Why David E. Kelley's Wonder Woman Must Succeed
- Thread starter Elizabeth Grunewald
- Start date
Most of the points you make are salient and correct; unfortunately, it'll still probably be terrible, and on the off chance it isn't, it still probably won't "do well".
What I think a lot of people don't realize is that at this point, Wonder Woman may be beyond redemption - not because she's been written poorly, but because too few people actually care about resurrecting her. I can count the number of "Actual Girls" I know who even vaguely care about WW on one finger, and since we comic nerd ladies need to stick together to survive, that's pulling from a pretty large pool. (By the way, that one is not me.)
Personally, I don't even understand how this project got greenlit. If anything, it's evidence of how out-of-touch studios are with the actual sentiment of their target markets. I simply don't believe people care anymore. Wonder Woman is done. She's an aging relic of the Golden and Silver Ages and (however she's written) a painful reminder that militant feminists exist. The worst part is this laughable idea that a character with a past as checkered as Diana's is going to somehow draw in that fiscally-lusted-after teenage/young adult female demographic. Good luck, boys, and when you figure out that coherently opened and ended stories with accessible timeline data are superior to 700-issue monsters and a Crisis every so often to sort out the loopholes, you'll have finally solved the problem.
I'm a female comic book reader aged 18-25, and I won't be watching Wonder Woman.
On an unrelated note, please learn the difference between a hyphen and a dash and punctuate accordingly. If it was something that your word processor did and the editor didn't catch, disregard this, but seriously.
What I think a lot of people don't realize is that at this point, Wonder Woman may be beyond redemption - not because she's been written poorly, but because too few people actually care about resurrecting her. I can count the number of "Actual Girls" I know who even vaguely care about WW on one finger, and since we comic nerd ladies need to stick together to survive, that's pulling from a pretty large pool. (By the way, that one is not me.)
Personally, I don't even understand how this project got greenlit. If anything, it's evidence of how out-of-touch studios are with the actual sentiment of their target markets. I simply don't believe people care anymore. Wonder Woman is done. She's an aging relic of the Golden and Silver Ages and (however she's written) a painful reminder that militant feminists exist. The worst part is this laughable idea that a character with a past as checkered as Diana's is going to somehow draw in that fiscally-lusted-after teenage/young adult female demographic. Good luck, boys, and when you figure out that coherently opened and ended stories with accessible timeline data are superior to 700-issue monsters and a Crisis every so often to sort out the loopholes, you'll have finally solved the problem.
I'm a female comic book reader aged 18-25, and I won't be watching Wonder Woman.
On an unrelated note, please learn the difference between a hyphen and a dash and punctuate accordingly. If it was something that your word processor did and the editor didn't catch, disregard this, but seriously.
Uhm, you mean Teen Titans: Trouble in Tokyo [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0816671/]?Sniper Team 4 said:
One could argue that, what with Warner Bros. in control of basically all of DC's characters, they don't really know how to market to even the 30-year-old-comic-reading demographic *cough*Smallville*cough*.MovieBob said:
Contrast with Marvel's basically reveling in their characters' sillyness/fanciful-ness.
Step one- Cast Lucy Lawless.
Step two-???
Step three- Profit.
Pretty cool. that she actually did the voice of Wonder Woman in a Justice League cartoon movie.
Lawless might be too old for the role today though.
Off topic- Anyway, how was the Wonder Woman DCAU movie? I haven't seen that one...
Step two-???
Step three- Profit.
Pretty cool. that she actually did the voice of Wonder Woman in a Justice League cartoon movie.
Lawless might be too old for the role today though.
Off topic- Anyway, how was the Wonder Woman DCAU movie? I haven't seen that one...
I'd rather David Kelly made a She-Hulk/Doc Samson tv show, the idea of a Superhero lawyer and a Superhero pyschiatrist working in NYC would be funny and awesome. Plus we know he can do it, he made Boston Legal.
