The Woman King

A new film stars Viola Davis as the leader of the Agojie, the all-woman army of the African kingdom of Dahomey.

But Agojie traditions [continued](https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20180826-the-legend-of-benins-fearless-female-warriors) long after Dahomey’s fall, with descendants of the warrior women [sharing stories](https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/08/26/amazons-dahomey-benin/) about their formidable ancestors and participating in religious rituals. … It is really strange to see women so well led, so well disciplined.” Though sources disagree on the number of women warriors who fought in the [Second Franco-Dahomean War](https://www.historynet.com/french-colonial-conquest-of-dahomey-in-1892/), Alpern cites 1,200 to 2,500 as a likely range. [History.com](https://www.history.com/news/african-female-warriors), Wantchekon emphasizes the central role played by women in Dahomean society. Upon seeing Nanisca’s body, Bayol [wrote](https://archive.org/details/amazonsofblacksp0000alpe/page/194/mode/1up?q=%22with+cowries%22) that a “cleaver, its curved blade engraved with fetish symbols, was attached to her left wrist by a small cord, and her right hand was clenched round the barrel of her carbine covered with cowries.” As Larsen articulates, the existence—and dominance—of Dahomey’s women warriors upset the French’s “understanding of gender roles and what women were supposed to do” in a “civilized” society. [likely stems](https://www.slashfilm.com/995302/how-the-success-of-black-panther-led-to-the-making-of-the-woman-king/) from the blockbuster [success](https://www.vox.com/culture/2018/2/23/17028826/black-panther-wakanda-culture-marvel) of 2018’s [Black Panther](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/how-black-panther-changed-comics-forever-180976521/), which testified to the demand for entertainment created by and featuring Black creatives. Because they were married to the king, they were restricted from having sex with other men, although the degree to which this celibacy was enforced is [subject to debate](https://archive.org/details/amazonsofblacksp0000alpe/page/40/mode/1up?q=celibacy). [1729](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/dahomeys-women-warriors-88286072/). Through these actions, the Agoije established Dahomey’s preeminence over neighboring kingdoms and became known by European visitors as “ [Amazons](https://amzn.to/3BIPaaZ)” due to their similarities to the warrior women of [Greek myth](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/amazon-women-there-any-truth-behind-myth-180950188/). [Dahomey](https://www.britannica.com/place/Dahomey-historical-kingdom-Africa) boasted an army so fierce that its enemies spoke of its “ [prodigious bravery](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/dahomeys-women-warriors-88286072/).” This [6,000](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/dahomeys-women-warriors-88286072/)-strong force, known as the Agojie, raided villages under cover of darkness, took captives and slashed off resisters’ heads to return to their king as trophies of war. magazine](https://msmagazine.com/2022/08/30/the-woman-king-review-africa-amazons-dahomey/). They are still under the patriarchy of the king, and they are still players in the slave trade.”

"The Woman King" is inspired by 19th-century female warriors in an African kingdom and creates a rousing action vehicle, augmented by plenty of melodrama.

Somehow, the film manages to feel like a throwback to the action movies of old while featuring people who were seldom allowed to occupy prominent roles back then. With its heavily female and almost entirely Black cast, the movie could give a welcome boost to other projects that have historically struggled in terms of studio support. Nanisca worries that her warriors "do not know an evil is coming," a tease for the pending battle against the Oyo. Shot in South Africa, the film helps bridge some of the expository gap by opening with a brutal action sequence, demonstrating just how fierce Nanisca and her loyal soldiers can be. (The script is by Dana Stevens, who shares story credit with actor Maria Bello.) Nanisca, meanwhile, urges the king to depart from his participation in the slave trade, arguing that selling captured foes to the Europeans has created "a dark circle" as they increasingly intrude upon their lands.

The director joined Viola Davis and her co-stars in intense training to play the real-life female Agojie warriors.

