Molly Ringwald calls ‘The Breakfast Club’ ‘very white’: It ‘doesn’t represent our world today’
Molly Ringwald wants fans to forget about a remake of “The Breakfast Club.”
The actress, 57, dismissed the possibility of remaking the 1985 teen comedy-drama about five high school students in detention during a panel, “Don’t You Forget About Me: ‘The Breakfast Club’ 40th Anniversary Reunion,” at the C2E2 pop culture convention in Chicago on Saturday.
“I personally don’t believe in remaking that movie, because I think this movie is very much of its time,” said Ringwald, who played popular girl Claire Standish.
“It resonates with people today,” she continued. “I believe in making movies that are inspired by other movies but build on it and represent what’s going on today. This is very, you know, it’s very white, this movie. You don’t see a lot of different ethnicities. We don’t talk about gender. None of that. And I feel like that really doesn’t represent our world today.”
“So I would like to see movies that are inspired by ‘The Breakfast Club’ but take it in a different direction,” Ringwald added.
Anthony Michael Hall, Ally Sheedy, Emilio Estevez and Judd Nelson also took part in the panel to celebrate 40 years since the John Hughes-directed film came out.
Estevez, 62, joined in on the discussion of remaking “The Breakfast Club.”
“Movies today are concept-driven, they’re not character-driven, and the beauty of John is that he focused on characters first,” Estevez said of Hughes, who died in 2009.
“And when you think about trying to pitch this movie today, it’s about five kids sitting in a library, all day in detention, and then the studio executives would march you right out the door and say, ‘Where are the monsters? Where’s the car chases? Where are the big effects?'” Estevez continued.
“It’s also important to remember that we made this movie for $1 million, which at the time was still a lot of money but by Universal standards was not; it was not thought of as a big, giant tentpole film as they make today,” Estevez added. “So there was a lot of risk involved, but by today’s standards, this movie, I don’t think, would ever get made.”
Ringwald told the Times of London last year that certain parts of the beloved movie “haven’t aged well,” including her on-screen dynamic with Nelson, 65.
“There is a lot that I really love about the movie but there are elements that haven’t aged well — like Judd Nelson’s character, John Bender, who essentially sexually harasses my character,” Ringwald said.
She added: “I’m glad we’re able to look at that and say things are truly different now.”
Ringwald similarly called out Bender’s problematic behavior and the fact that he and Claire kiss at the end of the film in a 2018 essay for the New Yorker.
“He never apologizes for any of it, but, nevertheless, he gets the girl in the end,” she wrote.