On a special effects note, it would be easier as neither can fly and super strength is easier to show than say shooting lightening, all you need is good costuming/makeup for her skin and his hair and you're done.
On a special effects note, it would be easier as neither can fly and super strength is easier to show than say shooting lightening, all you need is good costuming/makeup for her skin and his hair and you're done.
I thought it was excellent. I haven't seen any of the DC Animated Original Movies after Superman/Batman Public Enemies (i intend to see the rest) but I thought Wonder Woman was the best one. The film has a great sense of humor, the action scenes are awesome (and surprisingly brutal) and the voice cast is great. I thought Diana's character was handled really well, I hope the TV series can achieve something similar. Yeah, the animated original Wonder Woman is definitely something to check out if you get a chance.thenamelessloser said:
The biggest problem I have with Wonder Woman is the costume, I cant stand the costume.
For a character that, as far as I know, has little to do with america, other than living there, she is wearign a freaking american flag costume...
Mind you if she was some fermale Captain America I would not mind... but he way she is portraied, in forinstance this article, nothing about her screems american patriot...
PS: I guess as a mainly Marvel fan, I am a bit biased
For a character that, as far as I know, has little to do with america, other than living there, she is wearign a freaking american flag costume...
Mind you if she was some fermale Captain America I would not mind... but he way she is portraied, in forinstance this article, nothing about her screems american patriot...
PS: I guess as a mainly Marvel fan, I am a bit biased
This series tickles my interest more than anything happening on tv or about to happen on tv currently and I have the same hopes and fears.
Another depressing one, try and list the female superheroes with their own book that are not from a team or the female version of a male hero. Then look back at that list and scrap all the obvious sex-objects like Vampirella and Lady Death (if you even thought of them in the first place). Heck, ask this of random person you know. you'll see a lot of stumped people.
I have no idea how well known it is but the only Wonder Woman book I own is the League of One, where she basically takes the rest of the JLA out of the picture because a prophecy foretold that if they were to fight as a team they'd all die. I thought it was rather well constructed and pretty cool overall. (Apart from the whole concept of the JLA fighting a dragon of course...)MovieBob said:
Another depressing one, try and list the female superheroes with their own book that are not from a team or the female version of a male hero. Then look back at that list and scrap all the obvious sex-objects like Vampirella and Lady Death (if you even thought of them in the first place). Heck, ask this of random person you know. you'll see a lot of stumped people.
To really do super heroes correctly I think a network needs to get the liscences for several shows, put all on for simultaneous broadcast, and then cross characters over. One of the big problems with comics is that part of the appeal is not just the characters, but the overall universe, and how interwoven things are. While Smallville had some success in the way it handled other DC characters, and illustrated to some extent when you need other super characters, but also demonstrated at the same time why you need to be able to focus more on those characters on their own to really capture the essence of what is supposed to make the shared universe cool.
-
When it comes to Wonder Woman, I think a lot of people don't understand the character. In part I blame the fact that they keep re-launching and re-defining her, making the specifics of her origin unusually hard to pin down compared to a lot of other characters. What's more there seems to be an attempt to "modernize" her into a current feminist Icon when that was hardly the point of the character.
As I understand things from a bit of reading on the subject, Wonder Woman was created at a time when bondage was a big thing in adult entertainment. Stanton, Klaw, and Betty Page were all pretty big for example. What's more at the time you were dealing with a situation where part of female empowerment was the display of sexuality, contrary to what you see now. As Moviebob pointed out when he talked about "Bond Girls", and even things like "Playboy" decades ago that kind of thing was not seen as being exploitive in quite the same way. If you've read about modern feminism (which I have had to do, especially back in school) you'd know that for the last couple of decades there have been big battles within that philosophy over concepts like that, and when feminism becomes restrictive, and fear of exploitation or the preception of other women, has the end result of socially chaining women into roles just as effectively as when you saw it done legally.
The point of the character was that Wonder Woman was a strong woman, who could appeal to a dual demographic of both young men/teens, and women. Being something of a bondage queen (she's going to beat you down, tie you up, punish you, and make you tell the truth!) aspects of that subculture could let them downplay the actual sex, for purposes of ratings and the like.
