Because of The Hunger Games, I think we're ready for a Wonder Woman movie

[DANEgerous]

Josh Wheaton!

Er, it's "Joss Whedon." Honestly, though, I'm not sure he's the fellow I'd tap. His Girl Power! thing comes off a little, well, chest-thumpy to me. His brand of feminism seems to treat it like it's a contest in which whoever can dominate the other side is the better gender. Buffy's feminist because she can beat up men! The Black Widow is feminist because she can trick Loki! Yay girls! I'm not opposed to women defeating men at their own games or anything--Christ no--but his characters strike me as feminist the way most self-proclaimed feminists on the internet strike me as feminist: falsely, because for them feminism is just a backdrop against which to fight glorious battles in the name of a righteous cause.

A Wonder Woman written or directed by Joss Whedon would be okay. It would be fine. It would even be superficially cool, in the way a hot chick runs around in a swim suit outkungfuing the men and still looking hot while doing it is superficially cool as long as you don't think too hard about whether all those poses were choreographed to make her look hot. There would be at least two good jokes. I just think it would miss a lot of the point in favor of allowing Whedon to blow his Girl Power! trumpet, though.

True also thanks. While I knew the guy I never found him via text "yeah suck at being a fan" but I do think Joss Whedon could make the next Ripley and if you do not like Ripley well you suck. Everyone loves Ripley.

 

[Therumancer]

I think I'm with a lot of people when we say that Hollywood is ready for a Wonder Woman movie. I was with many fans who were displeased that a Flash movie was announced first instead of a Wonder Woman movie and Gal Gadot's casting as only announced after people got upset at the SDCC announcement.

But, because of recent successes of movies with female leads such as The Hunger Games, Frozen and (Please bear with me, I don't like this example either) Twilight, I think there is a market out there for Wonder Woman to cater to the female demographic.

What bugs me the most about this is that we've have several source materials to draw upon including a long running TV show, an animated film (which I thought was good), cartoons, a history of comic books, and even a porn parody. Yet, it seems WB became scared after the failed NBC pilot (which was dreadful).

I've also come across some arguments. For the sake of the posters, I will not post their names.

You give [producers] "the most iconic superheroine" and "hasn't had a TV series or major media presence since the 70s", and repeat "WOMAN LEAD", their heads fucking explode with how many demographics and story styles they're trying to chase down at once.

And they give it to familiar TV names who have had successes with female lead shows, which is pretty much a recipe for disaster with Wonder Woman, because it always means stuff like Ally McBeal or Gilmore Girls or whatever, when a modern day set Wonder Woman should honestly probably feel like a more heroic Supernatural or whatever. Urban fantasy, with a slight superhero bend.

But they want the Ally McBeal appeal too. So. They literally get the guy who made Ally McBeal to do it. And everything goes to hell.

And then they fucking gave it to Heinberg for awhile, because he's also already in TV and briefly wrote Wonder Woman in the comics. I am DYING to find whatever story ideas HE had, cuz he's awful.

Wonder Woman doesn't have a movie, and this is going to sound really weird, because she's too proactive a heroine, and audiences (especially female audiences) hate that.

Hunger Games and Twilight may have female leads, but they're actually thinly veiled fairy tale princess stories. Hell, look at the commercials for Catching Fire; they're all about how Katniss has pretty dresses and love triangles, and not about the whole "remember where they make kids kill each other for no reason" plot.

The problem is that Katniss and Bella aren't very proactive, whereas Wonder Woman is. When you actually start to learn about her beyond just assuming she's an icon, Wonder Woman is more like Ripley; the kind of female character that women tend to ignore at best or actively dislike.

On the subject of the rejected Wonder Woman script from Joss Whedon.

Maybe, but he doesn't need them anymore, WB changes their minds constantly, and the very fact that they gave it to Kelley and Heinberg in the first place shows that they're chasing something entirely different than what Whedon would be interested in doing.

