3 / 10
Charlie’s Angels (2019) is the second reboot of the 1976 television series and one of the most commercially unsuccessful spy-action films of the late 2010s. Elizabeth Banks wrote, directed, and co-starred. Kristen Stewart plays Sabina Wilson. Naomi Scott plays Elena Houghlin, an engineer whose energy-system invention is being weaponized. Ella Balinska plays Jane Kano, the team’s combat specialist. Patrick Stewart plays Bosley. Djimon Hounsou plays another Bosley. Elizabeth Banks plays Rebekah Bosley. Sam Claflin plays Alexander Brock, who turns out to be the antagonist.
The plot follows the Angels protecting Elena and her invention from a conspiracy that involves multiple Townsend Agency members.
The film made approximately seventy-three million dollars worldwide on a forty-eight million dollar budget. After marketing, it was a commercial failure. The reviews were largely negative. Elizabeth Banks’s public response to the failure attributed the underperformance to audiences not supporting female-led action. The response was widely criticized at the time and is widely cited as the moment the late-2010s woke-reboot wave’s defensive framing reached its peak absurdity.
What Made It a Woke Disaster
The film opens with Kristen Stewart’s Sabina delivering a monologue directly to camera. The line is “I think women can do anything.” The opening positions the audience inside a feminist statement before any plot has begun. The framing is unambiguous. This isn’t going to be a Charlie’s Angels reboot that argues women can do spy work through demonstration. This is going to be a Charlie’s Angels reboot that tells the audience women can do anything in case the audience needed informing.
The Townsend Agency expansion is the film’s structural argument. The 1970s television series and the 2000 film both had a single Bosley as Charlie’s voice. The 2019 reboot replaces this with a global network of multiple Bosleys (including Banks’s Rebekah Bosley). The expansion is positioned as feminist organizational redesign. The Townsend Agency is no longer one man’s surveillance operation. It’s a worldwide woman-led network. The structural change is meant to demonstrate that the property has evolved past its 1970s framework into a 2019 framework.
The Sam Claflin reveal is the film’s most explicit thesis statement. Brock has been presented throughout as Elena’s male ally and protector. The third act reveals he’s the actual antagonist. The script’s argument is that male allyship is the cover for male villainy. Even the men who present as supportive of women’s work are dangerous. The reveal is staged as moral revelation instead of as plot twist. The audience is meant to extract a lesson about the unreliability of supportive men.
For Writers
A film whose plot twists exist primarily to deliver ideological lessons instead of narrative surprises reads as sermon disguised as story. Charlie’s Angels 2019’s Brock reveal is engineered to make a point about men. The audience can feel the point being made and resists the engineering. The lesson is that twists work when they reveal something the audience missed about the story. Twists fail when they reveal something the writer wanted the audience to learn about the world. The first is drama. The second is propaganda. Audiences can tell.
The Banks Aftermath
Elizabeth Banks’s post-release statements about Charlie’s Angels became a more-discussed cultural moment than the film itself. Banks suggested in interviews that the film’s failure indicated audiences weren’t ready to support female-led action. The criticism was that 2017’s Wonder Woman, 2019’s Captain Marvel, and the John Wick action films with female supporting leads had all performed strongly in the same general period. The audience was clearly willing to support female-led action. The Charlie’s Angels reception was about the specific film’s failures, not about gender politics.
The Banks framing damaged the film’s reception further. Audiences who had been disappointed by the film were told they had been disappointed for the wrong reasons. The defensive marketing position made honest engagement with the actual craft problems impossible. The film’s failures (uneven tonal register, underused supporting team members, sermon-driven plot beats) went undiagnosed because the public conversation focused on the post-release controversy instead of the script. The film’s defenders had to argue against criticism Banks had pre-emptively dismissed as sexist.
For Writers
Blaming the audience for a film’s reception is a defensive position that prevents the production from learning. Banks’s response to Charlie’s Angels framed the rejection as bigotry. The actual craft problems were never addressed because the framing made addressing them politically risky. The lesson is that failure is feedback. Honest engagement with what didn’t work produces stronger subsequent projects. Defensive framing closes off the learning. Take the criticism seriously even when it feels unfair.
The Kristen Stewart Problem
Kristen Stewart is the film’s most successful individual element. Stewart plays Sabina with the specific dry comedy that’s characterized her best work since Adventureland (2009). The performance is calibrated and committed. The script doesn’t match her energy. Stewart’s specific comedic register works when she’s given the space to operate. The script keeps interrupting her work with sermon beats and demonstrative action sequences that fit different performers better.
The supporting team development is uneven. Naomi Scott’s Elena gets the most substantive arc as the audience-surrogate engineer. Ella Balinska’s Jane Kano is introduced as the combat specialist and given the least material relative to her function. The trio dynamic that should have been the film’s foundation never fully develops because the three performers aren’t given equivalent character work. The team feels assembled instead of built. The result is a Charlie’s Angels reboot whose Angels don’t have the chemistry the 2000 Diaz-Barrymore-Liu trio had.
For Writers
A trio of leads requires equivalent specific development. Charlie’s Angels 2019 develops Kristen Stewart most fully, Naomi Scott adequately, and Ella Balinska least. The team feels uneven as a result. The lesson is that ensemble teams need each member to be a fully realized character. If one member is underdeveloped, the team’s collective identity is undermined. Plan the development arcs for each member with equal care or accept the structural unevenness.
Craft Note
The Rio de Janeiro pre-credits sequence is the film’s strongest individual passage. Sabina works a charm-and-fight con on a Brazilian arms dealer with specific Kristen Stewart line readings (“if I’m a fragile woman, why are you afraid of me?”) and tight action choreography. The sequence runs about five minutes and is the film’s clearest evidence of what a confident Charlie’s Angels reboot could have looked like. The pre-credits demonstrates Stewart’s specific comedic capability and the action team’s competence. The rest of the film doesn’t match what the opening promised.
The opening is the film’s high water mark.
Should you skip Charlie’s Angels?
3/10. A commercially unsuccessful reboot whose post-release controversy overshadowed legitimate craft criticism. Kristen Stewart’s performance and the Rio pre-credits sequence are the film’s strongest elements. The opening monologue, the multi-Bosley expansion, and the Sam Claflin reveal are the film’s clearest ideological choices. The 2000 Diaz-Barrymore-Liu reboot is the better cinematic Angels. Watch that instead.
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