A point about Wonder Woman also is that she's supposed to be an outsider, and unlike many other heroes frequently wrong in her approach to problems. Conceptually she's supposed to be an Ambassador from a highly advanced, hidden isle of Amazons. A society that believes it's utopian, and superior to the outside world, and by sending envoys it's condescending to do the rest of the world a great service. While advanced and powerful, it's hardly everything it believes it is (there are organizations all over the DC world that possess equal or superior technology/magic). This is an aspect of the character that seems to be eclectic in how well people remember it. A good example of this would be during say the "Kingdom Come" alternate future here Wonder Woman is one of the "classic" heroes break from the code of ethics and agree that one needs to resort to killing to solve problems. I don't disagree with her in principle actually, but by doing what she did WHEN she did it, she ultimatly created the entire problem at the conclusion of the storyline. Wonder Woman is not supposed to be bumbling, or flat out wrong, but she's supposed to represent a counterpoint to conventional morality when appropriate, and whether she's right, or wrong, gets her way or not, it's supposed to represent something of a statement about society. On some levels Wonder Woman is about... enlightened barbarism.
I think this series is doomed to fail because if I was reading the right thing, the idea seems to be to have Wonder Woman raised in the human world, among other things. What's more I think there is going to be too much of a focus on making Wonder Woman a "strong, modern woman" and trying to have her embody what a lot of people think modern principles should be that they are going to TOTALLY miss the entire point of the character.
See, Wonder Woman is supposed to be an fairly icy sex bomb adventuress. She's just as much an outsider or "alien" as Superman is in her own way. While she deigns to follow society's rules on a lot of levels, she had her own code of ethics which has been known to trump them, sometimes with catastrophic results. What's more she's so arrogant that her Kryptonite is having a gauntlet of challenge thrown down (and this does not have to be gender based). In fact during the "Tower Of Babel" storyline, this was a key element of Batman's plan to disable her (without killing) that was stolen/implemented by Ra's Al Ghul.
I think the old TV show, despite having an actress that looked the part, is a bad example to use. It shows it's age, and at the time that came out simply having a show about a super hero (and with some kind of a female lead... I believe this was also around the same time as "Charlie's Angels") was a big deal. Today we have not only *quality* movies n the theaters, but TV shows like "Smallville" for them to compete with that have demonstrated short comings that should be overcome (above and beyond what I've mentioned).
I also think that banking on the audience's ignorance of a given character is a bad move. Wonder Woman has been around for decades now, and no character endures that long (relaunches aside) without having a pretty substantial fan base. What's more the core audience of people reading comics is older than before, and despite some very mixed reports about modern comic sales, I think more people have been reading comics than ever before due to the Internet and the easy availibility of back issues and the like (without getting into any discussions about piracy, torrents, or legality. That's not the point of the debate, I'm just stating this because it affects the audience).
The biggest problem with Wonder Woman and an audience is that while "Superman" and "Batman' have remained pretty consistant in their origins and what abillities they have, Wonder Woman has not. Is she an empowered mortal? A Demi-God? A mortal who became a god, and then returned to being mortal? Is she a princess, or merely a champion and envoy? All of these are valid questions and do present some grounds for a relaunch, though her origins on an advanced island are consistant. I think her personality has been scitzophrenic at times due to politics and people trying to make the character "mean something" for women when it should stand on it's own. The most consistant personality traits and backround do not seem to be in keeping with what I think I've heard about this show (the whole growing up human thing).
Ah well, apologies for the length. I'm sure many people are going to disagree with me (for a variety of reasons) but that's my thoughts on the subject.
-
When it comes to Wonder Woman, I think a lot of people don't understand the character. In part I blame the fact that they keep re-launching and re-defining her, making the specifics of her origin unusually hard to pin down compared to a lot of other characters. What's more there seems to be an attempt to "modernize" her into a current feminist Icon when that was hardly the point of the character.
