Wonder Woman movie

[Underseer]

In case you haven't heard, Wonder Woman is expected to appear in the upcoming Batman vs Superman movie, and star in her own movie a year or two later:

http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=56573

Lately, DC movies have sucked big sweaty donkey balls. Take the Superman movie as an example. I don't mind when moviemakers take extreme liberties with the source material, but when you mess with the underlying theme you've gone too far. Superman is at its heart an immigrant success story: foreigner comes to America and makes it big. The most recent Superman movie failed (at least in my eyes) because they stripped out the immigrant story that is at the heart of Superman and replaced it with a Jesus metaphor.

I bring this up because if Superman is about immigrants, then Wonder Woman is a female empowerment fantasy. If they manage to screw that up, I'm going to be really pissed off. I like me a good female empowerment fantasy (even bad ones).

Oh, and if they are still deciding which female director I sincerely hope they get Katherine Bigelow. Love her movies, and she does action well.

Anyway, what are your thoughts about the character or the movie?

 

[Unbeatable]

To be frank, the only thing about WW that both interests me and actually remains consistent from one interpretation to the next is her body. Her personality, her backstory, her reason for being Wonder Woman, the types of foes she deals with, her costume, etc. seem to be all over the map. I still haven't seen anyone successfully incorporate (intentional) humor into her stories. "Female empowerment" sounds about right for a theme, because it's so utterly generic that as long as it's an action movie and she's the star of it, then there's pretty much no way they can avoid it. Beyond that, I don't know. I hope Gal Gadot keeps her accent, or some sort of non-native-English-speaker accent.

 

[Daioh]

Anyway, what are your thoughts about the character

Personally I love the character
I love the animated versions of her and I will even say I love the Lynda Carter Live Action version of Wonder Woman (Sure the scripts were corny but Carter absolutely OWNED that lead role)
Of the DC Superheros I would probably rank Wonder Woman as my favourite
It should be noted that my opinion is based on never having read any WW comic books, just watching movies and T.V shows of her

then Wonder Woman is a female empowerment fantasy.

Empowerment is good
Just as long as she isn't turned into "Superman with Bewbs" or they don't go overboard trying to ram home the whole "look a superhero....and it's a CHICK....LOOK HOW PROGRESSIVE AND INTERESTING SHE IS BECAUSE SHE IS A CHICK AND FIGHTING WITH THE DUDES"

Also about her character I really hope they do a Thor and really play around with the mythological looks, themes and ideas that are connected with her

or the movie?

I'm probably gonna have the same complaint that I had with Man of Steel
Wonder Woman isn't really a "Dark and Gritty" kind of character (and everything so far seems to suggest they are ramping up the darkness and piling on some serious gritty)
I have no problem with wanting to maybe 'tone down" the spangly outfit but the image they put out showing her costume left me more with the reaction "Where's Wonder Woman?"
From that early image, she looked drab, boring, humourless and if you are not going with the original outfit then why keep the giant heels on her boots? (I mean seriously, you made her outfit look more like armour then give her the most impractical boots you could find, at least the other WW versions had the excuse that their whole outfits were bright and impractical)

As for the actress, I don't know enough about her to say whether or not she could pull a character like this off

Maybe a good director/script could really bring this to life
But given that I have rather low hopes/expectations for Dawn of Justice, then I'm afraid that my hopes/expectations for WW are equally low

 

[Tom Sawyer]

Wonder Woman could be a very interesting movie, but it depends on how they go about doing it. The dark and gritty thing worked for Batman because that's the essence of his character and failed spectacularly for Superman because that's the compete antithesis of his character. If DC handles the Wonder Woman movie like Marvel handled the Captain America and Thor movies in that they just say "Ya, this shit is corny as hell, but we're just going with it" then they could make it work just as well.

If they make her just some generic strongwoman in some generic action movie to be able to keep the elements of gritty realism in it, it's going to fall flat even if they do a good job of it. However, if they embrace the character and write all the cheesy crap into the movie in a way that doesn't embarrass it, it has the potential to be something very cool.

 

[marc]

Hopefully they learned the lessons of that crappy TV pilot they made a few years ago.

 

[Underseer]

I think the female empowerment fantasy has been integral to the character from the get-go.

She was not the first female superhero. I believe that was Black Canary who was originally a cop's wife who put on a cape and beat up bad guys. Black Canary wasn't really a female empowerment fantasy since what she was doing was essentially an extension of her husband's work; who she was and why she did what she did was defined by her husband.

