Someone Help Rosamund Pike
She hasn’t made a good decision in eight years
I don’t have children, but I imagine that if I did it would be hard to watch them make horrible decisions over and over again. Instead of children, I have a stable of actresses 15 years older than me for whom I am constantly rooting; and by whom I am constantly disappointed. Leading that pack is Rosamund Pike, who has not made a good decision in eight years.
It was announced this week that Pike would star in a movie called Rich Flu, which is described as “a poignant-sounding thriller in which a deadly disease starts killing off the wealthy” by The Hollywood Reporter. Apparently, the film is about “how far one would go to save their skin when the wealth that made the world go round suddenly becomes its most dangerous commodity.” Baby, what are we doing here?
Considering Pike’s track record, I do not expect this movie to be good. I feel safe in saying that because what’s going to happen to me? Is the entirety of the Wheel of Time fandom going to fight me? That’s like seven people max, I could handle it.
Since her masterful performance as Amy Dunne in Gone Girl — for which she inexplicably lost an Oscar to Julianne Moore in Still Alice (memba her?) — Pike has not made a good movie. This is not for lack of trying on her part. She played real-life war correspondent Marie Colvin in A Private War, the real-life wife of the king of Botswana in A United Kingdom, and the real-life scientist Marie Curie in Radioactive. On paper, these are all great roles for an interesting actress. These are the kinds of roles that, when well-written and directed, are a one-way road to the Oscars. However, I fear that whoever is suggesting scripts to Pike does not read them and only gives them to her because they heard that Emily Blunt was also being eyed for the role.
A quick peek at Pike’s IMDb page shows that in addition to 2020’s I Care A Lot — a performance that did win her a Golden Globe (the movie is not good, but that has never stopped the Hollywood Foreign Press Association before) — she starred in a podcast series about Edith Wilson, several children’s cartoons, and that’s kind of it. (There’s also her Goldman Sachs commercials.)
Let’s get Pike working with someone who has brought greatness out of her before, someone like Joe Wright or David Fincher. Or maybe, dare I suggest, a woman director who can harness the same energy that makes girls tweet “Amy Dunne did nothing wrong.” Pike is, first and foremost, for the girls, and that energy has been lost in this recent chapter of her career.
Maybe she should take some time and return to the stage. She’s never done Broadway before, but I think if we revived Streetcar Named Desire for the millionth time we could get her a Tony. Or maybe we do a gender-swapped True West with Pike and Anne Hathaway. Can you believe I’m giving these ideas away for free?
There’s still time to right this ship. I believe in Pike’s talent, I just don’t believe in her choices. Maybe hire whoever is in charge of Olivia Colman’s career. If all else fails, there’s always Gone Girl 2: Amy and Nick Forever. But that’s a lever that should only be pulled in an absolute emergency.