WB seems to want the... general women's audience? Like, sit down, casual TV watching audience of women. Not the TV nerd women who update the wikias and know their shit, and catch every episode of whichever new show features two white dudes being ambiguously gay.

Which, to be fair, marketing Wonder Woman to them is tough to begin with.

But whatever, WB wants something different than a more straight up action/fantasy show. They seem to want something more... character drama. Bit more teenager-y.

So, are these arguments valid or are they biased in favor of not producing a Wonder Woman movie? If you were given the reigns, how would you make a Wonder Woman movie? If it were up to me, I'd just make 300 but with Amazons. Also, I would replace Gal Gadot with Eva Green.

People have been ready for "Wonder Woman" for a long time, truthfully having heroines hasn't been a big deal for a long time. I mean "Buffy The Vampire Slayer" was a cultural phenomena, and lead to more than a few fairly successful series such as "Tru Calling", "Dollhouse", "Dark Angel", and a few others. When I say "fairly successful" understand those shows got second seasons in most cases, even if a lot of people like to think of them differently. Furthermore shows like "Castle" and others in the same vein pretty much have female leads, given that the standard trope nowadays is to have the girl be the competent one and the dude as being the comic relief even if he does come in useful. Then of course more recently we've had "Fringe", and "Lost Girl" which is still ongoing.

The problem with doing Wonder Woman is that it's become too political. Your dealing with a concept that is supposed to be sexy, high camp, and yet oddly empowering. Wonder Woman is not a feminist icon or a character that really represents some of the political values people want to project through female characters. The problem is that nobody who has tried to pick up the project has really wanted to do "Wonder Woman" they have wanted to create a feminist super hero, with only a token connection to the mythology of the character, that they could point squarely at modern issues that the character has no place addressing if it's going to retain it's identity and what makes it what it is.

To put things into perspective, one of the last Wonder Woman attempts I remember seeing ran with the idea of having her be born and raised in the US as some kind of half breed, and uncover her Amazonian heritage as the series went on. That's not Wonder Woman, one of her defining traits is that she's a complete outsider to the societies she finds herself in, trying to act as a sort of icon and diplomat. What's more as was spelled out in "Tower Of Babel" she's supposed to be incredibly arrogant and competitive, to the point of stupidity at times, which is something that can and has frequently been exploited. That comes from being both an Amazon AND a Princess. What's more if you know anything about the character, you'd know that at least half her purpose is to be dominated and eventually turn the tables. The quintessential Wonder Woman story involves her doing something arrogant and stupid, getting defeated, tied up, and then put in some kind of bizzare (and oddly sexy) position from which she escapes and then takes out the enemies. Sites like "Superdickery" make fun of this by exaggerating it, although some of the panels from the comics themselves make it pretty obvious she plays both ends of the BDSM game at least when other girls are involved (some of which are presented as is on Superdickery to reinforce the even bigger joke they are making).

