Why Did No One Pick Up The Wonder Woman Series?

[OtherSideofSky]

It would help if anyone could write or choreograph female action heroes worth a damn. Most major Hollywood productions get bogged down in either the empowerment message or the exploitation angle and forget to write an interesting (or even entertaining) character and choreograph good fight scenes (the public squeamishness at showing women being hurt and the shortage of actresses who can actually fight doesn't help). There have been a decent number (maybe not as many as there should be, but at least one a year) of big action movies with female protagonists in the last decade, and the only one I can think of that didn't suck was Doomsday (and Chocolate if we include foreign films). In WW's case it probably doesn't help that she's more in line with the over-the-top, fantastic side of super hero comics that the film industry and general public have yet to really accept or come to grips with.

It's also important to remember that creating a film (or any type of creative project) solely for the advancement of a social or idealogical cause, however noble or necessary it might be, almost invariably leads to a preachy, second-rate product whose characters are cheapened and stripped of genuine humanity by their subservience to a message.

 

[DoctorM]

Wow, it's failure to find a network is simple: David E. Kelley is the wrong man for the job.

"It's a very, very different genre for me, a very tricky beast. I won't know whether I've cracked it or not until I've finished it, but it's going... If I can't, I don't want to delude Warner Bros. or anybody else that I should be doing it. The way I've always worked has been to write a script and discover, in the process of the writing, if it's a fertile and creative place where I want to live. If I feel I can make the characters my own and it's a world rich enough for me to revisit, that's a good sign to me that it?s a series worth doing."

Does that really sound like somebody who has any idea what it is he's writing?
That's the kind of woolly-headed thinking that will get you eaten... or a Bionic Woman, Knight Rider, etc. reboot.

While Whedon might have done a good job with the series, he DEFINITELY would have done a better job than Kelley. Forget fanservice vs. commercial success, DEK had no business even trying unless you want Wonder Woman to be a plucky Boston lawyer.

 

[Aurgelmir]

To be blunt I think Wonder Woman is in a similar boat to Ms. Marvel in that politics got so heavily attached to the character that she's almost impossible to use in any context. On a lot of levels she's not really about fun anymore, despite being a good character in of herself. Read the links you get if you do a search for "the Rape Of Ms. Marvel" (I've linked it before). Wonder Woman has similar issues having also been picked up as a feminist icon, when as Moviebob points out in his movie, she's hardly intended to represent the kind of feminism popular in modern politics.

Without knowing the numbers on how well Wonder Woman or Ms. Marvel sells, Ms. Marvel has had a good role in later years. Personally think Brian Reed (was that his name, I think it was) wrote Ms. Marvel very well, both in her own book and in Mighty Avengers.

I was drawn to the Ms. Marvel comics mainly due to the fact that I felt they were not trying to make her into anything other than an awesome character with a human side. She has her insecurities even though she has her powers and thats what makes her human to me.

So does Wonder Woman posses these skills?

Just give it to Joss Whedon and have him do the damn series.

I think they at one point did. Never made it out of the starting block.

 

[DoctorM]

Just give it to Joss Whedon and have him do the damn series.

I think they at one point did. Never made it out of the starting block.

You are thinking of the Wonder Woman movie. They goofed off too long so Joss moved on to the Avengers film.

With Joss in tight with Marvel now, I wouldn't be surprised to see him end up developing one of ABC's many planned Marvel TV series.
It'd be nice to see him away from Fox and their crazy.

 

[teknoarcanist]

Nobody cares about Wonder Woman because she's a shitty two-dimensional cardboard cutout of a character, who has absolutely no bearing or capacity to reflect on modern women/standards short of a complete revamp with a female writer/director at the helm

(Which...yeah. Ha. modernhollywood.jpg)

And if you're doing that, I guess the question becomes why use Wonder Woman at all? Short of marketing? Which I guess we've established she doesn't offer?

Instead of this uber-Amazonian fem-butch superhero with an apologetic backstory justifying how badass she is, and a raving slack-jawed fandom that has absolutely no idea what it wants, and fifty years of canon, and the most blatantly anti-feminist costume imaginable all tying you down creatively . . .

. . . why not just create a unique, badass interesting female superhero? Who has, like, characters flaws? And a clear motivation and engaging antagonist 'n whatnot?

Or is that just too taxing and difficult for today's multimedia franchise revenue stream research executives / cross-platform launch supervisors / entertainment industry whores screenwriters?

 

[Aurgelmir]

Just give it to Joss Whedon and have him do the damn series.

I think they at one point did. Never made it out of the starting block.

You are thinking of the Wonder Woman movie. They goofed off too long so Joss moved on to the Avengers film.

With Joss in tight with Marvel now, I wouldn't be surprised to see him end up developing one of ABC's many planned Marvel TV series.
It'd be nice to see him away from Fox and their crazy.

I was indeed thinking of the Wonder Woman movie.

Personally I do not think Joss is an be all end all director/writer, I mean Dollhouse was in my opinnion horrible. But he has made a lot of cool stuff

 

[Omikron009]

There's nothing wrong with female superheroes, but wonder woman sucks. Her costume looks silly, she has bulletproof gauntlets made of "feminium" and a lasso that makes people tell the truth. Were they on drugs when they created her? Seriously.

 

[LadyRhian]

Why Did No One Pick Up The Wonder Woman Series?

Explain to me why female heroes are still a relative novelty.

