By now you've probably heard about the upcoming Ocean's 8 – and it's starring all girls, playing thieves!  How hysterical is that?

Sandra Bullock and seven other girl-thieves plot to steal some jewelry from someone.  This is an appropriation of Ocean's 11, of course, which starred mostly men.  (George Clooney fits into that category anatomically, if not psychologically.)

Ocean's 11 itself was a remake of a 1960 version of the film, but that one also starred men.  What Warner Brothers is doing is taking a franchise where the main characters are played by men and substituting them with women.  It's as if Warner Brothers doesn't feel that an original film starring women will attract audiences, so the company has to remake a film that became popular when it was cast with men.

This is the most patronizing strategy Hollywood can follow.  If movie studios really feel that people want to see action films starring women, they should make films featuring original characters, not ones that have been historically played by men.  To do as they are doing makes it seem that women's films need to use characters made popular by men in previous films as an impetus to get people into theaters.  That's an entirely un-feminist perspective and seems to indicate that the studios feel that women aren't popular enough to be leads in action films.

This is the same strategy Hollywood used in making its all-female version of Ghostbusters.  That film glommed off the popularity of the original Ghostbusters films, which starred men.

This strategy has also been used with Star Wars, where, in the latest trilogy, Luke Skywalker's character has been replaced with a girl named Rey.  And yet, can you spot Rey in this poster for The Last Jedi?

No?  Think about it.  The main protagonist of the latest Star Wars film doesn't even appear in the movie posters for it.  Disney is afraid to show its lead protagonist because it knows that many people don't want to see an action film with a female protagonist.

You can find this theme in television, too.  The lead in the latest Star Trek series, Star Trek Discovery, is a black woman named Michael Burnham with a big Federation afro.  Yes, a woman named Michael.  Skinny Michael beats up Klingons twice her size on a routine basis, with the help of the openly gay engineer, Lt. Stamets, and the Arab security chief with the super-WASPy name of Ash Tyler.

(This is Michael.  Welcome to the 21st century.)

Once again, in hearing the name "Michael," we are meant to think women are replacing men.

There is nothing wrong with female leads in film or television.  Wonder Woman, for example, was a pretty good film.  But having women stand on the shoulders of men by remaking films and switching genders is pure cowardice on the part of Hollywood, and it shows that Hollywood executives don't truly believe what they preach.

The fact is that not only most men, but most women want to see leading men, not women, in action roles, and so Hollywood, caught between its P.C. instincts and its urge to make money, makes these absurd remakes.

What's next: a female Captain Kirk?

A female James Bond?

A female Doctor Who?  Oh, wait – they've done that.

This is part of the larger liberal agenda to turn men into women and women into men.  But I have a feeling that despite the brainwashing, audiences are not going to turn out to watch a movie where Sandra Bullock, Cate Blanchett, and someone named Awkwafina play cat burglars.