The other day I sat down in front of my TV and popped my newest arrival from Netflix: DC's animated Wonder Woman film. Now I'm a huge fan of the animated DCU movies and usually rush out to the video store to get them as soon as they come out, but this was the only one I didn't see. I had no interest in seeing the Wonder Woman animated movie because I never really found her interesting as a character, but a friend of mine kept telling me to see it and finally I gave in. About 70 minutes later, I couldn't believe how much I enjoyed it, and it also got me to wondering as to why we haven't seen Wonder Woman on the big screen yet.
As we all know, there's a TV pilot in production for a new Wonder Woman weekly series produced by David E. Kelly. Now I like Kelly, both The Practice and Boston Legal are two of my favorite shows, but the more I read about his Wonder Woman show, the more I worry. Rumors state that Wonder Woman is a successful corporate executive and the head of Themiscyra Industries, specializing in Wonder Woman merchandise. This just seems like a very cheap watered down version of the character and I fear that it's just going to be Wonder Woman battling a white collar villain of the week, and she deserves much more. To put it lightly, Wonder Woman deserves a movie to show why she can play alongside the boys like Batman and Superman.
There has been a multitude of excuses as to why we haven't seen a Wonder Woman movie yet. We've heard everything from her not having a good enough rogues gallery, the difficulty of male audiences to connect to a female hero, and to some saying it's because she doesn't have her own city to protect! I think it's just because Hollywood writers were like me: they really didn't understand the character.
If they want to make a good Wonder Woman, I say look no further than the animated movie. This movie perfectly captured Wonder Woman's warrior spirit and yet her innocence when confronted with our world, not to mention it also had some kick ass fight scenes. One of the animated movie's greatest strengths is how it stuck to Wonder Woman's feminist roots, particularly in seeing how women are treated and how they behave in our world. Steve Trevor is a womanizer, boys only see girls as damsels in distress, and woman use their feminine wiles to get what they want. The movie perfectly captured Wonder Woman's shock and anger towards this and created a great contrast between our world and her warrior upbringing. Not only does it make us immediately sympathize with Wonder Woman, but it also carries a great message of female empowerment, which is what Wonder Woman is all about.
Because movies like Catwoman, Aeon Flux, and the Tomb Raider movies were failures, many people in Hollywood say that male audiences can't connect with a female lead, and I disagree. The main reason why those movies failed is simply because they were BAD. Yes, male audiences didn't connect with the female leads, but that's because they were poorly written. This past summer I was standing in line at the movie theater and there were two dudes, about mid-twenties, standing in line in front of me debating on what to see. Their conversation went something like this...
"What do you wanna see?"
"Uh, I dunno"
"What about Salt?"
"Nah, not that"
"Why not"
"I dunno man, she just seems like such a bitch in that"
Therein lies the problem with most female lead action movies: they try to make them too tough to the point where they just become unsympathetic (Angelina Jolie is the one most guilty of this as she does it every time she plays an action hero). Ripley, from the Alien movies was a good female action hero because she was tough but also vulnerable, human. Many times you doubted if Ripley would make it out of a situation, but she came through. In order to make Wonder Woman compelling to a male audience, just look at how Ripley was done in the first two Alien movies. You can totally have Wonder Woman as a kick ass Amazon warrior,but also show just innocent she is when it comes to dealing with our world.
Another thing a good Wonder Woman movie needs is good action. We had three seasons of Wonder Woman fighting petty crooks with the Linda Carter show, lets see her fighting enemies that will give her a challenge! Once again, the animated movie got things right by having Aries be the main villain, leading to plenty of sword battles and giving us plenty of fights with Greek monsters. Doing something like this in a big budget movie will be a good way to make it stand apart from other superhero movies and maybe give us something we haven't seen before. Whoever said that Wonder Woman doesn't have a good enough rogues gallery is just someone too lazy to really look, plus look at what the first Iron Man did with a second string villain.
Many say that if the Wonder Woman series is successful then we may get a movie, but I don't really have faith in it. I'm really curious to see what Joss Whedon would have done with Wonder Woman, but sadly disagreements over casting stopped us from seeing that. DC's other big heroes have gotten shots at the big screen, it's time for Wonder Woman to do so so we can get the Trinity up on screen! Superhero movies have been pretty much a boys club, and it's time the girls got some love too.