Jenna Ortega Doesn’t Want Repurposed Male Roles

Movies

Another actress has voiced her displeasure with the way Hollywood writes female leads in modern movies. A couple of years ago, Emily Blunt talked about how she threw away scripts in which the term “strong female lead” appears, preferring more complex, challenging, and entertaining roles. Now, rising star Jenna Ortega, who appears in this week’s Tim Burton sequel Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, revealed in an interview with MTV that she’s tired of Hollywood replacing traditionally male characters with female versions. This was precipitated by interviewer Josh Horowitz asking Ortega if she’d like to star in a sequel to Burton’s Edward Scissorhands with herself replacing Johnny Depp in the lead role. (On the whole, the interview is very interesting, especially some of Catherine O’Hara’s insights into the first Beetlejuice, but sometimes it feels like these interviewers  go out of their way to be annoying.) You can see the clip below:

I don’t have much of an opinion about Jenna Ortega yet because I’ve only seen her in those awful modern Scream sequels (and she was easily the best of the new actors, so I guess that’s a point in her favor) and X, but I like what she has to say here. It’s an immediate turnoff when a movie takes a male hero and replaces him with a female. (I’d say “and vice versa,” but it never seems to happen that way; for the record, I don’t want John C. Reilly to play Black Widow, either.) And it’s the same with race swaps or making a straight character gay; it’s being done with a purpose, and then they tell you it’s you who cars too much. Jenna Ortega seems to be specifically talking about movies that replace the lead with another character who is female, like what Kathleen Kennedy was clearly trying to do with Indiana Jones and Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s character, which, thankfully, will never happen because the Indy send-off movie bombed too hard. That makes the point even better because it’s the lighter example, rather than just saying Indy is a girl now, and it’s also insulting. Ortega is making the point that it’s insulting to the actress, too, as if you’re telling her she can’t stand on her own in an original part.

That Jenna Ortega uses James Bond and a hypothetical “Jamie Bond” as her example allows for another point. If you want to make a female spy fantasy movie, instead of making James Bond a girl, why not adapt something like Modesty Blaise? If you’ve never heard of the character, Modesty Blaise is a former criminal and freelance spy who appears in a long-running series of novels, short stories, and comics. One film was made in 1966 (and a direct-to-video one in 2003), but otherwise, the character has remained on the page. She’d be perfect for a fun series of spy movies to show off a new movie star like Jenna Ortega (although Modesty Blaise should be British, but you know what I mean). The impetus they have to replace classic and beloved characters rather than introduce a new one in a new series suggests that the lofty principles they tout are not their true motivation. They’d rather dispense with the cultural icons of the past and reshape them in a more modern-day-acceptable image, conforming to what the Critical Drinker calls “the message” rather than giving people what they want. And on that score, I believe one thing people want is great new characters – new to the screen, at least – that they can fall in love with the way they did James Bond or Superman or Indiana Jones.

I’m glad someone on the rise like Jenna Ortega is saying this. She’s making a big name for herself right now; why should she settle for being a prop in some activist’s repurposing of a character as whom no one will accept her? That’s something that could halt a rapidly ascending career. She’s smart to hold out for better roles that she can use to win an audience, like she did with Wednesday, which is supposed to be a pretty good show. She’s in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, but she’s not playing Betelgeuse or Lydia; she’s a new character who isn’t taking over the movie if the trailers are a good indication. It’s the same as Emily Blunt not wanting to be stuck in “strong female lead” roles. (I read somewhere that Blunt had her character in The Fall Guy reworked so that she was more human, vulnerable, and likable instead of being an overbearing nutcracker; we don’t deserve her.) Maybe this is the start of actresses demanding better of Hollywood; in that case, we all win.

Let us know what you think of Jenna Ortega’s outlook on female roles in the comments!