This is on top of the three hours they were doing with the trainers, on top of the hour and a half with [Gabriela Mclain] in the morning doing weights, on top of the running. GPB: As a director, I write what I want to see, and I direct what I want to see. Certainly the acceptance of that, you can absolutely draw a line to The Woman King and these women celebrating their athleticism and their skill and their athletic bodies and also finding the great beauty in all of that. They came into that room and saw the intensity that she was bringing and they were like, “Oh, that’s what we’re doing.” It just changed the energy. It’s funny, too, because I literally said, “You’re going to go online and you’re going to find these videos of actors who have trained before, and it’s cut to music and it seems really cool and it’s not. And it was like connecting the dots: getting a paragraph of one person describing the way that they dressed or a paragraph in another tome that talks about the cowry shells being in the hair. But the same fight I had when I had $7 million is the same fight I have at a $70 million budget. And the work that he did to give the film, those musical numbers that were organic to the story, set within the story, was exciting. We have the same mentality, of work ethic and integrity and authenticity and wanting to get this right. And then the actors had to learn that too. And then the script came and within five pages I was like, “Oh, shoot, this is my next movie.” I just felt like it was something I had to do. [The Woman King](https://www.avclub.com/film/reviews/the-woman-king-2022) is enough to show that Viola Davis and her co-stars did the kind of fight training you can’t fake.

Viola Davis leads a strong cast into battle in an epic from Gina Prince-Bythewood, inspired by real women warriors.

Even as the script falters, that history and Prince-Bythewood’s direction imbue “The Women King” with an intensity that’s manifest in every fight and in the clenched faces and straining muscles of the warriors. “The Woman King” drags here and there, weighted down principally by a subplot that grows more unpersuasive with each scene and involves an unruly young woman, Nawi (an appealing Thuso Mbedu), who’s dumped at the palace by her family. That the Dahomey traffic in other people complicates the triumphalism of a movie that celebrates women’s power, a complexity that the story never satisfyingly engages. The visual connection to these forces both adds to the movie’s overall sense of the past and bridges the horrors of 19th-century Africa with those of the continent’s post-colonial conflagrations. (The cinematographer is Polly Morgan.) You don’t need to be a scholar of old Hollywood, which divided Black performers in hierarchies of color, typecasting darker actors in servant roles, to grasp the greater implications of Prince-Bythewood foregrounding women like Davis, Sheila Atim and Lashana Lynch — it’s galvanizing. [Prince-Bythewood](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/08/movies/the-woman-king-gina-prince-bythewood.html) anchors you both in the battlefield and the ensuing chaos of the fight, which tethers you visually and, by extension, strengthens the movie’s realism. The wives show up now and again in “The Woman King,” seated and standing in a cloud of regal hauteur. The kinetic action adventure “The Woman King” is a sweeping entertainment, but it’s also a story of unwavering resistance in front of and behind the camera. The women are their own greatest weapons, and among everything else it addresses, “The Woman King” is about strong, dynamic Black women, their souls, minds and bodies. The tale is rooted in the women warriors of Dahomey whose exact origins remain obscured by tribal myths and oral traditions as well as the obviously biased, self-serving and at times contradictory accounts of European observers. Directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood, the movie is filled with palace intrigues, sumptuous ceremonies and stirring battles, and features, as golden-age Hollywood liked to brag, a cast of thousands (or thereabouts!). Certainly one of the most expansive of these canvases is “The Woman King,” a drama about the real women soldiers of the precolonial Kingdom of Dahomey in West Africa.

Viola Davis delivers a stunning performance as the commanding general Nanisca in this less-than-winning movie about a battalion of 19th-century female ...

This Team Fixed It.](https://www.wsj.com/articles/laguardia-airport-renovation-lga-terminal-b-11663203700?mod=trending_now_news_1) [U.S. Railroad Strike Averted as Tentative Deal Is Reached](https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-railroad-strike-averted-as-white-house-unions-reach-tentative-deal-11663234424?mod=trending_now_news_2) [Transfers of Migrants Have Democratic Leaders Scrambling for Solutions](https://www.wsj.com/articles/florida-sends-50-migrants-on-planes-to-marthas-vineyard-11663253106?mod=trending_now_news_3) [Putin Says Xi Raised Concerns on Ukraine War](https://www.wsj.com/articles/chinas-xi-jinping-and-russias-vladimir-putin-to-showcase-growing-ties-11663243097?mod=trending_now_news_4) [Mortgage Rates Hit Over 6% for First Time Since the 2008 Financial Crisis](https://www.wsj.com/articles/mortgage-rates-hit-6-02-highest-since-the-financial-crisis-11663250402?mod=trending_now_news_5) [September Sales Event - Members save 20% or more](https://www.wsj.com/coupons/expedia) [Hotels.com September Deals - Save 20% or more](https://www.wsj.com/coupons/hotels-com) [30% off women's sneakers - DSW coupon code](https://www.wsj.com/coupons/dsw) Davis is one of those actresses who should probably be given an automatic Oscar nomination every time her name appears in a list of credits; whether she is playing a mousy mom in “Doubt” or the blues-singing force of nature in “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” she always drills into her character, and as usual she is captivating here.