Taken in the context of the time Wonder Woman was originally created, it was clearly meant to be a female empowerment fantasy. The writer was kind of a kook who believed that women are inherently superior to men (and was into S&M, hence the creepy S&M overtones in the original character).

Just having a strong female character doesn't count as a female empowerment fantasy (e.g. the Black Canary). Ripley from the second Alien movie and Sarah Connor from the second Terminator movie were clearly about a mother protecting her young, and thus any female empowerment themes are purely incidental. Examples of what I would consider female empowerment fantasies: Eowyn's confrontation of the Lich King in Lord of the Rings, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Thelma and Louise.

 

[credoconsolans]

I think the female empowerment fantasy has been integral to the character from the get-go.

She was not the first female superhero. I believe that was Black Canary who was originally a cop's wife who put on a cape and beat up bad guys. Black Canary wasn't really a female empowerment fantasy since what she was doing was essentially an extension of her husband's work; who she was and why she did what she did was defined by her husband.

Taken in the context of the time Wonder Woman was originally created, it was clearly meant to be a female empowerment fantasy. The writer was kind of a kook who believed that women are inherently superior to men (and was into S&M, hence the creepy S&M overtones in the original character).

Just having a strong female character doesn't count as a female empowerment fantasy (e.g. the Black Canary). Ripley from the second Alien movie and Sarah Connor from the second Terminator movie were clearly about a mother protecting her young, and thus any female empowerment themes are purely incidental. Examples of what I would consider female empowerment fantasies: Eowyn's confrontation of the Lich King in Lord of the Rings, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Thelma and Louise.

But Ripley from the first Alien movie is certainly female empowerment. She's not protecting a child or a lover, she's just one of a crew who ends up besting the beast.

 

[credoconsolans]

Is Wonder Woman going to be another time-traveler like Captain America?

Wonder Woman emerged during WWII.



If they forget that and just make her modern, I'd really like it if they toned down the racing-around-in-a-bustier/corset-and-leotard and made her more special forces type.

I read one Wonder Woman comic some years ago as an adult and it had a very interesting theme in this one story - Wonder Woman is a Greek amazon and thus is a pagan. She worships the ancient Greek gods, especially the women gods. The comic touched on how some Americans were not reacting well to that.

I would love it if they kept up that theme, much like Marvel has the Odin/Thor/Loki-god thing going.

 

[repoman]

yep, the closer she is to source the better. But it being a DC property and not a Marvel one with the current people in charge that is unfortunately not very likely.

Huh, just found out it will (as of now) have a female director who has directed episodes of Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones and The Walking Dead.

Just please have the writers bone up on the canon and keep anyone who ever wrote for Lost far away.

 

[thebeave]

I'm surprised they haven't completely reinvented WW, like they did with Thor (changed genders) and others. Like make her a lesbian, or transgender, obese, African American, etc. I mean shapely, white and heterosexual is so 1990's! Get with the program, DC!!

 

[Tom Sawyer]

I'm surprised they haven't completely reinvented WW, like they did with Thor (changed genders) and others. Like make her a lesbian, or transgender, obese, African American, etc. I mean shapely, white and heterosexual is so 1990's! Get with the program, DC!!

In the Caption Contest thread, there was once a picture of a morbidly obese lady wearing a Wonder Woman costume. One of the captions was about the screams of terror around the city when she flew in her invisible jet.

 

[Underseer]

yep, the closer she is to source the better. But it being a DC property and not a Marvel one with the current people in charge that is unfortunately not very likely.

Huh, just found out it will (as of now) have a female director who has directed episodes of Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones and The Walking Dead.

Just please have the writers bone up on the canon and keep anyone who ever wrote for Lost far away.

There is no "the" source. There have been many different versions of Wonder Woman over the years, and frankly the original incarnation had creepy S&M overtones.

 

[Jayjay]

DC itself can't seem to decide what Wonder Woman is about, except that she's the chick on Justice League.

 

[Unbeatable]

There is no "the" source. There have been many different versions of Wonder Woman over the years, and frankly the original incarnation had creepy S&M overtones.

Creepy S&M overtones are apparently becoming mainstream, what with the whole 50 Shades of Grey thing. It's a shame Big Two superheroes aren't allowed to be much edgier than a Nerf ball. A modernization of the original Wonder Woman would be more interesting than whatever Frankensteinian mishmash of WW's incoherent publishing history the Time Warner corporation eventually puts in theaters.