As I understand things from a bit of reading on the subject, Wonder Woman was created at a time when bondage was a big thing in adult entertainment. Stanton, Klaw, and Betty Page were all pretty big for example. What's more at the time you were dealing with a situation where part of female empowerment was the display of sexuality, contrary to what you see now. As Moviebob pointed out when he talked about "Bond Girls", and even things like "Playboy" decades ago that kind of thing was not seen as being exploitive in quite the same way. If you've read about modern feminism (which I have had to do, especially back in school) you'd know that for the last couple of decades there have been big battles within that philosophy over concepts like that, and when feminism becomes restrictive, and fear of exploitation or the preception of other women, has the end result of socially chaining women into roles just as effectively as when you saw it done legally.
The point of the character was that Wonder Woman was a strong woman, who could appeal to a dual demographic of both young men/teens, and women. Being something of a bondage queen (she's going to beat you down, tie you up, punish you, and make you tell the truth!) aspects of that subculture could let them downplay the actual sex, for purposes of ratings and the like.
A point about Wonder Woman also is that she's supposed to be an outsider, and unlike many other heroes frequently wrong in her approach to problems. Conceptually she's supposed to be an Ambassador from a highly advanced, hidden isle of Amazons. A society that believes it's utopian, and superior to the outside world, and by sending envoys it's condescending to do the rest of the world a great service. While advanced and powerful, it's hardly everything it believes it is (there are organizations all over the DC world that possess equal or superior technology/magic). This is an aspect of the character that seems to be eclectic in how well people remember it. A good example of this would be during say the "Kingdom Come" alternate future here Wonder Woman is one of the "classic" heroes break from the code of ethics and agree that one needs to resort to killing to solve problems. I don't disagree with her in principle actually, but by doing what she did WHEN she did it, she ultimatly created the entire problem at the conclusion of the storyline. Wonder Woman is not supposed to be bumbling, or flat out wrong, but she's supposed to represent a counterpoint to conventional morality when appropriate, and whether she's right, or wrong, gets her way or not, it's supposed to represent something of a statement about society. On some levels Wonder Woman is about... enlightened barbarism.
I think this series is doomed to fail because if I was reading the right thing, the idea seems to be to have Wonder Woman raised in the human world, among other things. What's more I think there is going to be too much of a focus on making Wonder Woman a "strong, modern woman" and trying to have her embody what a lot of people think modern principles should be that they are going to TOTALLY miss the entire point of the character.
See, Wonder Woman is supposed to be an fairly icy sex bomb adventuress. She's just as much an outsider or "alien" as Superman is in her own way. While she deigns to follow society's rules on a lot of levels, she had her own code of ethics which has been known to trump them, sometimes with catastrophic results. What's more she's so arrogant that her Kryptonite is having a gauntlet of challenge thrown down (and this does not have to be gender based). In fact during the "Tower Of Babel" storyline, this was a key element of Batman's plan to disable her (without killing) that was stolen/implemented by Ra's Al Ghul.
I think the old TV show, despite having an actress that looked the part, is a bad example to use. It shows it's age, and at the time that came out simply having a show about a super hero (and with some kind of a female lead... I believe this was also around the same time as "Charlie's Angels") was a big deal. Today we have not only *quality* movies n the theaters, but TV shows like "Smallville" for them to compete with that have demonstrated short comings that should be overcome (above and beyond what I've mentioned).
I also think that banking on the audience's ignorance of a given character is a bad move. Wonder Woman has been around for decades now, and no character endures that long (relaunches aside) without having a pretty substantial fan base. What's more the core audience of people reading comics is older than before, and despite some very mixed reports about modern comic sales, I think more people have been reading comics than ever before due to the Internet and the easy availibility of back issues and the like (without getting into any discussions about piracy, torrents, or legality. That's not the point of the debate, I'm just stating this because it affects the audience).
