Like nearly every fan of comic book movies I couldn’t click on the link fast enough when I saw that DC had released its first image of Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman. However, that excitement quickly turned to confusion when my eyes met what appeared to be a knock-off of Xena The Warrior Princess.
I wasn’t looking for the star-spangled panties per se but at least some hint of color; after all it is a comic book movie and not Game of Thrones.
No longer than 3 minutes after my initial disappointment I received a phone call from a friend who is a die-hard DC fanboy.
“Oh-Em-Gee, you see the new pic of Wonder Woman?” he screamed in my ear.
As a guy a tad more partial to Marvel, I had a serious choice to make. My boy was having a moment. For years he’s been frustrated with WB’s slow start in creating a DC cinematic universe and today was his dream come true. He finally had a look at “the Trinity.” I could either be brutally honest and piss on his parade or fake the excitement and let him have this moment. I decided on the latter… at least for the moment.
Since then I’ve looked at the new Wonder Woman images a few dozen times and each time I look at the copper colored medieval outfit I had to ask myself, “What is DC afraid of?” The one thing I give Marvel a lot of credit for is that they’re not afraid of having their comic book movies feel like comic books.
Take Captain America’s outfits for example. Marvel was bold in dressing Cap in his modern red and white stripes and bright blue suit in the first installment of the Avengers, maybe a little too bold. Thankfully they’ve made some color and design adjustments in Avengers: AoU and he’ll look a little less like a Bomb Pop. But I applaud them for trying to honor the comic books as best as possible.
It appears that Zack Synder is still looking to channel Christopher Nolan’s down to earth approach to comic book movies. That worked for the much more grittier and grounded Dark Knight, but it shouldn’t apply to Wonder Woman.
One problem that I had with Snyder’s Man of Steel was that it was too dull looking. The entire movie looked as if it had some terrible Instagram filter on it to wash out Superman’s colorful tights. If I could suspend my disbelief that a beautiful warrior princess from an Amazon race arrives on the scene yielding a magic sword and Lasso of Truth, then I can accept a hint of blue and red in her outfit.
My hope is that this is not Synder’s only outfit for Wonder Woman. Perhaps this is the outfit she is first introduced in. Like any other fanboy I can’t wait to see Superman v. Batman in 2016 but hopefully it’ll be in color.