Gina Prince-Bythewood's follow-up to "The Old Guard" is a forceful account of women warriors in the West African kingdom of Dahomey during the 19th century.

In recent years the Hollywood tide has clearly begun to turn for Prince-Bythewood, on the evidence of [“The Old Guard,”](https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/movies/story/2020-07-08/the-old-guard-review-charlize-theron) her bracing 2020 action-fantasy for Netflix about a band of immortal warriors. To its credit, the movie does acknowledge some of the story’s uglier historical context, including the fact that Dahomey became a rich nation by profiting off the transatlantic slave trade, selling African prisoners to European invaders. [“Love & Basketball”](https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/movies/story/2020-04-21/love-and-basketball-oral-history-20-year-anniversary) more than 20 years ago, her commitment to centering women in her storytelling, especially Black women, has never wavered, even as it’s cost her opportunities in an industry that likes to pass off its racism and sexism as commercial imperatives. (Terence Blanchard’s moving score heightens the immersion.) At times you wish the director would linger longer still, the better to let a deeper understanding of Dahomey’s rigid rules, meticulous hierarchies and tangled alliances seep into your bones. To watch the Agojie warriors storm into battle, armed with swords and spears and led by Nanisca’s mighty ululating battle cry, is to encounter much more than the standard Hollywood vision of resistance in action. It’s not the story’s only trade-off: If the general is easily the most physically imposing character Davis has ever played, that may necessarily preclude her from being the most interesting or psychologically complex. Naturally, it also means submitting to the kind of intense fitness regimen — running through thickets of thorns, decapitating dummies stitched from tightly knotted ropes — that great training and competition montages are made of. That’s a remarkable accomplishment if also a revealing one, and it speaks less to any heretofore uncharted depths of Davis’ talent than to the limits of the film industry’s imagination. Or, as we see in “The Woman King’s” cut-to-the-quick opening scene, to rise silently from the grasses, sword out, midriff bared, shoulders agleam with sweat and firelight. And the most ferocious among them, at least in this swift and satisfying telling, was their top general, Nanisca, played by Viola Davis in the first major action showcase of her career. Nor does it unpack the tricky gender nuances of a kingdom where women who became Agojie were essentially considered to have become men, according to some historical accounts. With her rousing new action-drama, “The Woman King,” director Gina Prince-Bythewood suggests that, in at least one crucial respect, the West African kingdom of Dahomey was more ahead of its time than that starry imperialist empire called Hollywood.

The breathtaking and action-packed historical epic The Woman King is one of 2022's best films. Based on a true story, director Gina Prince-Bythewood throws ...

Prince-Bythewood: It started with precisely what you said, making people see the value in this story, in this cast, in these characters, and it's a tough thing to have to fight and prove that people that look like you have value. I got the gig in the room, and then I had to walk to my car. I also got a sense of some of the movies of the 70s with strong black women front and center, like Foxy Brown. I had actors doing all their own fighting, all their own stunts, face to face and spitting and grappling and sweating; you can't wear masks in that situation. I was like, 'How are we going to get that done?' You figure it out, and you do it. That said, we found these incredible journals written by these two men who went to the kingdom and their descriptions of the palace, the costume, the people, and the environment, and that's what I wanted to put up on the screen. I sat in my car, and it was like, 'Damn, now I've actually got to come through.' That's where the fear sets in, but that fear is good because it drives me and pushes me to put in the work I need to prove that everything I said in that room I could deliver on. Those details were vital to me, the actors, and the department heads who took the authenticity seriously. That seemed to be important across the board, top to bottom. Some were very offensive in the way they were written because of the lens they were looking through. Honestly, I think it started with the studio not realizing the bigness of this film, the epic nature of it, not only in the scope of it but also in the emotion. We felt it on set, but you never know until you start to put it together, but the reaction has been pretty incredible.

In “The Woman King,” Viola Davis a mass of muscle, battle wounds and world weariness as General Nanisca, the head of the Agojie, an all-female unit of ...

It’s also a very Hollywood version of what may have happened as they prepare to go up against the powerful Oyo empire, with some convenient reveals, a love interest, a slightly idealized king figure (in John Boyega) and an old score someone needs to settle. But unlike some recent cinematic depictions of armies not entirely comprised of men, they didn’t have to look to fantasy or the comic books to make “The Woman King” — just a history that isn’t widely taught. It’s 1823 and there is rape and rampant hatred of women. The world of the “The Woman King” is no paradise though. Directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood, who cannot be pigeonholed, the film is a throwback of sorts to the big, exciting, emotional warrior epics that used to be all too common at the multiplex, with the twist that it’s women not men driving the action. Terence Blanchard lends a fittingly rousing score to the action, which, though brutal, is carefully constructed to keep that superhero PG-13 rating.