The problem I think with Wonder Woman is similar to that of the DC movies/media properties in general. Marvel's universe was always trying to be *fairly* serious, at least in comparison to other comics. DC on the other hand has generally not tried to take this stuff seriously at all, the only character they have that is really "serious" is post- Dark Knight Returns Batman, which is why it worked for a "serious" movie, especially seeing as they tend to act like Batman is in his own universe half the time anyway (unless he's crossing over into someone else's book). There have even been a lot of people making arguments based on "Gotham Reality" vs. "DC Universe Reality" like it's a pocket dimension only partly in phase with the rest of that universe. The thing is that characters like "Wonder Woman" and "Superman" can't be treated with complete seriousness, because they are not serious characters, they are pure escapism/entertainment fantasy. That's something the most recent attempts at Superman really didn't seem to get, and it's the same trap they seem to be charging full tilt towards with "Wonder Woman". This stuff looks ridiculous when visualized, because it is ridiculous, and DC absolutely revels in it. Where say "Marvel" will only call a character "Captain" with a good reason (say Captain America is a Captain in the US Army, Captain Mar Vell is a Captain in the Kree Space Force, Captain Kracken was a pirate Captain with his own ship), DC will throw out characters like "Captain Marvel" or "Captain Boomerang" (yes that is a real character, a villain in fact) without any thought as to why they call themselves that, since they don't exactly have any rank (or former rank) in any organization I've ever seen. The jokes pretty might write themselves (which has been exploited in the past in fact). Don't misunderstand this and think I'm saying Marvel is deadpan serious (it's not even close), but DC takes the absurd to entirely new levels regularly. As a general rule you just can't build a universe where "Gorilla City" has been a major player and the source of a recurring antagonist (and other drama) into something serious.... and Wonder Woman is a character intended to be seen with the same kind of "WTF" detachment as the rest of this, because I mean when you have a Gorilla with a mind control helmet trying to "evolve" people into monkey people so they won't be as primitive, an Amazon Princess bondage model/fetishist coming forward as one of humanity's champions is going to be one of the least ridiculous elements involved.

 

[VVThoughtBox]

Why do we need a Wonder Woman movie? Aren't there other female superheroes who can be adapted onto the big screen? How about a Black Canary, or a Hawkgirl, or Huntress movies? I don't see why a studio should take a big risk in putting all their resources into making a Wonder Woman movies. She's not even that good.

 

[Brian Tams]

Stop it. The Hunger Games (which I hate, because I find them poorly written & poorly directed, but with a good number of solid performance) doesn't show that we as a society are just now [i[ready[/i]. I reject that notion. The success of The Hunger Games shows that it was never a damn problem in the first place.

The problem with Wonder Woman, as others have mentioned, is that she is the definitive female superhero. I'm afraid of Hollywood execs utterly destroying the character. Now, that doesn't mean I don't want to see the movie made, but there are only a few in the industry I would even begin to trust with the character.

 

[Therumancer]

Wonder Woman is insanely hard to market, I'm afraid. Not even because she's a woman, but because she's just... kind of an odd superhero that most people can't place too well.

She's also not that well written most of the time. She seems to lack identity in most of the comics I've read, which puts her at a disadvantage.

That's probably due to her being a feminist icon, and feminism being an ever shifting movement. And she doesn't seem to be leading the charge either, she just seems to be following whatever feminist ideals are current (now she wears pants, cuz women wear pants). She stands (from what I've heard) for something that is in constant motion, so I would think it's hard to solidify her character in any way.

Wonder Woman isn't a feminist icon, at least not in any modern sense. While he wasn't on the money about everything, MovieBob did a run down on Wonder Woman, her intent, and her creator a while back, and to say that the situation is insane is an understatement.

Wonder Woman pretty much represents the personal sexual fantasies of her creator who had a big thing about the superiority of women because he liked being dominated by them, and was into lesbians (I kid you not), he also contributed to the technology behind the Polygraph machine (Truth Detector).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Moulton_Marston (Combine with Bob's video on it, I'm not going to nitpick details at the moment).

To put it bluntly Wonder Woman is a bondage pin up who fights crime, basically a switch hitter who is designed to get into awkward and provocative situations, and then reverse the roles on the people who take her down. She is supposed to be an outsider to society in general, and also incredibly arrogant and prone to taking challenges/accepting competition due to being both an Amazon and a Princess. It could be argued that she sort of represents an "ambassador" of the kink community to mainstream society on some levels.

... and that is so odd that I couldn't have made it up if I wanted to.


The thing is that over the years the general pattern and attitudes of Wonder Woman have remained over the years, including the various trappings of her "purpose" even if they have only occasionally been explicitly pointed out. People wind up picking up on this in modern comics even if they can't put a finger on it (and it leads to numerous jokes, which actually come very close to the truth, which would be more obvious if they weren't generally continueing to write her for a general audience as opposed to an adult one), some of the older stories which go back decades were pretty straightforward about it, sites like "Super Dickery" even put up some of the more explicit panels, including points where she's referred to as a "suffering Sappho" and similar things making her bi-sexuality (tending strongly towards lesbianism) pretty obvious. Albeit Superdickery ties the whole thing into an exaggerated pattern which they make out to go a bit further than it actually does.

