Gal Gadot Rebukes Hollywood’s Misogyny Narrative: Moviegoers “Do Want To See Movies With Women, If The Story Is Good”
John F. Trent
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Gal Gadot, who stars as Rachel Stone in the upcoming Netflix film Heart of Stone, recently shared comments that rebuke Hollywood’s misogyny narrative.
HEART OF STONE. Gal Gadot as Rachel Stone in Heart of Stone. Cr. Courtesy of Netflix © 2022.
Speaking with Vogue Hong Kong about Heart of Stone, Gadot was asked, “How important is it to you to portray these types of roles? What do you hope audiences take away from your performances?”
Gadot responded, “Great question. Well, it’s funny, I guess I just got lucky, playing very strong, powerful characters. Heart of Stone was something that I always wanted to do, I always felt I was a big fan of this genre. I’m a big fan of Mission Impossible and Bond movies. And I never had the opportunity, as a girl, watching myself in one of those, you know. I was always wondering if there’s room for something like that, but female driven.”
Heart of Stone – Gal Gadot as Rachel Stone in Heart Of Stone. Cr. Robert Viglasky/Netflix © 2023.
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She continued, “And I think that I got my confidence only after Wonder Woman came out and became this huge success. That was like the thing that really proved to me that wait, why do people say that men don’t want to see women, they do want to see movies with women, if the story is good, if the action is there, if it makes sense. They’re all for it.”
“After Wonder Woman came out, Yarron, my husband, who is also my partner, in my production company, we had a meeting with David Ellison, and we had a great time. At the end of the conversation, David asked me, So what do you want to do? What do you want to produce? And I told him, I want to produce a female driven action film, one that is exciting, global, scopey. We shook on it, and now here we are. So I’m very very grateful for the fact that we’ve had such great partners like David, Skydance, and Netflix. It’s been an incredible ride,” Gadot concluded the question.
Heart of Stone – BTS – (L to R) Director Tom Harper and Gal Gadot as Rachel Stone on the set of Heart Of Stone. Cr. Robert Viglasky/Netflix © 2023.
Not only did Gadot rebuke Hollywood’s misogyny narrative in regards to moviegoers, but she also recently rebuked Hollywood’s gender swapping trope.
She told Total Film via Hollywood in Toto, “I wanted to show a great story about a female character who is doing it in the action genre. Right? She is thriving. But at the same time, how many times have they just switched gender?”
“They take a story that all about the men and they just change it to a woman, and then go shoot it? To me, it was so important in the DNA to make Heart of Stone a little different, because men and women are different. They’re built differently, they operate differently,” Gadot stated.
Heart of Stone’s official logline states, “Rachel Stone (Gal Gadot) is an intelligence operative, the only woman who stands between her powerful, global, peace-keeping organization and the loss of its most valuable — and dangerous — asset.”
Netflix’s Tudum’s Tara Bitran also shares, “Stone is a member of an elusive and mysterious group of elite spies known as the Charter. In the trailer, they’re described as ‘the most highly trained agents — no political leanings, no national allegiances — working together to keep peace in a turbulent world.’ To achieve their lofty aims, those agents rely on a one-of-a-kind asset called the Heart. ‘If you own the Heart, you own the world,’ Rachel Stone’s MI6 counterpart Parker (Jamie Dornan) explains in the trailer. That sounds like a plan to Keya Dhawan (Alia Bhatt), whose quest to find and control the Heart threatens global stability. Can Stone stop her before it’s too late?
Heart of Stone – (L to R) Paul Ready as Bailey, Gal Gadot as Rachel Stone, Jamie Dornan as Parker and Jing Lusi as Yang in Heart Of Stone. Cr. Robert Viglasky/Netflix © 2023.
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As for what the Heart actually is, Bitran relays, “The Heart is the world’s most powerful AI, able to keep track of anyone’s entire online history and then use that data to predict what they might do in the future. But it’s not just about predicting how many episodes of Queen Charlotte you might watch in one sitting, or what you’re about to make for dinner. The Heart can advise on responses to potential global threats and even deliver odds on the success in neutralizing them. That’s where the Charter comes in.”
The film’s VFX supervisor Mark Breakspear added, “The Heart is what’s called a general AI — an AI that can do anything you want it to do, and it becomes a master of that immediately. No one has built a general AI yet. And it’s connected to a quantum computer, which processes way faster than an ordinary computer. The Heart is tasked with monitoring all human data, analyzing it, looking for patterns and then using those patterns to make predictions. The Charter uses the Heart to look at a given situation and help their operatives plan what to do.”
Heart of Stone – (L to R) Jing Lusi as Yang, Paul Ready as Bailey, Jamie Dornan as Parker and Gal Gadot as Rachel Stone in Heart Of Stone. Cr. Robert Viglasky/Netflix © 2023.
Alongside Gadot the film stars Jamie Dornan as MI6 agent Parker, Alia Bhatt as hacker Keya Dhawan. It also features Sophie Okonedo, Matthias Schweighöfer, Jing Lusi and Paul Ready.
The film arrives on Netflix on August 11, 2023.
Heart of Stone – BTS – (L to R) Director Tom Harper, Gal Gadot as Rachel Stone and Jamie Dornan as Parker on the set of Heart Of Stone. Cr. Robert Viglasky/Netflix © 2023.
What do you make of Gadot’s comments rebuking Hollywood’s misogyny narrative?