Why Did No One Pick Up The Wonder Woman Series?

Elizabeth Grunewald

The Pope of Chilitown
Oct 4, 2010
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Why Did No One Pick Up The Wonder Woman Series?

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

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Covarr

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May 29, 2009
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The problem isn't that Wonder Woman is a woman. The problem is that this fact has a tendency of being shoved down audiences' throats. Make a show where her primary role is as a superhero, rather than a politically correct empowerment message, and it'll be entertaining. Basically, take her gender for granted instead of focusing on it.

P.S. Thanks

Edit: But now that I think about it, this is one of the few writers on TV capable of writing females as people instead of tools to convey a message. So now I have no clue why it didn't work.
 

Therumancer

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Nov 28, 2007
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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.

What's more, I'm not sure if Wonder Woman can really be considered one of the "big three" to be honest, I think that she's an icon due to being promoted as an icon simply on the merits of being a female super hero and a long running one.

To be entirely honest, I also think that "Fox" is exactly the network they would need to do a Wonder Woman show, however given the left wing leanings of a lot of people in the comics industry they probably want to stay away from that network largely because of it's right wing news programming. Fox is one of those networks that is actually willing to take risks with fairly edgy content, and experimental works. Understand this is the network that brought us the prime time Soap Operas "Beverly Hills 90210" and "Melrose Place" both of which were pretty sexy, especially for their time. Not to mention being the network who did "The X-files" and took risks on shows like "The Adventures Of Brisco County Jr.". I believe they also had "Married With Children" which was doing the "OMG I can't believe they did that on a show" thing before either South Park or Family Guy.

Truthfully I think Fox could do a good "Wonder Woman", but really the issue is political as I said, with the comic creators, more than any real problems. Especially if they decided to go fairly old school with the take on the character, albiet with a bit of modernization.
 

Ne1butme

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Nov 16, 2009
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The DC Original Animated movie version of Wonder Woman was really good. I was actually surprised how much i enjoyed it. My only real knowledge of wonder woman came for the justice league series and Wonder Woman wasn't that interesting of a character in that show.
A live-action movie can definitely work.


Perhaps it's just that i prefer original content TV shows as opposed to adaptations of existing properties, but i can't get excited about a wonder woman TV show. Especially if it went the same route as the 70's show, with WW having a secret identity and other stuff that's not needed to make the character work.

I would rather see David Kelly write something original that doesn't have to fall in line with decades of existing stories.
 

Wolfram23

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Mar 23, 2004
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When Penny wore the Wonder Woman costume for the New Years party (Big Bang Theory, btw)... she looked fantastic!

...yep. That's all I have.
 

GrandmaFunk

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Oct 19, 2009
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It has less to do with gender issues and more to do with the overall worth(or lack thereof) of Wonder Woman herself, both as a character and as source material.

how well does the comic book still sell?
how did that animated movie from last year do?

this isn't about the novelty of female heroes, just this particular female hero being completely uninteresting.

let's face it, other than a very well executed batman reboot, the DC world is totally outdated.
 

Aiddon_v1legacy

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Nov 19, 2009
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goddamned 18-35 male demographic. I have honestly gotten frustrated at the lack of good action heroines in media (and yes, games are equally guilty of this).
 

tehroc

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Jul 6, 2009
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You should have asked this question when Xena Warrior Princess was on TV regularly.
 

Sniper Team 4

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Apr 28, 2010
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They are making a TV show about Raven, so there's that. Of course, in the wrong hands, Raven can turn out to be a complete mess. I always liked Wonder Woman because she was the only girl on the team, but now that I think about it, people are right. Her character has been so twisted and re written so many times to make her "interesting" that I no longer know if I know her correct background. I'm not sure how a TV show would work that's not a cartoon (are there any superhero TV shows right now besides Smallville?), but a movie is easily possible. I mean, we even have a Young Justice cartoon now, and less people have heard of them. Speaking of which, WHY isn't Wonder Girl in it?!

I'm still waiting on my Teen Titans movie, either animated or live action. No, Trouble in Tokyo doesn't count. I mean one like Public Enemies, Wonder Woman, Red Hood, and the like.
 

SimuLord

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Aug 20, 2008
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Hey, check it out---it's the female Nords and Orcs from Oblivion pictured in the article!
 
May 5, 2010
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Because the ven diagram of "Feminists" and "People who read comic books" looks kind of like a sideways "8".
.>
I'm saying the circles don't overlap very much. Meaning that there aren't a lot of feminists who read comics.
 