Now, the thing is that Wonder Woman has a very distinct reason for existing and way of presentation, it is very much a high-camp concept, that is intentionally ridiculous. You start taking this kind of stuff away, and it's not Wonder Woman any more. Indeed I think that's half the problem with DC's media properties... as I said in my last post Marvel tried to be fairly serious and grounded for comics in their universe, DC never really was, as a result it's universe doesn't work well for serious storytelling. Batman represents an exception because he represents his own little corner of the universe which has been kept intentionally separated from a lot of the crazier stuff, as I've said before a lot of DC fans will oftentimes divide DC into "Gotham Reality" and the rest of the universe, while some things might come out of Gotham frequently, what affects Gotham and the Bat-Pals from the rest of the universe is greatly filtered, allowing Batman to maintain a somewhat different tone while being part of the main universe. The Superman reboots failed because they tried to treat a character seriously and "realistically' in the context of "the real world" when as a character he's neither serious, nor realistic, nor was created to inhabit anything like the real world, as a result trying to be "realistic" tends to ruin the essence of Superman. With Wonder Woman the same basic argument applies, which is why attempts like the last one to make her "a half amazon raised in the US gradually learning about her heritage" don't work, that's not the character. Making something totally different and then slapping a well known name on it does not work, or mean that the formula that sells the idea is going to translate well. To work DC needs to be over the top and ridiculous, UNLESS your dealing with Batman where things can be toned down a lot because he's his own thing and separated by writer's fiat specifically to keep it that way as much as possible. Characters like Wonder Woman and Supes are also by definition a lot crazier concepts than some gimmicked vigilante who wears a mask and fights crime to honor the memory of his dead parents, the rogues gallery is also more insane (space aliens, mythological monsters, mad scientists, giant kaiju-like monsters, etc..., as opposed to a mixed group of Asylum inmates that tend to each have a good trick or two that matches their personal derangement).


To do Wonder Woman "right" they would need to take risks, and by doing so going well away from the safe area Marvel established. They need to pretty much embrace the crazy in a way beyond what Marvel does, and also look at sub-markets. If *I* was going to launch Wonder Woman I'd probably want to go for a late night/tail end of prime time TV slot where more extreme programming is allowed, or aim for a network like "Showtime" or whatever. I'd then load it up with sensuality and eroticism, particularly bondage, without going into actual porn territory (nothing we actually haven't seen before albeit in smaller doses on these kinds of networks or time slots), and define the show by embracing the absolute silly/crazy of DC while having a deadpan reaction to it. What's more Wonder Woman classically does follow a formula, which works well for one off TV episodes, that formula is some threat arises, Wonder Woman confronts it, typically loses due to her own arrogance, gets tied up and faces some weird situation (oftentimes involving something over the top, phallic, and lethal racing towards the sweet spot between her legs... I mean seriously look at some Wonder Woman covers on Super Dickery), follow by an escape, and then tying up and beating the villain (though not always in that order). You would of course mix it up a bit, throw in a bit of a metaplot, and of course have her visit home a few times where the Amazons have even said in the comics "they play many binding games" (seriously, read Superdickery's section on this and the stuff they are showing there) stopping just short of porno... and well... then you'd have
Wonder Woman, and it would probably be as successful as anything else shown in those time slots or on Showtime.

Of course I imagine DC will go for something like "300 with Amazons" (as someone else mentioned) and that would kind of miss the entire, absurd, point of the entire thing, and I'd imagine it would wind up not going over that well. Sort of like my opinion of "Man of Steel" I thought some of the fight scenes were pretty good, but overall it didn't capture the essence of the character.