) is a simple test to judge the presence of female characters in film. Simply put, a film passes the Bechdel test if it matches these three criteria:

1. The film has two or more named female characters.

2. The two (or more) female characters talk to each other…

3. …about something besides a man.

The Bechdel test was named after Alison Bechdel, author of the comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For. In one strip, two characters talked about a movie they just saw, and one of the women mentioned her three criteria for seeing movies.

Personally, I don’t use the Bechdel test to determine which movies I want to see.

1. A movie that passes the Bechdel test is not necessarily a feminist movie. Bad Teacher is a recent movie that passes the Bechdel test, but I would never call it a feminist movie (though I did enjoy it as a guilty pleasure). Jackie Brown does not pass the Bechdel test, as the lead character interacts with mostly men, and only interacts with other women while men are either present or watching the conversation. It’s also one of the most feminist movies I’ve ever seen.

2. A movie that passes the Bechdel test is not necessarily a good movie. I can think of many personal favorite movies that don’t pass the Bechdel test – The Producers (1968), Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Pulp Fiction, When Harry Met Sally…, Beauty and the Beast, Punch-Drunk Love, The Lord of the Rings – and those are only a few. Meanwhile, the film adaptation of Beverly Cleary’s Beezus and Ramona supposedly passes the Bechdel test, but you couldn’t pay me to see that movie, as the trailer indicated a feel-good movie with the sanitized message of “sisters fight but they really love each other!” when the message of the book is actually that Beezus doesn’t always love Ramona, and that’s okay. (I also don’t want a film version of Ramona Quimby in my head because Ramona Quimby is quite possibly my favorite character of all time in any medium, ever, but that’s getting a little off-topic.)

3. A movie might pass the test, but so what? Zombieland technically passes the Bechdel test because Emma Stone and Abigail Breslin’s characters have a conversation about their trip to an amusement park, but the conversation takes up maybe ten seconds of screen time. We Need to Talk About Kevin passes the test because Eva has a job interview with a female employer about getting a job, but the female employer is not an important character in her own right. Sure, she has a name, but she’s not a person, really – she’s there to set up a minor plot point, and that’s it. Every single scene in the movie is either about, or affected by, Eva’s relationship with her son Kevin. Yet this little scene makes the movie pass the Bechdel test.

In short, I don’t use the Bechdel test to determine whether a movie is artistically good, or even whether a movie is feminist. As far as I’m concerned, the Bechdel test isn’t really useful when talking about individual films. Where the Bechdel test becomes important is when talking about the film industry as a whole.

Feminist Frequency has a good breakdown of the Bechdel test and gives a list of examples of films that fail said test:

The question, as you can see, is not whether any individual film passes the Bechdel test. The question is why so many films don’t.

To put it another way – try to come up with a list of movies that pass the reverse Bechdel test: a movie that has two named male characters, who talk to each other, about something besides women.

You’re going to come up with a handful of films that fail the reverse Bechdel test (Terms of Endearment and Black Swan immediately come to mind), but I imagine that the list of movies that pass the test will be much, much longer.

There’s a conventional wisdom in Hollywood that movies starring women won’t sell to large audiences. Hollywood bigwigs believe that movies starring men have universal appeal to men and women, while movies starring women only appeal to women. Some film students have even been discouraged from writing screenplays with more than one prominent female character. There’s a stereotype that stories about men are about “the human experience” while stories about women are about “women’s experiences.”

Movies starring women simply don’t have mass appeal, people will say. After all, just look at the list of the top grossing films of 2011. Of the top 10 movies, only one has a female protagonist – and she’s from Twilight, so that doesn’t count.

It’s true that the top 10 grossing movies of 2011 have predominantly male casts – Harry Potter and the Sobbing Audience Members, Transformers: Pink Floyd Album Ripoff in the Title, The Twilight Saga: Breaking Bella’s Spine Part 1, The Hangover Part Whatever, Pirates of the Caribbean: Johnny Depp Officially Loses Indie Cred, Fast Five Sequels Too Many, Mission: Impossible – Awesome Theme Music, Cars 2Who Cares, Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Homoerotic Subtext, and Thor: Not Enough Room for a Fake Subtitle.

Yes, it’s a big year for men.

It’s also a big year for sequels.

Every single movie in that list is either the sequel or part of a story franchise. Thor is a film that could stand on its own, but he’s about to join The Hulk and Iron Man and Captain America in The Avengers, so I consider it as part of a Marvel franchise if not a sequel.

The movies in the #11 and #12 slots also  fall into “sequel or franchise” category: Rise of the Planet of the Apes STARRING JAMES FRANCO and Captain America: Why Hello There, Chris Evans.

What a year for sequels, am I right? Is there any hope for original stories? Let’s see what movies are on the rest of the list.

A-ha! There we go. The #13 and #14 highest-grossing movies of 2011 are The Help and Bridesmaids: two movies with predominantly female casts.

HMMMM. Interesting, that.

If one looks at the list of top-grossing movies of 2011, one might come to the conclusion that Hollywood can never worry about losing money as long as it can make movies about superheroes and sequels to movies about superheroes. One would probably be correct in saying that. One ALSO might notice, however, that the two most popular movies of 2011 that were not superhero movies or sequels were about relationships among women.

No doubt this will lead to sweeping statements from Hollywood producers where they announce that they will no longer make movies with male protagonists (unless it’s an action movie), right?

And producers will certainly not dismiss this box-office success of movies starring women as a fluke, and insist that The Help and Bridesmaids are exceptions to the rule, right?

My answer to the first question: “SHYEAH RIGHT.”

My answer to the second: “One can only hope.”