Beach_Sided

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Jun 25, 2010
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IMO I simply think we're reading too much into this.

Being old enough to remember the original TV series (and have watched most DC and Marvel cartoons over the years), then I just don't think it fits into the look and feel of a successful superhero movie at the moment.

The more successful superhero movies currently have a dark and more adult cover to them. The new Batman films, Watchmen, The Hulk, Wolverine, Iron Man, Kick Ass...... they are all very different to the only reference we have for Wonder Woman.

At the moment movie-goers want darker and more violent superheroes, and that just doesn't suit the Wonder Woman franchise at all.
 

Sixcess

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Feb 27, 2010
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She's got a terrible name that sounds like the title of a feminist tract from the 70s.
She's got a terrible costume.
She's got a terrible back story - try making Princess Diana of the secret island of the Amazons sound like anything other than bad pulp fiction or a juvenile lesbian fantasy.

Speaking of juvenile fantasy - her comics run is more renowned for thinly disguised bdsm themes than anything else so the character's 'golden age' isn't something people want to harken back to. William Moulton Marston was a very strange guy.

Finally, her live action track record is just bad. Sure the 60s Batman was campy, but both the Burton and Nolan versions have plenty of fans, and the first couple of Christopher Reeve Superman movies were so well done the last reboot made a point of casting someone who looked as much like Reeve as possible.

What does WW have? Linda Carter's run may be a camp classic, but it's not exactly what you want people to think of if you're trying to do a proper revival, but it's what people outwith comic book fans (i.e. most viewers) will think of.

So yeah, I don't think this is a problem with female action heroes - I think this is a problem with this particular female action hero.
 

CitySquirrel

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Jun 1, 2010
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As much as I agree with you about female super heroes on tv, I still can't get behind Wonder Woman. I was never a DC fan, so maybe that is part of it.

Edit: although, moviebob does make a persuasive argument.

p.s. I would love to see Vampirella as a tv show...based on the classic stories, not the Harris stuff. They could even change her costume for the sake of the audience, I don't care.
 

Casual Shinji

Should've gone before we left.
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Jul 18, 2009
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First Moviebob and now this?

Looks like Wonder Woman is quickly becoming a charity case.

If she's popular enough they'll take the risk, if not, too bad.
 

Vault Citizen

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May 8, 2008
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My fiance (Ellie) is a big Wonder Woman fan but she actually was kind of glad at the news, but thats just because the recent Wonder Woman reboot in her comic made her worry that it wouldn't really be Wonder Woman.
 

maninahat

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Nov 8, 2007
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Sixcess said:
She's got a terrible name that sounds like the title of a feminist tract from the 70s.
She's got a terrible costume.
She's got a terrible back story - try making Princess Diana of the secret island of the Amazons sound like anything other than bad pulp fiction or a juvenile lesbian fantasy.

Speaking of juvenile fantasy - her comics run is more renowned for thinly disguised bdsm themes than anything else so the character's 'golden age' isn't something people want to harken back to. William Moulton Marston was a very strange guy.

Finally, her live action track record is just bad. Sure the 60s Batman was campy, but both the Burton and Nolan versions have plenty of fans, and the first couple of Christopher Reeve Superman movies were so well done the last reboot made a point of casting someone who looked as much like Reeve as possible.

What does WW have? Linda Carter's run may be a camp classic, but it's not exactly what you want people to think of if you're trying to do a proper revival, but it's what people outwith comic book fans (i.e. most viewers) will think of.

So yeah, I don't think this is a problem with female action heroes - I think this is a problem with this particular female action hero.
Exactly what I thought. Maybe Wonder Woman, despite her popularity and iconic image, is just a shite character that has no appeal to modern audiences. There are lots of shitty female super hero comics, their main problem being that they are made to appeal to guys (so their primary characteristics are their sexy appearance, rather than their personality/super power). Saying that, there are blatently some good female characters out there that deserve a strong adaptation. Remember when they tried it with Catwoman? Yeesh, I wonder if a good writer could have made a good movei about her.
 

spire23

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Aug 3, 2007
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Maybe don't dress her like an idiot? Honestly, who would aspire to look like Wonder Woman?
 

Jeralt2100

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Jun 9, 2010
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There are examples of pretty decent female superheroes. Witchblade wasn't a bad series, not great by any means, but not terrible. Wonder Woman as a character might be one of DC's 'Iconic' three but every time I try to conjure images of a new tv series for the character I wind up with the image of a slightly higher-budget version of Xena which is not exactly fitting for Wonder Woman's status in the DCU.