With an outstanding cast of characters and a truly epic sale, The Woman King is glorious and powerful.

With an outstanding cast of characters and a truly epic sale, The Woman King is glorious and powerful. And while she was left out of the fights in movies like The Suicide Squad, Davis is absolutely badass and shows that she’s an action star in her own right. On top of leading the cast as General Nanisca, Viola Davis is also a significant behind-the-scenes contributor to The Woman King. As the leader of the Agojie, she has the most action sequences out of anyone in the film. Of course, it’s impossible to speak about The Woman King without talking about the force of nature that is Viola Davis. The Oscar, Tony and Emmy Award-winning actress is known for bringing a fierce emotionality to her performances, and that was certainly the case as General Nanisca. The Woman King is set back in the 1820s and follows the Dahomey Kingdom in Africa. Indeed, the action sequences are hugely important to buoying the runtime of The Woman King. There’s simply never been a movie like this in theaters, and the care taken with its contents make each scene, battle and expression into a revelation. All of these storylines are greatly serviced by The Woman King’s production and design elements. While each action scene from The Woman King offers a shot of adrenaline throughout the movie’s runtime, there is obviously a deeper story being told by Gina Prince-Bythewood and company. As previously mentioned, The Woman King is directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood, who is known for projects like Love & Basketball and The Old Guard.

A brave Agojie general named Nanisca (Viola Davis) who serves King Ghezo (John Boyega) works to protect her people — and to convince Ghezo that their country's ...

They are still under the patriarchy of the king, and they are still players in the slave trade. A lot of The Woman King is absolutely based in the historical record. In the film, General Nanisca is depicted as a strident leader for change in Dahomey. A brave Agojie general named Nanisca ( [Viola Davis](https://screencrush.com/tags/viola-davis/)) who serves King Ghezo ( [John Boyega](https://screencrush.com/tags/john-boyega/)) works to protect her people — and to convince Ghezo that their country’s participation in the slave trade is a “poison” that needs to stop. But unlike the trailer, the film itself doesn’t actually include any sort of title card claiming it is a work of historical fiction — and it’s also worth noting that saying something is based on “true events” is not quite the same as saying something is based on a “true story.” Technically speaking, The Amityville Horror is based on true events. [The Woman King](https://screencrush.com/tags/the-woman-king/) advertises that it is “Based on Powerful True Events.” The events depicted in the film involve a group known as the Agojie, a ferocious platoon of female warriors who protected the West African kingdom of Dahomey.

Led by General Nanisca (Viola Davis), an all-female unit of Agojie, or Amazons, strike the enemy outpost in the dead of night, rising from the tall grass with ...

“The role of fantasy is to create the heroes we cannot have in the real world,” she says. “That’s why you have things like ‘Black Panther.’ ” Still, she goes on, “I think it’s also really important to be aware of the truth.” Nyong’o has given no public explanation for dropping out of “The Woman King.” But I suspect that she left precisely because of these reservations. “Not good at all!” As the woman sings a Yoruba melody, Nyong’o begins to cry, wondering aloud how she can reconcile celebrating the Agojie with the bereavement of their victims’ descendants. Nyong’o never mentions “The Woman King.” But the documentary was filmed a few months after she was cast and not long before her departure was reported. Nyong’o begins her journey enthusing about how “dope” it is to be in the land of the Amazons. [noted](https://isaacsamuel.substack.com/p/the-kingdom-of-dahomey-and-the-atlantic), the kingdom had many motivations, and one of its rulers was astonished when a European visitor assumed that “we go to war for the purpose of supplying your ships with slaves.” If the scriptwriters had wanted, “The Woman King” could have been an amoral epic about swordplay and statecraft, no more consumed by slavery than “ [The Great](https://www.newyorker.com/culture/on-television/the-great-reviewed-a-proudly-fictional-pleasurably-vulgar-spin-on-catherine-the-great)”—a Hulu series about Empress Catherine of Russia—is by serfdom. It’s hard not to see uncomfortable echoes of this propaganda in “The Woman King.” On the Route des Esclaves in Ouidah, sculptures testifying to the suffering of the enslaved sit just down the road from monumental evocations of their traffickers’ glory. Why, then, should “The Woman King” be held to a moral standard ignored by the thousands of period dramas about violent Western states? “Burn their whole trade to the ground,” Nanisca proclaims during a battle at the port. Much of the hype around “The Woman King,” which premières Friday, has focussed on the obstacles to making it. [Angélique Kidjo](https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-new-yorker-interview/angelique-kidjo-has-heard-it-all), Ghezo has been forced to pay a humiliating tribute of guns and captives to the Oyo.

