I'd Pay to See Kathryn Bigelow Direct Wonder Woman - Would You?

Discussion in 'Science Fiction & Fantasy' started by Lapis Exilis, Jul 13, 2013.

  1. Locutus of Bored

    Locutus of Bored Yo, Dawg! I Heard You Like Avatars... In Memoriam

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    I'm sorry to see Mimi Leder's name didn't get a shout out in the article. Granted, she's been out of the major motion picture business since 2000 (sticking to TV since then and one low budget film), but I thought she was an excellent action and dramatic director with The Peacemaker (very underrated, IMO), Deep Impact, and Pay it Forward. She obviously doesn't have the same visibility as Bigelow at the moment (who I think would be an excellent WW director as well), but I think she'd be good alternative. Plus, I'd love to see her back directing films again.
     
  2. PsychoPere

    PsychoPere Vice Admiral Premium Member

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    I've only seen three of Bigelow's films (Near Dark, The Hurt Locker, and Zero Dark Thirty), but at this point I'd gladly pay to see anything she does. I have no real preference for what types of films she should continue to do. Her deciding that a particular film is interesting enough to give her attention to is enough for me.
     
  3. Pingfah

    Pingfah Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    Oh, I'm guessing you are a sci-fi fan, being as where we are. You should definitely see Strange Days. It's a dark, sprawling cyberpunk thriller, superb film IMO.
     
  4. ITL

    ITL Vice Admiral Admiral

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    I saw it for the first time a couple of years ago. Loved it.
     
  5. Guy Gardener

    Guy Gardener Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    So I was cataloguing my shit, and I cue up zero dark thirty to make sure everything was consistent and in sync... What? That's weird... What's Elvis doing here and... I wound to the credits... OH! It's a parody/farce called Zero Dark Dirty.

    I need new glasses.
     
  6. Lapis Exilis

    Lapis Exilis Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    I don't think she was saying from a business perspective superheroes need a change, but from a creative perspective, yeah. I love superheroes and I'm bored out of my mind with them now because they're getting pretty repetitive. Didn't see Amazing Spider-Man, Iron Man 2 or 3, watched X-Men First Class during a free Epix preview on instant streaming and am pretty sure I'm not going to bother on the new Wolverine, even if it does feature Hugh Jackman half naked. I only went to see MoS because the controversy over it caught my interest and am still wishing I'd skipped Dark Knight Rises. The genre really may have topped out on Avengers. Which isn't to say there won't be any interesting superhero movies made ever again, but chances are we're going to see a lot more of the same until it all peters out in favor of some new fashion.

    Rom com is a perenniel genre, not a momentary ascendency subgenre of action pictures like superhero movies are. As for not one high-profile, A-list fueled rom-coms this year, um??

    Admission - Tina Fey, Paul Rudd
    The Host - Saoirse Ronan, Max Irons, William Hurt
    The Big Wedding - DeNiro, Keaton, Katherine Heigel
    About Time - Rachel McAdams, Bill Nighy
    The Best Man 2 - Taye Diggs, Terrence Howard, Nia Long
    The Third Person - Liam Neeson, Mila Kunis, James Franco, Olivia Wilde
    Are We Officially Dating - Zac Ephron, Imogen Poots
    The Last Drop - Justin Timberlake
    Can a Song Save Your Life? - Keira Knightly, Mark Ruffalo, Adam Levine

    She means rescuing from its own tedious repetitiveness, which is starting to wear thin. That may not be readily apparent to hardcore superhero fans such as frequent this forum, and yes, they're still making plenty of money but any action adventure pictures pushed the way studios push superhero movies are going to make money. Tom Cruise's War of the Worlds made money. But I don't think too many people are going to claim it was a particularly intersting sci fi film.
    I think you have something of a point except that the lack of a clearly defined mythos really just means WW is ripe to have someone do a big definitive take on film. WB just seems to lack the balls (talk about mixing metaphors...) to do that. I mean if we can go from Burton to Schumacher to Nolan with Batman, I think you could take the plunge one way or another on Wonder Woman.

    To me the problem is that WW is much more charged culturally than the top tier male characters. They know that no matter what they do, the film will be parsed this way and that as the Most Iconic Female Superhero, and I imagine they let that get in the way of just telling a good story and letting the chips fall.

    This "we won't make a female superhero a tentpole movie" is bullshit in the midst of The Hunger Games furor - I mean, really, come on guys, who do you think you're foolin'?
     
  7. CaptainCanada

    CaptainCanada Admiral Admiral

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    That's definitely true in theory. I think the WB's reluctance relates to them wanting some sort of guidance from the comics on what people are looking for in Wonder Woman, but the comics have never produced a consensus on that point.
     
  8. Dream

    Dream Admiral Admiral

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    Enjoy the this golden era of superhero movies while it lasts. I doubt we will be getting three big budget superhero movies per year forever. When that time comes, I hope you don't start complaining about the lack of superhero movies being released.
     
  9. JD

    JD Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    The Host was a rom-com?
     
  10. Dream

    Dream Admiral Admiral

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    They should pick and choose the best aspects of WW from the comics and use it for the movie. Better to fail than not to even try. Who knows? We might get something even more interesting than the comics.
     
  11. Lapis Exilis

    Lapis Exilis Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    Too true - and that tends to be true of a lot of superheroines. But I think Dream is right - better to try something than nothing. And to point to previous outings, which just weren't very good movies, and say, see superheroines don't sell, is really annoying.

    Oops! Got me on that one - I was working off a list of romantic movies in 2013. Not so sure The Third person is a comedy either - it was written by Paul Haggis who also wrote Crash. But I should have caught the Host since I know what that is.