Read Full Article

ill tell you why. look at the first episode of Stargate SG1. you pretty much get Capt Carter ramming the fact she is a female down your throat. She makes you feel like an ass whole even though you are not. any time you have a new female super hero, they either go for the Succubus or Uber Feminist models. both of which no one cares to watch given a choice.

its because of these models, which are the only ways TV and Movie companies think it would sell, that marketing a medium between the two with a good story would be near impossible to sell. it be almost a new and strange market. My 2 cents anyway

Especially ironic considering that the original idea for Captain Carter was male. I have a copy of the first draft of the script and Carter was male. And don't forget the third route- even more boy than the boys. I did like the MacGyver line and the way that O'Neill and Daniel shared a look over it in the finished episode.

 

[Monsterfurby]

To be honest, from the point of view of your typical European (in whose shoes I hereby undeservingly put myself); this is an interesting debate to follow. To me, the entire premise of Wonder Woman just seems entirely... weird.

Think about it - people like me who know comic book heroes mainly through movies made about them, who don't even have an idea who the Green Lantern is (unless they looked the character up on Wikipedia) and who get a headache when trying to figure out if comic books have some sort of continuity to follow, translate super heroes in a simple thought of "what to expect". Batman is dark, gritty, and human; Superman is a strong alien who works as a journalist in his free-time and is more often faced with questions of how and when to use his power and so forth.

What's this Wonder Woman's gimmick?

She's a woman.

O hai, cheesy clichés about Amazons and so forth - us mere mortals don't know thee. Being a woman is not a "selling point", and even though Hollywood does seem to think it is, a character is not made better of worse by being of one gender or another. A character needs personality, needs conflict, needs a STORY TO TELL. And while Wonder Woman might have had character development of some degree throughout her comic books career, the character does not exactly flaunt that. And that's the main problem I have with her: The character does not even have the semblance of multi-dimensionality.

And to comment on MovieBob's video: Apart from prople being able to make movies out of anything, I hereby claim that there is not a *good* movie in that.

 

[beniki]

So... networks are unwilling to pick up a superhero series written by a person that mostly does legal and medical shows? I'm not really that surprised. To be fair I wouldn't want them to do a series now anyway. It'll just end up being a 'grown up' version of Smallville, and that took forever to actually be interesting.

And truth be told, I don't understand the argument that men don't want to see a strong female lead. We've had so many already, it's not actually a novelty.

And really... an amazonian warrior princess wearing a corset and long dark hair. Xena?

 

[beniki]

Explain to me why female heroes are still a relative novelty.

Simple really, we've so rarely seen one.

Think of all the heroines that we've seen in history and what they're known for:

Samantha(Bewitched), Betty/Wilma, Marge, Lois, Oprah - Superintelligent Sexy housewife
Trinny/Susannah, Xena, Supernanny, The Nanny, Ally Mcbeal - Squealing faux lesbians doing a MANS job in a MANS world.
Bella, Scarlett (GI Joe), Baroness(GI Joe) - "I've just been waiting for you"
Buffy, Melody, Josie, Britney - "I'm - like - so gonna kick your ass after school"

Now try and think of one that has sex appeal, skill and can work without the aid of a sidekick.

Really rounded it down, hasn't it? Even in the depths of time, what do we really know about Marie Curie, Joan of Arc, Boudicea, Pochahontas...

DCs "Birds of Prey" was good - although the "all men are my slaves" just gets so overused. Bionic Woman crashed and burned after it was turned "dark".

Perhaps what they really needed was a bit of comedy? Having a female hero that can laugh at herself could be the breakout they need. It's what started Bruce, Peter, Dr. Bruce and Clark off at the start. Just show them being normal.

That's the real problem though. Name a "normal" woman on TV...Kari Bryon was turned from a go-girl into a drool-poster pretty quickly, same with Summer Glau, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Alyson Hannigan. Even Gillian Anderson.

How about hiring a woman based not just on her photogenic skills, giving her a good script and not sticking her in a skintight suit for the first episode. (Yes, Star Trek, I'm looking directly at you.)

Jeri Ryan almost had it as 7 of 9, but then they had to bring in the romance... And that, as any fan of Moonlighting/X-Files etc. will tell you, kills the female stone dead.

I counter with Captain Catherine Janeway, who is by far superior to all the other Star Trek captains.

 

[Tomo Stryker]

Anyone watch the old 90's series, Witchblade? If you have then you realize strong feminism characters are just as good as any strong male lead character. Wonder Woman on the other hand has a long and twisted history in the hands of writers who had agendas. The best way to revive this is to wipe the slate clean and restart with a modern approach, I dunno.

 

[RadiusXd]

http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/51434

wonder woman = overpowered.

ps. didnt really like superman either.

 

[Smooth Operator]

It has nothing to do with gender, it's just an unimaginative idea for a superhero, that's also why superman never got a good movie, sure you can show off his powers but hes as interesting as potatoes.

You need some flavor in the mix not just guy/woman + every power we can think of.
Even the damn names Wonder Woman and Super Man, seriously? Even when I was 10 that sounded poor.

 

[marscentral]

"It's because Wonder Woman is a bad character!" Really? I could buy that argument if there were lots of TV and films starring other female superheroes.

Added to which, Movie Bob already pointed out that there is plenty of good source material for Wonder Woman. It is just a question of using it properly, but that's true of any superhero regardless of gender.

 

[moretimethansense]

I don't think it's so much about gender as that most people's only exposure to wonder woman is the (pretty campy) 70's TV series.

Imagine if your only exposure to Batman was the Adam West version, now imagine that you were asked to give monetary support to a new series, doesn't sound like such a good idea anymore does it?

If WW had more public exposure then maybe we'd be watching WW's equivelent of The Dark Knight right now.

 

[Aurgelmir]

Don't know a lot about Wonder Woman, so I would have liked a TV-show... Oh well... it would probably have sucked anyways.