Oscar-winner Viola Davis stars in the upcoming historical epic, "The Woman King."

The Woman King is out in theaters now in the U.S. At the moment, there is no news on whether The Woman King will be available to stream or which platform it will be available on. and Canada and is coming to U.K. The Woman King hits theaters on Friday, September 16. The Woman King is an American historical epic that follows the gripping story of the all-female warrior unit known as the Agojie. Cinemagoers in the U.S.

The filmmaker is constantly evolving and unafraid to show off her work. That persistence and confidence landed her the biggest gig yet.

“In that first meeting, I knew my connection to the story,” Prince-Bythewood said. That was the toughest shoot in my career, but also the most joyous,” Prince-Bythewood said. “This was a big, epic script, a big epic story with big set pieces, and I needed to show them that I could do that,” Prince-Bythewood said. “She invited us, Viola, and Julius [Tennon, Davis’ husband and also a producer] and I, to see ‘The Old Guard’ in the editing suite,” Schulman said. She became the right target and she also really reacted to it in a personal way.” “The Old Guard” was her most action-driven entry yet, and she knew it showed her prowess with a seemingly new skill set. “I knew everything about these characters, my athletic background, who these women were, how to tell the story. “By the industry standards, it helped to see ‘The Old Guard,’ certainly,” Davis told IndieWire. “I think it’s easier to repeat what’s already been done than to forge new ground, and I think it’s because the studios and the financiers, everybody, they’re suffering through the crowded marketplace and how to do something that can stand out,” Schulman told IndieWire. Not only did that allow Prince-Bythewood to add “Marvel director” to her resume, but she got to direct her first Black superhero — actor and rapper Aubrey Joseph portrayed the teenage Cloak. “That was a year and a half of my life and I learned a tremendous amount,” she said. We go to all of them, and it was maybe two years before ‘Black Panther’ came out, and my older son said to me, ‘Why isn’t there a Black superhero?’ And at that moment I was like, ‘I keep saying I would love to do that for you, so let me stop saying I would love it, and do that.’ So what steps do I need to take?”

We're in Cambridge, we're in Lowell, we're all over at the movie theaters -- slip that September slide and roadmap your weekend.

[Music](https://vanyaland.com/category/music/), [Comedy](https://vanyaland.com/category/comedy/), and [Film/TV](https://vanyaland.com/category/filmtv/). [Event info](https://www.mideastoffers.com/event/12376435/actors-house-of-harm-digital) :: [Advance tickets](https://www.ticketweb.com/event/actors-house-of-harm-digital-sonia-tickets/12376435?REFID=clientsitewp) [Comedy](https://vanyaland.com/category/comedy): Lewis Black at Lowell Memorial Auditorium [Lewis Black](https://www.lewisblack.com/) is back in town this weekend, and his presence is usually enough to capture out full attention. The ranting comedian and actor continues his Off The Rails Tour with a stop at [Lowell Memorial Auditorium tonight (September 16)](https://lowellauditorium.com/calendar/2022/9/16/lewisblack), and as Jason Greenough notes in [this week’s Mic’d Up](https://vanyaland.com/2022/09/12/micd-up-black-is-back-in-lowell-mirman-gets-cozy-the-burren/), “he’s already said more than enough to light a fire up under America’s ass, but apparently he has to keep saying it. Be sure to check out our review for Johnston’s full breakdown, but here’s a quick synapsis to get us rolling: “The Woman King is a 2022 American historical epic film about the Agojie, the all-female warrior unit who protected the West African kingdom of Dahomey during the 17th to 19th centuries. As [we wrote](https://vanyaland.com/2021/11/22/band-in-the-usa-actors-unveil-2022-north-american-tour/) back then, “Acts of Worship is often dramatic on its serpentine surface, but the atmospheric core is centered purely on our own human emotions, and as an extension, the resulting connectivity we have with others.” There’s delectable homegrown flavor on the bill as well, with Providence’s [Digital](https://digitalpvd.com/), Boston’s [House of Harm](https://houseofharm.com/), and [Corrosion’s DJ Brian L](https://www.facebook.com/DJBrianL.Boston) all slingin’ kaleidoscopic beats and sinister treats from doors to headliner. Then I’m going to move on to the next one, which will be about what the hell I think is going on in the world with things like healthcare, and all the other nonsense that these idiots [talk about].” LEWIS BLACK :: Friday, September 16 at Lowell Memorial Auditorium, 50 East Merrimack St. [ACTORS](https://vanyaland.com/2021/10/01/actors-turn-an-affair-into-relationship-on-acts-of-worship/)‘ arrival in Cambridge [this Saturday (September 17)](https://www.mideastoffers.com/event/12376435/actors-house-of-harm-digital) for a shadow twirl at Sonia has been something we’ve awaited since the Vancouver post-punk band released 2021 standout album Acts of Worship nearly a year ago. ACTORS + DIGITAL + HOUSE OF HARM + DJ BRIAN L :: Saturday, September 17 at Sonia, 10 Brookline Ave. [Music](https://vanyaland.com/category/music/): ACTORS at Sonia Or is it a show masquerading as a festival? We often hype festivals in this space so here’s one masquerading as a show.

