Is WB simply afraid of Wonder Woman?

Discussion in 'Science Fiction & Fantasy' started by Ian Keldon, Nov 24, 2012.

  1. Green Lantern

    Green Lantern Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    I think WB is afraid of WW simply because every comicbook based film (unless part of a team) with a female protagonist has been a bomb (Elektra, Catwoman). I think WW could work very well if they did it properly, but if they stereotype the film like they did with those god awfull superman films, then it will fail without a doubt.
     
  2. Gaith

    Gaith Vice Admiral Admiral

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    We didn't see any magic battles performed in the Muggle world into well into the series, though, didn't we? ;)

    As for the femaleness, Rowling invented a middle initial so the book covers wouldn't reveal her lack of a magic wand. :p
     
  3. Takeru

    Takeru Space Police Commodore

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    French?:vulcan:
     
  4. Alidar Jarok

    Alidar Jarok Everything in moderation but moderation Moderator

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    I know Tintin is Belgian, but I thought Asterix was French. Am I mistaken?
     
  5. Mr Light

    Mr Light Admiral Admiral

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    My problem with Wonder Woman is I don't like how the whole magic/gods things works into the DCU.
     
  6. Kegg

    Kegg Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    Let's just call Asterix/Tintin Francophonic and leave it at that, eh?

    Not as much as you'd think, which is what I'm getting at. There's certainly a lot of American pop culture that is widely disseminated and held as the standard (and you'll find that the biggest grossing films or most watched TV shows or whatever are almost invariably American), but that is not true of all American pop culture.

    And American superheroes in particular have been more known here through their film adaptions and other media than through comic books.

    Asterix and Tintin were pretty much the pervasive standard of comic books for me as a kid and while I didn't care much for Tintin I read Asterix religiously... as did many people my age, it's an enormously significant pop cultural touchstone in ways that pretty much any American superhero comic was not.

    And sure, that might sound like the irrelevant rambling of some European. But it's important in that Hollywood is not looking exclusively to sell suphero movies to people who either know or care who these characters are, and also that I actually knew who Wonder Woman was unlike these other guys. That WB/DC would greenlight (ha ha) a Green Lantern movie prior to her says a fair bit, I think.
     
  7. Dick Whitman

    Dick Whitman Commodore Commodore

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    I think everything said is true. Looking at DC's own approach to WW is the most revealing. She is more an icon than a character. They have much lesser known female characters which are better defined.

    To create more interest in her they tied her as much as possible to Superman and Batman. Being a love interest for both has gotten more attention than anything in her own books.
     
  8. Nerys Myk

    Nerys Myk A Spock and a smile Premium Member

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    It's not all that different than how it works into the Marvel Universe. Magic is real and the Gods exist.
     
  9. Orac

    Orac Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    You'd think think WB would be itching to make a WW woman movie with the recent popularity of B&D novels. ;)
     
  10. Takeru

    Takeru Space Police Commodore

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    Not at all, Asterix is french, somehow I completely missed him in your post, all I saw was "Tintin" and "french". *oops*
     
  11. Kelthaz

    Kelthaz Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    I know of Asterix because of the Sega games, but if it wasn't for them I wouldn't have a clue. However, I am fairly familiar with Tin Tin.
     
  12. Mister Fandango

    Mister Fandango Fleet Captain

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    I love the rationalization a lot of people use around here. "Well, since that last Wonder Woman show NBC made was utter crap, any attempt to do anything with Wonder Woman WILL be utter crap. Because it was Wonder Woman that made it crap, not all the stupid ass decisions the people who made the previous show." Just blows my mind how some people think.
     
  13. Kegg

    Kegg Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    ...has anyone actually said that?
     
  14. Gaith

    Gaith Vice Admiral Admiral

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    ... But not familiar enough to know that he's "Tintin", apparently. ;)

    (Sorry, but I grew up loving Tintin, so seeing his name split up is a pet peeve of mine.)



    No. The actual conversation goes like this:
    A: There ought to be a Wonder Woman movie!
    B: Sure, but there are legitimate reasons for a studio to be wary of such a project.
    A: No, there aren't! Wonder Woman is popular!
    B: Sort of, but there have been a lot of failures of similarly-themed projects, including an aborted WW tv show. This history of failure only makes studios more nervous, adding to their existing nervousness, which was understandable to begin with.
    Mister Fandango: I love the rationalization a lot of people use around here. "Well, since that last Wonder Woman show NBC made was utter crap, any attempt to do anything with Wonder Woman WILL be utter crap. Because it was Wonder Woman that made it crap, not all the stupid ass decisions the people who made the previous show." Just blows my mind how some people think.

    I'd like to see a well-done Wonder Woman movie myself. But I can also see why WB is wary of making one, and why they're going to introduce her in a JLA movie, which does actually seem to be happening this time, rather than a solo flick.
     
  15. Greg Cox

    Greg Cox Admiral Premium Member

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    Tell me about it. I react the same way when I see "Ghostrider" or "Ironman."

    I wonder: Do people ever confuse "Tintin" and "Rin Tin Tin"?

    Don't laugh. I've met people who thought that the Flash and Flash Gordon were the same character . . . .
     
  16. Gaith

    Gaith Vice Admiral Admiral

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    I'm sure that there's at least a subconscious element of confusion from Rin Tin Tin, yes.
     
  17. CaptainCanada

    CaptainCanada Admiral Admiral

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    Despite frequent financial failures, the studios have greenlit various female-led action movies, so I don't think that's an insurmountable obstacle, though it's definitely a factor.

    I think the single-biggest issue is that there's never been a really coherent conception of who Diana is, creatively, that has been consistently held by writers and audiences. In her original form she was probably the closest thing the Golden Age superheroes had to a creator-owned sort of character -- so much about her is derived from the very unique philosophies and proclivities of William Marston, things that none of the many people who've written since have had much sense of what to do with.

    There have been great runs on Wonder Woman since then (George Perez, Greg Rucka), but those runs tend to, like Marston, be highly specific to their creators, and they were never widely adopted by other writers as a mold to follow (indeed, both Perez and Rucka were succeeded by people who basically junked everything they'd done; or, in Rucka's case, editorial dictates caused Rucka to junk it himself to clean the slate for the next guy). There have been attempts to synthesize the best elements of previous runs (Phil Jiminez, Gail Simone), but those didn't really take either.

    The Lynda Carter show from the 70s is her only real popcultural solo product outside of the comics, but it's rather akin to the Adam West Batman show in that it offers modern filmmakers no template to work with. It's an icon of camp.

    My take is that WW frustrates executives' market calculations because there's no clear sense in their minds of what version of the character the public really wants to see. Hence the constant rejections of attempts at scripting.
     
  18. Harvey

    Harvey Admiral Admiral

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    I don't see how Warner Bros. has been afraid of the Wonder Women property here. If they truly were, they'd stop spending so much money on it. (Though, in recent memory, the only attempt that has gone into production was the failed pilot, the cost of countless screenplays can't have been cheap).

    Their behavior doesn't really seem all that different than the way they treated Batman after the failure of Batman & Robin in 1997 (with several aborted attempts before Nolan's reboot in 2005), or Superman between the last Christopher Reeve movie and Bryan Singer's version in 2006.
     
  19. DWF

    DWF Admiral Admiral

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    For the record there was no show just a pilot which NBC didn't actually buy.
     
  20. Gotham Central

    Gotham Central Vice Admiral Admiral

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    WB is being super cautious with all of its properties. After Superman Returns was a letdown and the debacle of Green Lantern, they are being even more cautious. Both Wonder Woman and The Flash have been in development hell of a while.