All-Female Version of ‘Lord of the Flies’ Faces Backlash

[kyuuei]

There are lots of movies I'd like to see gender bend. James Bond being an unpopular one of them. Sleek, Brienne-of-Tarth style woman, still picking up an attractive woman and using gadgets and stuff? Hell yeah.

This?... It's about gender. So, gender bending doesn't really work. Mean girls with an all-boys cast doesn't make sense at all... boys in high school don't act like that. There's nothing to relate to... An all-girls cast will either 1. force masculine roles onto small girls that just don't seem to be there for girls that are only recently removed from society, or 2. turn it into petty cat fighting. While I think we can all agree in anarchy all humans tend to devolve into animals, I think the book spoke specifically to how the macho attitudes of men being impressed onto young boys weakens them all when it isn't balanced with healthy behaviors and coping mechanisms. So, to me, it really just doesn't make sense.

WB MAy be trying to push an agenda of, "We've picked on men enough" right now, with recent movements of men feeling completely sucker punched from all sides in society... but in a world where we are JUST NOW getting truly strong female leads (Even the recent Star Trek, as awesome as Aurora was supposed to be, they devolved her into petty arguments during an important mission) on a consistent basis instead of 1 awesome character in a sea of stereotypes, I don't think it makes sense to take a book so famous and popular, and that school children are suppose to read, and flip it on its side and tell young women, once again, how much they suck in the eyes of society.

Now... This COULD be done right. They could talk about important topics, like exploring how women would truly react when devoid of male influence, when looks are not a center issue and they're too young to worry about such things.. how all humans can devolve, and people wrongly assume women are just automatically good little girls that share, smile, and play nice.. how women in history and society have easily taken on masculine roles vs motherly roles when times are needed for such... but I really, really doubt WB will handle this right. Writers might care a LOT about handling this film with due diligence, and not holding back. This seems like a money grab on a classic, and meant to strum up attention--negative or otherwise.

Edit: I said entirely the wrong movie, it was a rookie nerd error on my part. Apologies to any Star Wars/Trekkie fans I offended in the process.

 

[Grand Admiral Crunch]

There are lots of movies I'd like to see gender bend. James Bond being an unpopular one of them. Sleek, Brienne-of-Tarth style woman, still picking up an attractive woman and using gadgets and stuff? Hell yeah.

This?... It's about gender. So, gender bending doesn't really work. Mean girls with an all-boys cast doesn't make sense at all... boys in high school don't act like that. There's nothing to relate to... An all-girls cast will either 1. force masculine roles onto small girls that just don't seem to be there for girls that are only recently removed from society, or 2. turn it into petty cat fighting. While I think we can all agree in anarchy all humans tend to devolve into animals, I think the book spoke specifically to how the macho attitudes of men being impressed onto young boys weakens them all when it isn't balanced with healthy behaviors and coping mechanisms. So, to me, it really just doesn't make sense.

WB MAy be trying to push an agenda of, "We've picked on men enough" right now, with recent movements of men feeling completely sucker punched from all sides in society... but in a world where we are JUST NOW getting truly strong female leads (Even the recent Star Wars, as awesome as Aurora was supposed to be, they devolved her into petty arguments during an important mission) on a consistent basis instead of 1 awesome character in a sea of stereotypes, I don't think it makes sense to take a book so famous and popular, and that school children are suppose to read, and flip it on its side and tell young women, once again, how much they suck in the eyes of society.

Now... This COULD be done right. They could talk about important topics, like exploring how women would truly react when devoid of male influence, when looks are not a center issue and they're too young to worry about such things.. how all humans can devolve, and people wrongly assume women are just automatically good little girls that share, smile, and play nice.. how women in history and society have easily taken on masculine roles vs motherly roles when times are needed for such... but I really, really doubt WB will handle this right. Writers might care a LOT about handling this film with due diligence, and not holding back. This seems like a money grab on a classic, and meant to strum up attention--negative or otherwise.

You're probably right that it should aspire to be empowering to girls. I like your ideas about what messages the movie should promote....I thought the meaning of the book was that kids are stupid and any civilization or culture they tried to create would be also be stupid. That's what kids do when they are left alone with each other and I'd like them to know that it is stupid. That's another thing that the movie could tackle.