    I doubt I'll be complaining, at least I surely won't if they don't start varying the formula a bit. It could happen - MoS took a few risks with the Superman mythos. It's why I posted the article, I thought the suggestion of getting some unexpected directors' takes on superheroes was a good idea - though I don't really think it breaks down so easily along gender lines.
     
  12. Guy Gardener

    Guy Gardener Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    There's a lot of comics which are mostly in conflict or outright shit.

    I got through 15 minutes of Atlantic Rim, before the cheesy awfulness squeezed my soul by it's balls and... Imagine Wonder Woman, normal size fighting one of those massive sea monsters?
     
  13. Gaith

    Gaith Vice Admiral Admiral

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    You've got my sympathies on having sat through MOS and TDKR, but, given that you've skipped seeing four of the best superhero movies of recent years in theaters, I've kinda gotta call into question your superhero love. ;)


    That was a movie with strong title recognition, directed by the world's most successful director, and featuring the world's biggest movie star - hardly your average actioner. And big studio pushes didn't exactly help The Lone Ranger, White House Down, Battleship, Speed Racer, Robin Hood, or a number of other non-superhero movies from recent years.


    I haven't seen or read any Hunger Games, but isn't the whole point of the story that Katniss isn't a superhero, but rather a more or less ordinary girl (albeit with mad archery skills) forced into a situation that makes her famous? That's a very long ways off from your standard Harry Potter/Luke Skywalker/Clark Kent learning he's magically powerful, and even farther from a princess and daughter of Zeus born and raised on a mythical island unknown to the rest of humanity. Or do you actually think Hunger Games would have been just as big a hit if Katniss could easily beat up a dozen guys at once? ;)
     
  14. Agent Richard07

    Agent Richard07 Admiral Admiral

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    I saw The Host last week and enjoyed it quite a bit. Good scifi, great lead and it was visually stunning. And the romantic angle that might have people concerned is hardly there.

    As for Man of Steel and The Dark Knight Rises, I thought those were among the best superhero movies to come out over the last decade because they were anything but "more of the same". Even a year later I don't have a full understanding of why The Avengers is so popular. As entertaining as it was, it's the epitome of "more of the same".
     
  15. Kegg

    Kegg Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    That Katniss isn't a superhero is not the point. She is the star of a genre action movie that made a tidy - and enviable - bit of money. She shows there's an audience that will accept movies about women kicking ass and taking names in a SF&F setting, an audience that probably overlaps with superhero films anyway and, if it doesn't, it'd be smart to entice over.

    You know, four quadrants and all that.

    Kind of silly surely. I imagine most people who consider themselves superhero fans read superhero comics and perhaps do not need to 'prove' themselves by spending money to see what Joss Whedon or Zack Snyder or whomever has done to these titles.

    There is something to be said for unexpected directors in this genre. The reason I even bothered to see Hulk or the first Hellboy movie was due to Ang Lee and Guillermo del Toro, respectively, and while the first one wasn't great, del Toro clearly was having a fair bit of fantastic fun with both Hellboy features.
     
  16. Hound of UIster

    Hound of UIster Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Because Avengers is very much a carnival show and sold itself on the coolness of all these A-list characters from multiple Marvel movies showing up and teaming up. TDKR and MoS at least tried to be a little bit more ambitious.
     
  17. Gaith

    Gaith Vice Admiral Admiral

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    According to Box Office Mojo, The Hunger Games had a budget of $80m. Compare that to $150m for the modestly-budgeted (among supero flicks) Thor, and I think you'll see that the fact that THG isn't a superhero movie is very germane to this dicussion.



    Let's not forget that the HG films are based on a series of well-known, mega-selling books, unlike Aeon Flux, Ultraviolet, BloodRayne, Hanna, Elektra, The Host, and Beautiful Creatures, all of which underperformed-to-flopped. Add The Golden Compass and Catwoman in, and it becomes clear that for every Hunger Games and Underworld/Resident Evil female action SF/F success, there's one or two flops to balance them out. The simple fact is that unless you've got very strong brand awareness built-in, through blockbuster books or a popular video game series, female-led SF/F movies have had a very spotty B.O. record so far.



    Opening weekend crowds for The Avengers and Iron Man 3 were both about 40% female, and 50% over 25. In other words, male-dominated superher movies already hit the four quadrants just fine.


    ... Again, I'm not at all opposed to quality female-centric superhero movies. But let's not kid ourselves: while it may be a rich and untapped market, there's plenty of precedent suggesting it probably isn't.
     
  18. Kegg

    Kegg Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    I don't see how (other than it's absurd Thor had that much money), unless you're suggesting all superhero movies need stupid amounts of money to be made. Since there have been lower budget superhero films and indie films and so on I'm not sure, not every picture need go for Man of Steel style planet annihilation.

    There are tons of high profile flops with male leads - hell, there were two last year that starred Taylor Kitsch! Add this to the success of the Twilight movies, Host, etc. and there's clearly an audience for female oriented genre movies.

    Wonder Woman, Black Widow and Catwoman are all characters that could be marketed in that way and also are in the latter two cases well known with high profile actresses having played them in blockbuster films already.

    You're right they probably won't. And I can sleep easier ignoring the whole craze entirely.
     
  19. Harvey

    Harvey Admiral Admiral

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    I was under the impression that The Host, Beautiful Creatures, and The Golden Compass were all fairly popular young adult books and/or series. That didn't help them at the box office, though.
     
  20. CaptainCanada

    CaptainCanada Admiral Admiral

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    They are, particularly the last two. The Hunger Games honestly wasn't even that huge prior to the movies, I don't think. It was popular, but not a Harry Potter-level thing. Merely having a popular source material isn't a guarantee of anything.
    So? The sequels are going to cost a lot more than that.