The Viola Davis produced and starring femme warrior pic is off to a solid start with $1.7M after showtimes that began at 3PM yesterday at 3,271.

The $50M feature co-financed by TriStar and eOne is expected to make between $13M-$16M this weekend after [a very warmly received premiere](https://deadline.com/2022/09/viola-davis-delivers-impassioned-speech-at-woman-king-tiff-world-premiere-magnum-opus-is-for-risk-takers-naysayers-actress-six-year-old-self-1235113548/) at TIFF last Friday, and Rotten Tomatoes critic reviews that had hovered at 100% now have now settled to a still-great 94%. [The Woman King](https://deadline.com/tag/the-woman-king/) is off to a solid start with $1.7M after showtimes that began at 3 p.m. [Sony](https://deadline.com/tag/sony/) was eyeing Harriet and Widows, the latter a Davis action crime movie, as comps, and already Woman King has beaten both those pics’ respective $600K Thursday previews by 183%. Now at 3,056 theaters, Bullet Train‘s domestic total through six weeks stands at $93.9M, while Maverick counts $706.8M at the end of its 16th week. The Woman King expands to 3,675 theaters this weekend, and the hope is that those excellent reviews will pull in adults at a time when there’s not much on the marquee. [Pearl](https://deadline.com/tag/pearl/) going wide at 2,900 theaters.

The movie follows the story of the all-female Agojie warrior unit that protected the West African kingdom of Dahomey between the 17th and 19th centuries.

The movie is currently showing in theaters. It is one item in a long list of "firsts" for King. It makes sense that Sony would want to partner with King to promote the movie.

Atim is a two-time Olivier Award winner who stars alongside Viola Davis, Thuso Mbedu, Lashana Lynch and John Boyega in Sony's historical epic The Woman King, ...

Also a playwright, her debut play, Anguis — produced by Avalon and BBC Arts — premiered at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2019. The actress also starred alongside Academy Award winner Halle Berry in her feature directorial debut, Bruised, which premiered at the 2020 Toronto International Film Festival. The actress plays Signora Vitelli in Robert Zemeckis’ Pinocchio for Disney+ and will next appear in the drama All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt, which is a co-production between A24 and Barry Jenkins’ filmmaking collective, Pastel.

The Woman King features Viola Davis, Lashana Lynch, Thuso Mbedu and John Boyega in a (somewhat true) story of the Agojie, an all-female guard protecting the ...

One helping factor is that The Woman King is the first big movie aimed at women since Crawdads, which was the first of its ilk since Everything, Everything All at Once and The Lost City in late March. It may not be explicitly positioned as an Oscar flick (it’s an action movie first), but a strong opening could put it in the game. Still, otherwise both ‘not a white guy’ flicks will have the field to themselves, especially outside of horror movies like Halloween Ends (and the rerelease of Avatar), until Black Adam and Tickets to Paradise on October 21. The Woman King features Viola Davis, Lashana Lynch, Thuso Mbedu and John Boyega in a (somewhat true) story of the Agojie, an all-female guard protecting the king and otherwise defending the West African kingdom of Dahomey in the 18th and 19th centuries. That old-school melodrama, starring Daisy Edgar Jones and based on a much-read best-seller, legged out to $86 million domestic on a $24 million budget. Splitting the difference would be around $17 million, a debut on par with Sony’s female-targeted Where the Crawdads Sing from back in July.

