What if Bring It On (2001) didn’t have a villain? Or maybe she looked a little different. If she hadn’t been played by Gabrielle Union, maybe the character Isis wouldn’t exist the way we know her.
Isis is Union’s pride and joy in terms of the characters she’s portrayed. In her book, “You Got Anything Stronger?” Union refers to Isis as her daughter. She talks a lot about how this character took a lot of work, and Union wanted her not be the villain based on the color of her skin.
Union sat down with the director, Peyton Reed, and completely reworked the character after the first table reading. Yet, the majority of the audience for Bring It On didn’t pick up what they were putting down with the reworked version of Isis.
They still thought of her as a villain.
Personally, I don’t get it. Plot-wise, it makes a little bit of sense. Isis is the captain of the East Compton Clovers, the team that is going against the Rancho Carne Toros, our protagonist team. But that’s what you see when you half-listen to the movie.
If you really watch Bring It On, the Clovers are the victims. They had their cheers stolen from them under their noses, and the Toros face no real repercussions for it until Torrance Shipman becomes captain and the truth is revealed. In terms of Isis, she handles the situation without violence and is just trying to get justice for the Clovers. She even has goals of going to Berkley.
But for audiences, they only see the color of her skin.
Union did not want her character to be seen as the brash “other” cheerleader she was supposed to be. She wanted Isis to have class, given the situation.
According to hints from Union, the development of Isis didn’t have as much thought as the white characters. The biggest thing is that Isis, or the other clovers, don’t have last names.
Isis is just Isis. Lava is just Lava. Jenelope is just Jenelope.
It seems like a trivial thing for a character not have a last name, it’s pretty common. But it’s weird that the Toros all have last names, but none of the Clovers do. Isn’t it?
Isis is such a misunderstood character. All she wants is to bring justice to the Clovers for something the Toros’ former captain, Big Red, did to them. Union worked so hard during filming to make Isis into someone who broke stereotypes.
But despite it all, she’s still the villain.