I expect it will be awful like you say. Those SOBs are going to fish out the script from the old movie and not change a thing. I hope I'm wrong about that.

 

[Grand Admiral Crunch]

You're probably right that it should aspire to be empowering to girls. I like your ideas about what messages the movie should promote....I thought the meaning of the book was that kids are stupid and any civilization or culture they tried to create would be also be stupid. That's what kids do when they are left alone with each other and I'd like them to know that it is stupid. That's another thing that the movie could tackle.

I expect it will be awful like you say. Those SOBs are going to fish out the script from the old movie and not change a thing. I hope I'm wrong about that.

Maybe the message should be that children shouldn't be left alone to form their own cultures and public schooling needs to change so that they don't have to waste their time with this system of socialization.

 

[kyuuei]

You're probably right that it should aspire to be empowering to girls. I like your ideas about what messages the movie should promote....I thought the meaning of the book was that kids are stupid and any civilization or culture they tried to create would be also be stupid. That's what kids do when they are left alone with each other and I'd like them to know that it is stupid. That's another thing that the movie could tackle.

I expect it will be awful like you say. Those SOBs are going to fish out the script from the old movie and not change a thing. I hope I'm wrong about that.

Children in the book reflect modern society -- minus the stipulations and rules in place. Anarchy ensues. They are reflections of us as humans. There are a LOT of themes in the book -- morality, groupthink, a lack of remorse when there is no pressure to have such, etc.

But one of the themes many pick up on is that what contributes to the negative groupthink in the actions of these boys is the machismo of the boys. They were influenced by society, this wasn't created in a vacuum, and the more delicate a character is--the more likely they were to be killed. How society can kill and drown weaker men when, truly, it isn't at all necessary or even valuable to do so. That not expressing emotions or knowing one's vulnerabilities and limits was childish and savage.

If they were going to genderbend this, I wouldn't want them to EMPOWER women per say, I don't think we need constant movies telling women they're awesome with no checks and balances--men have plenty of movies showing how both powerful and rational and how savage and awful they can be. I don't think it's any different for women. What I am saying is... there is no way to not tell women "you suck" by creating a genderbend of this film--and it would not even be taken seriously and the insult would be doubled with my assumption of a studio executive not handling this with complete deep thought and care. We're juuust getting strong female leads, were trying hard to phase out the petty stereotypes and cheap knee jerks... I don't think this movie would provide anything to modern society or comment on society today, and would only serve to tell young women how much they suck while guys who hate women jerk off to it.

This does not seem to be a, "Hey, let's talk about this very deep subject with allegory, I've really been thinking and pondering this for years and carefully sculpted something" it's very "Let's cash in on the women-on-screen shit" bandwagon bullshit. If you're going to lift off of someone else's work to make money and throw in a random twist to make it your own, Do the source material justice and Don't subtract from modern society in the process. Lord of the Flies has a LOT of layers, and you can read the book several times and get a different angle, theme, and lesson from it each time. A movie adaption is not an easy thing to do--but can be done well... It is a lot to ask for.. but, if you wanna make money telling stories, people ought to step up to that plate.

I don't think WB will step up to the plate. I think they'll just get some people's money who must see it just to bitch about it, and walk away knowing people will go see the next PoS they put out later.

 

[Red Herring]

- : So many Hollywood movies these days are adaptations, sequels (sometimes sequels of adaptations), remakes and other unimaginative perceived safe bets because moviemaking has become such a major business investment that few artistic risks are taken. This could very well be another example.

+: I never preceived the story to be about masculinity but rather about civilization and what happens when it crumbles. So, from that perspective, I agree with [MENTION=4939]kyuuei[/MENTION] that it could potentially be well done and interesting as a story about a group of young girls and how their behavior changes as they are left to their own devices and some learned behavior fades away.



Btw, realistic or at least credible female characters, how f*ing hard can it be? The Bechtel test is also still delivering some scary results ... so as far as I am concerned we are still very far from done with this whole gender business!

 

[Edgar]

That everyone should panic and we all have a massive drama about this.