The biggest problem with Wonder Woman and an audience is that while "Superman" and "Batman' have remained pretty consistant in their origins and what abillities they have, Wonder Woman has not. Is she an empowered mortal? A Demi-God? A mortal who became a god, and then returned to being mortal? Is she a princess, or merely a champion and envoy? All of these are valid questions and do present some grounds for a relaunch, though her origins on an advanced island are consistant. I think her personality has been scitzophrenic at times due to politics and people trying to make the character "mean something" for women when it should stand on it's own. The most consistant personality traits and backround do not seem to be in keeping with what I think I've heard about this show (the whole growing up human thing).
Ah well, apologies for the length. I'm sure many people are going to disagree with me (for a variety of reasons) but that's my thoughts on the subject.
TsunamiWombat said:
I never knew about her costume. I actually VERY much approve of it. It is VERY sexy without her looking.....well "easy".
Now the new timeline, that is a whole different discussion and to be honest I don't like it too much.
Wonder Woman going Urban is well....ackward. Her image once portrayed "old knowledge". More or less an ancient life looking at how new/modern life is. Right now it's quite out of place to me. Kind of like they dedicated a whole new origin for Spider-man if he was a rich boy. I just fear they will make her an EXTREME feminist instead of a major feminist like she was. Or make her "ghetto" in the pop culture kind of way.
This is going to sound flash-in-the-pan, but as a closet macrophile, the only reason I'm holding onto the hope that this will be good, is because I want Giganta to show up, in all her gigantic giantess-rage-induced glory, and wreck shit up. Call me shallow, call me a deviant, but that's what Wonder Woman has become for me. Giganta. A giant woman in a yellow jumpsuit knocking over buildings and threatening to eat protagonists.
How's that for an outsider's view eh?
How's that for an outsider's view eh?
They sort of solidified a bit once they got out of the Golden age.Fronzel said:
The problem is really that Wonder Woman has failed to develop any iconic villians/friends or other elements to build stories about her off of. She doesn't have anyone on the level of the Joker or Lex Luthor. Who does she have? Giganta? The Cheeta? Nobody friggin' cares. What kind of supporting cast does she have? Steve Trevor, who isn't even used anymore?
There's enough material for Wonder Woman herself, but she just doesn't have the storytelling infrastructure that Batman and Superman have.
Ugh, no. Look, I love Xena as much as the next gal, but let's all be honest for just a moment: Lucy Lawless can't act worth a damn. Plus, as you point out, she's too old for the role. That said, please, for the love of god, don't cast some 20-nothing waif so that she can run around half-naked.thenamelessloser said:
My problem with Wonder Woman - the little of her I've seen over the years - is that she's never been as cool as the boys. She's never, ever struck me as being a badass, just the girl who tagged along and who also had some powers and toys. I couldn't tell you a single thing about what drives her, other than some vague notions of Right and Wrong. She's dull...at least what I've seen.
Which all just goes to further Elizabeth's point. I know of Wonder Woman, but I don't really know her, so in order for this new show to work, it needs to convince me that she is worth knowing. Tough job...but Kelly does have some mad skills. (Loooooved Boston Legal.)
There's a fine line isn't there? I mean, look at the woman in Burn Notice, she is so thin it makes me feel a bit concerned for her, or Deborah in Dexter, and yet, Grace Park in Hawaii Five-O is ever so slightly bigger (and I mean ever ever so slightly) and I find her absolutely gorgeous. Although it could be the rockin bikinis, go figure.cerebus23 said:just as long as they do not get a skeleton with skin to play wonder woman i could tolerate whoever
We will probably end up with Megan Fox. Which might actually work out ok...maybe.
I have to agree with this. Wonder woman has never been anywhere near as interesting as batman for me. The iconic villains is really what makes me come back to read about a hero and she just never had any. To be honest I'd actually prefer if they gave a more modern super heroine with the potential for good villains a show than base one on wonder woman. Someone like Robert Kirkman's Mecha Maid (I know she's not a main hero, but I could see her becoming one since Kirkman likes her so much).BloodSquirrel said: