Keep selecting your facts if it works for you.
Actually I wanted to debate and while I'm waiting for you to address any of my points, I'm just, you know, hanging around.
I think the point is that anyone adapting an existing story is free to select the facts however they like. Just because the comic-book version of a character has a backstory that's grown very complicated over the decades, that doesn't mean that an adaptation of the character is obligated to reference all those complicating factors.
For the purposes of new viewers discovering the Wonder Woman character for the first time, all they need to know is that there's a hidden island populated by Amazons, that an American pilot crashlanded there, that the daughter of the island's queen was smitten with him, that she defied her mother to win the right to take him back home, that she thereby became her people's emissary to the outside world, and that her special Amazon abilities enabled her to become a superhero in that world. They don't need to know the history of the Amazons or the circumstances of Diana's "birth" or any of that stuff.
Look at the animated Justice League series. They never mentioned Diana's birth story, aside from a passing joke where someone suggested she had "feet of clay" and Diana replied, "You have no idea." They never delved deeply into the history or origins of the Amazons. Heck, they didn't even use the standard story of Diana wearing a mask and winning a competition to become the emissary; they just had her sneak into where the star-spangled costume was kept and steal it.
Yes, that was more or less what I meant. Diana is no more convoluted than any other superhero. To tell a good story, you select the necessary facts for the story. However, some folks, as in this thread, want to insist that Wonder Woman is to convoluted and complex to write. That just seems absurd, unless you try to keep together all 70 years of the character's history and try to make sense of it. Any superhero so long lasting would fall apart if that was tried. The beauty of fiction is that you don't have to.
She is. She really is. That's the problem. Of course you can select the facts that are necessary to tell the story. The problem with Wonder Woman is that when you strip down the character to its basic components, they don't fit together at all.
Superman is the last survivor of an alien planet called Krypton. His rocket crashed in Kansas, he was brought up by farmers who gave him an American name, Clark Kent. He became a journalist in Metropolis, realized he had alien superpowers and started using them to help mankind and fight supervillains. He decided to wear a colorful costume and the press dubbed him "Superman".
Wonder Woman is an envoy from a utopian island populated by Amazons, warrior women who are dedicated to peace and worship Greek Gods. She has a roman name and works as an ambassador and a messenger of peace. She is also using her Amazon superpowers and magic items to fight supervillains. She wears a colorful swimsuit that looks like the American flag and people call her "Wonder Woman".
Everything fits together in Superman's origin: his powers, his motivation, his personality, everything comes from his origin, it's a neat little immigrant story with a science-fiction twist that ties every element together.
Wonder Woman's origin is a hodgepodge of unrelated elements that require some explanation to make sense together. Alternatively, you can also chose to ignore most of these elements and come up with a simplified origin where, as Dennis said, Wonder Woman just comes from a utopian parallel dimension to kick ass with her magic powers. That's fine with me, but there's very little of the original story left.
Ya know, sometimes ignorance really is Bliss. I am so glad I don't know Comic books, nor many books that are the source material for movies. Makes it muche asier to enjoy a movie for what goes into it, and not needing to compare it to it's source material, and measure this version versus that, and what's missing, etc.
Heh, nah, that, I just accept as a reboot/reimagining, and they gave a reason the changes.
I actually quite enjooyed the JJ Abrams Star Trek movie, other than the Spock/Uhura romance and that damned glare on the Enterprise.
Sorry for derailing the thread somewhat but you got me thinking - which would qualify as being one of the more convoluted origins. I think Hawkman and I'm told Power Girl (tho' I think for the recent past at least, we've known that she's the cousin of the older Superman in Crisis on Infinite Earths and Infinite Crisis.)
Then one more isn't going to hurt anyone.
But you don't really need all of those details when you do an adaptation like this. IMO for someone to be recognizably WW to a layman like me (So far my only exposure to WW is the JL: New Frontier and Crisis on Two Earths movies, and the pilot of the Lynda Carter series) all you really need to know is that she's an Amazon Princess who was sent away from her mysterious island home to be an ambassador to the outside world, and she uses her Amazonian abilities and tech to fight evil. Hell, it's almost simpler than Batman or Superman.
Even when I AM familiar with the source material, I usually never have a problem with a movie going off in a new direction. Whether it's the kid storyline (or costume) in SR, or the alternate timeline in the new Trek, or the redesign of the Transformers, etc.
As long as it's done well, I think new interpretations can be a lot of fun to see.
Agreed. Heck, if I am familiar with the source material, why would I want to see an adaptation that's just a rehash of the same thing? What's the point unless it can offer me something new, a fresh way of looking at the character or the universe? If you want something that's true to the original, that's what the original is for. What adaptations are for is finding different ways of approaching the concept.
except the ones who think of wht their idea of an origin...;-)..why the hell do you think most super hero motion pictures fail?...
except the ones who think of wht their idea of an origin...;-)..why the hell do you think most super hero motion pictures fail?...
Couldn't make any sense of that, sorry.
In any event - to the extent that I could make out the second clause I'm not buying that most of these movies fail (if they do, which I doubt) because people are confused or annoyed by the origin story.
why the hell do you think most super hero motion pictures fail?...
Because most motion pictures fail, regardless of genre. Most TV shows fail, most new comic books fail, most books fail, most albums fail, etc. Saying "most X movies fail" as an isolated statement doesn't prove that there's anything intrinsically untenable about genre X. You'd have to compare it with movies in other genres and demonstrate that the percentage of failures is materially greater for genre X. And I don't think you'd find that to be the case.
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