Gina Prince-Bythewood's latest film is a rousingly old-fashioned action-drama about women warriors in 19th-century West Africa.

Prince-Bythewood has conceived The Woman King in the grand-scale tradition of epics like Braveheart and Gladiator, this time with women leading the charge. To its credit, the script addresses some of the historical complexities of the situation, including the fact that Dahomey became a rich kingdom by participating in the trans-Atlantic slave trade — a practice that Nanisca wants to end. Nanisca may not be the most complex character Davis has played, but it's thrilling to see her take on her first major action showcase as she dons battle gear, wields a sword and hacks her way through the many, many men who get in her way. The Woman King was shot on location in South Africa, and its re-creation of the Dahomey villages is so immersive — the costumes, designed by Gersha Phillips, are especially gorgeous — that it just about carries you past some of the messiness of the storytelling. But by the end, Nawi absorbs those values and becomes a courageous fighter, honing her skills through many exciting scenes of training and competition. As Prince-Bythewood has said in interviews, her focus on women protagonists, especially Black women protagonists, had made it hard over the years to get her projects off the ground.

Directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood (“The Old Guard,” “Love & Basketball”), the movie premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival last week, where it had ...

[Pearl](https://variety.com/t/pearl/),” a follow-up to this year’s March release “X,” both directed by Ti West. West and A24 already announced a third movie in the horror series, titled “MaXXXine,” which will be a direct sequel to “X.” At the box office this weekend, “Pearl” is expected to have a debut in the low millions, which would align with the $4.2 million launch “X” had earlier this year. [aiming for a $15 million opening](https://variety.com/2022/film/news/the-woman-king-viola-davis-box-office-1235372477/) this weekend, where it doesn’t face much competition from rival releases.

There are some historical figures in the film, including the Dahomey king Nanisca serves, Ghezo (John Boyega). But the movie makes no onscreen claims to truth — ...

But Davis’ performance — and the ferocious fighting of her Agojie comrades — make The Woman King worth watching anyway. As the Agojie’s general, she is the one who demands Nawi and the rest of the platoon observe the group’s rules around marriage and babies, and she presents herself as a stone-faced combatant who has purged herself of every emotion. Nawi is brave and wants to fight for her king — but she also struggles to follow orders, which Nanisca insists is one of the keys to the Agojie’s success in battle. The Woman King occasionally plays like a battle between its own elephant and termite art tendencies, and its final act seems unsure whether to embrace its impulses towards gritty, B-movie action or venture into a more solemn consideration of its weightier issues. The Woman King also draws comparisons to Braveheart and Gladiator, movies that combine epic battle sequences with philosophical discussions about slavery and the nature of freedom. (So is the rest of the supporting cast, including a scene-stealing Lashana Lynch as one of Nanisca’s lieutenants.) The Woman King also gets badly sidetracked by a ludicrous romance subplot between Nawi and Malik that seems highly implausible and very convenient, before it ultimately concludes in totally unsatisfying fashion. Enemies captured by either side in their ongoing conflict are then sold to Europeans in the slave trade — a practice Nanisca detests and tries to convince King Ghezo to end. Like all good war movies, The Woman King contains its fair share of inspirational speeches and pithy aphorisms. Dahomey really existed and so did Nanisca’s army, known as the Agojie, who live a monk-like existence behind the walls of the king’s palace. There are some historical figures in the film, including the Dahomey king Nanisca serves, Ghezo (John Boyega). In [The Woman King](https://screencrush.com/tags/the-woman-king), she gets to show off a whole arsenal of impressive fighting moves, lashing out at her enemies with swords and knives and a variety of mixed martial arts.

The actors perform their own stunts, including a couple of flips to the dirt, in this scene from the film. The director Gina Prince-Bythewood narrates.

In this sequence, that means performers have to pull off a flip in a couple of wrestling scenes. “We’ve seen training montages before and they’re always fun and exciting,” the director Gina Prince-Bythewood said, narrating the scene. In “Anatomy of a Scene,” we ask directors to reveal the secrets that go into making key scenes in their movies. Nawi (Thuso Mbedu) has been dumped by her father at the palace in the Kingdom of Dahomey in 19th-century Africa. The woman leading the drills is Izogie (Lashana Lynch), whom Nawi ultimately tries to emulate. See new episodes in the series on Fridays.

Viola Davis anchors an excellent ensemble in this rousing period piece about the Agojie warriors of Dahomey.

