Ballerina: We Never Needed a Female Bond

But we sure do need more Ballerinas

For the last few years, there’s been a bit of a push online that it’s time for a female James Bond. And while I understand the sentiment and the reason behind it, I don’t believe it to be true. I don’t think it’s time for a female James Bond because we don’t need a female James Bond. We never did and we never will.

Now, many very irrational, terminally online people will have already closed this and cussed me out, but for the sensible people in the crowd, allow me to explain.

Casting a female as James Bond is a superficial substitute for actually addressing the need to improve female roles in action films. It’s a virtue signal. A quick way to say, “Look, we made this popular character a girl, we’re helping feminism”. But it ultimately means nothing.

“Why should a woman play James Bond when there should be a part just as good as James Bond, but for a woman?”

Those are the words of actor Daniel Craig, best known for playing southern detective Benoit Blanc, in a 2021 interview with Radio Times. He’s right. Not just with Bond, but with any pre-established male character. Supplanting a woman into a man’s role isn’t progress; it’s window dressing made to look like it. Real progress is giving women roles that are as good as male roles.

This problem isn’t relegated to the action genre, but it’s perhaps the genre most emblematic of the problem. Action movies are a boys’ club. More than basically every other genre. It’s been like that since the beginning. There have been outliers, don’t get me wrong. But for every Geena Davis in The Long Kiss Goodnight, there are a dozen Jason Statham movies. For every Charlize Theron action movie, there are a dozen middle-aged men getting their version of Taken. For every Charlie’s Angels, there are too many Expendables. Angelina Jolie had a nice run being an action star in the 2000s, but she could not bear the burden alone.

That brings us to the latest female-led action movie and the reason I’m writing this and you’re reading it. Ballerina or more accurately From the World of John Wick: Ballerina but I will not refer to such a good movie by such a stupid title.

I’m not here to claim that Ana de Armas is the savior that women need for better action movie representation. Nor am I here to claim Ballerina is the best female-led action movie. But what I am here to say about Ballerina is how it’s a shining example that we don’t need a “female James Bond”, we just need better roles for women.

The biggest thing Ballerina gets right is that its main character, Eve, played by Ana de Armas, who did most of her own fighting in the film, and is free to beat me up whenever she wants, I will clear my schedule, what was I talking about? Oh yeah, Eve. She isn’t Jane Wick. This isn’t just John Wick but a woman. It’s a spin-off film, so of course, there are familiar series elements you expect, like the assassin underworld, themes of revenge, and Ian McShane being helpful. But Eve is her own character, with her own motivations, her own agency, and her own fighting style.

Eve doesn’t fight like John Wick. She fights like a girl. It’s a major point that’s brought up in the movie. That’s not a weakness, it’s a strength. In most fights against men, she’s going to be at a disadvantage. When every assassin in this world has comparable martial arts skills, she can’t rely on that alone. And she’s always gonna lose when it comes to size and strength if she’s fighting dudes. So she fights like a girl. She’s quicker, more nimble, and she kicks them in the nuts.

During a lot of the fight scenes in the film, she gets thrown around a lot, because, of course, she does. She’s smaller and weaker, but she wins anyway because she fights like a girl. She’s better at improvising than her opponents are because many of them simply rely on brute force. There’s one fight scene where a dude is manhandling her, lifting her with ease, and she wraps herself around his arm and breaks it.

That’s why Ballerina is so good as a female-led action film. It leans into the fact that she’s a woman. It embraces it. A lot of times in movies, women are still choreographed to fight as if they’re a male because that’s the kind of action choreography that’s the standard. Ballerina embraces the fact that its star is a woman, and it’s all the better for it.

That brings me back to my original point. We don’t need a woman to be James Bond. It’s cheap and lazy. Just putting a woman into a male role does nothing but score optic points. There’s no need to gender swap male action heroes when you can just create a Ballerina. An action movie that is not only as good, if not better than a lot of male-led action films, but one that embraces its lead character’s gender and uses it to enhance the action.