Anna Kendrick’s upcoming movie about Santa Claus’ daughter is making us want movies about Edna Mode (and other women entrepreneurs).
Disney recently announced an upcoming family movie called Nicole, starring Anna Kendrick as Santa Claus’ daughter, who has to take over her father’s business when he retires. While it doesn’t seem to be much more than a fun movie, it is nice to know that we’ll have a family film with a leading female character that’s a businesswoman.
There’s a lot of space in film for ambitious women and their stories in movies for all audiences. From movies oriented towards adults that explore the challenges associated to starting a business, especially as a woman, to children’s movies that depict capable women putting their talents to use, we could use more role models that aren’t afraid to follow their ambition and start something new.
More female biopics
Joy made a welcome recently impact with Jennifer Lawrence playing Joy Mangano, the inventor of the Miracle Mop, and older movies like Coco Before Chanel and Julie and Julia have explored the dreams of complex real-life characters. But while Hollywood loves to immortalize corporate characters through biopics like Steve Jobs or The Social Network, but few movies featuring female entrepreneurs have become well known.
Looking back into history, there are countless women who have stories worth telling, such as that of Eliza Lucas Pinckney, the creator of blue indigo dye that became the second largest South Carolina export in 1739. And what about Oprah Winfrey, or Beyoncé?
But there is progress on this front. A movie about Ruth Handler, the creator of the Barbie doll, is in the works, and it will be directed by Reese Witherspoon (who has written an amazing essay on ambition, by the way).
Talented women putting their skills to use
Beyond stories of real-life women, it’s important to see even fictional characters harness their talents and turn them towards business. Neflix’s Girlboss succeeded in doing this by showing the story of a young woman who turns her passion into a sustainable business model, with all the challenges that involves.
But especially when it comes to children’s movies, we have to give characters the space they need to do more with their talents. Beauty and the Beast made Belle an inventor in a move to make the story more progressive, but couldn’t quite take it far enough to show how Belle goes on to implement those inventions. It’s not that the movie should have been about Belle’s professional pursuits — but while women are often depicted as talented, it’s easy to reduce that talent to just a personality quirk and forget that it can actually be useful.
Our movies should teach girls that talents are more than just an attractive quality. Talents are tools, and women across history have used them to build the world we know.
Switching our focus to secondary characters
Movies’ tendency to focus on the more easily relatable characters often relegates the ambitious businesswoman to a secondary role. In Ratatouille, Colette’s character is a fascinating glimpse at the life of a hardworking woman who has had to fight to climb restaurant hierarchy her whole life — and is ultimately intercepted by a rat. As fun as the movie is, an equally interesting story could have been told about Colette and how far she could go driven by a dream.
And even better: Edna Mode, easily the best character to come from The Incredibles and maybe Pixar as a whole. Who is she? Where did she come from? What made her go into superhero fashion, and what crazy adventures did she get involved with as a result? A movie about Edna Mode would be both hilarious and empowering, and bring notoriety to a different sort of female character than the ones we usually see in main roles.
It’s going to be great to see Santa Claus’ daughter take on a central role in Nicole. Hopefully this can be a part of a bigger trend of at least occasionally focusing on the more interesting characters and putting ambitious, innovative women in the spotlight.
Nicole is set to be released on November 8, 2019.