And because the women are very much human, the stunt work is remarkably grounded in the realism of their training and their prowess with their weapons of choice. Check out the trailer for the 13 TMNT titles and their Japanese versions, coming to PC via Steam, PS5, Xbox Series X/S, PS4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch on August 30, 2022.The collection includes: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Arcade), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time (Arcade), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (NES), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Arcade Game (NES), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III: The Manhattan Project (NES), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tournament Fighters (NES), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles IV: Turtles in Time (Super Nintendo), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tournament Fighters (Super Nintendo), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Hyperstone Heist (Sega Genesis), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tournament Fighters (Sega Genesis), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Fall of The Foot Clan (Game Boy), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: Back From The Sewers (Game Boy), and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III: Radical Rescue (Game Boy).](/videos/teenage-mutant-ninja-turtles-the-cowabunga-collection-release-date-trailer) [Atomic Heart - Combat TrailerAtomic Heart gets a fresh, brutal new trailer, showcasing combat and more from this upcoming first-person shooter game. But even with those quibbles, The Woman King is very much an engaging movie about the ingenuity and compassion of the Agojie warriors. But the bulk of those stories do land because the cast is so damn good in selling the humanity within them. The Oyos are painted as the baddies with the Dahomey the progressive good guys, even with their contributions to the selling of their countrymen. The script itself is a bit surface when it comes to the complexities of the social and political tribe dynamics of the time, but the ensemble cast elevates even the soapiest subplots to make this a story worth watching. Each has amassed great wealth selling their prisoners to the slavers to fill their coffers, perpetuating a vicious cycle of preying on one another for profit. Fed up with her brazen ways and lack of value, Nawi’s father gifts her to King Ghezo (John Boyega) and she is given the opportunity to join the Agojie. One of the most interesting moral quandaries of the film is witnessing how both the Dahomey and the Oyo are complicit in helping the slave trade. Despite the brutal training process overseen by General Nanisca, Nawi finds agency and friendship amongst her fellow peers and is mentored by the elite warrior Izogie (Lashana Lynch). The latter valued its women warriors so much that they had gender parity in their upper echelons of power, including an all-female guard known as the Agojie. Viola Davis is their world-weary yet fierce General Nanisca, who trains the women of her tribe and the captured women of other tribes to become elite warriors of unparalleled respect.

Viola Davis stars in 'The Woman King,' a historical epic that chronicles the trials and triumphs of the Agojie and Dahomey.

“There will always be time to consume the legacy of Dahomey and the slave trade,” Wantchekon says. In The Woman King, Nanisca experiences firsthand the horrors of slavery, and works to convince King Ghezo to stop participating in the slave trade—or at least to end the tributary status of the Dahomey to the Oyo Empire. But The Woman King marks the [first time](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/real-warriors-woman-king-dahomey-agojie-amazons-180980750/) that a major motion picture in the U.S. He also acknowledges that multiple facets can be true, and highlighted, at the same time: a society can be forward-thinking and advanced in one regard while causing immeasurable harm in another. The Woman King opens in 1823, the year that King Ghezo finally freed Dahomey from its tributary status. [told](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-features/viola-davis-gina-prince-bythewood-the-woman-king-1235210487/) The Hollywood Reporter. Wantchekon posits, though, that Queen Hangbe, the twin sister of King Akaba, planted the seed for the idea of the women warriors in the early 1700s. [Dora Milaje in Black Panther](https://time.com/5171219/black-panther-women-true-history/). And third, King Ghezo catalyzed the expansion of military might. Wantchekon makes three key points about the conditions that made Dahomey ripe for the Agojie to thrive. “But they are products of a social environment that enables women to do anything they want to do or they can do—including going to war.” [Gina Prince-Bythewood](https://time.com/collection/american-voices-2017/4696466/gina-prince-bythewood-filmmaker/) out Sept.

Viola Davis presides over Gina Prince-Bythewood's rousing action movie with a conflicted view of the past. Co-starring Lashana Lynch and John Boyega.

And yet they still exist in service to the whims of a king. The broader in theme it gets, the less convincing it is, and never more so than when it introduces a forbidden love interest for Nawi in the form of a biracial slaver named Malik (Jordan Bolger, all abs) who, over the course of what feels like minutes, connects to his Dahomey heritage and repudiates everything about the trade he’s been participating in. Its version of the Agojie, led by a brawny Viola Davis as General Nanisca, take up arms not just against the rival Oyo Empire and the Mahi people they’re aligned with, but against the Europeans who have been buying captives from all of them and finally against the slave trade itself.