Elizabeth Banks says Charlie's Angels wasn't a "feminist manifesto" - The A.V. Club

There are many pitfalls on the road to a good remake; Elizabeth Banks, who directed 2019's ill-fated Charlie’s Angels reboot, may know this better than anyone.

As Banks tells The New York Times in a new interview (after some slight hedging), she felt Charlie’s Angels was pigeonholed as a movie “just for girls”— not the kind of action film Banks had thought she was making.

I was able to direct an action movie, frankly, because it starred women and I’m a female director, and that is the confine right now in Hollywood.

“I was told by a big producer of big action movies that I couldn’t direct action, that male actors were not going to follow me,” Banks says.

Although Banks doesn’t mince words about her experiences, she’s also careful to stress her story doesn’t represent “all women in Hollywood who are doing interesting things.” Just as she’s not a spokesperson for that conglomerate, Banks also doesn’t think her position in a “rarified category” of female actor-directors implores her to solve Hollywood.