Themyscira Girls: They’re Undefeatable

I love Batman. I even love Superman.

Like many of my fellow Millennials, I grew up watching Batman: The Animated Series and Superman: The Animated Series. Bruce Timm and Paul Dini did incredible jobs bringing the DC characters of these storylines to life in a way that could be enjoyed by children—and even more so by adults.

So, when I say that I’m tired of seeing so many Batman and Superman movies, I mean nothing against those characters or those films. No matter how upsettingly disappointing Superman Returns was, or how much the Christopher Nolan Batman trilogy seemed to be going out of its way to seem as little like superhero films as possible.

I am only tired of seeing Superman and Batman films because they are only two out of the “DC Comics Big Three.” So where’s my Wonder Woman movie?

It’s not that Wonder Woman hasn’t been on our screens before* (though no, I’m sorry, Lynda Carter doesn’t count as Wonder Woman any more than Adam West counts as Batman).

Like all of her Amazon sisters (I won’t go through the many versions of her backstory, but you can look that up just about anywhere), Wonder Woman (Princess Diana) is tall, extremely beautiful, strong, a trained warrior, and immortal. Not all female role models have to portray realistic body images (certainly most male superheroes do not). Diana herself is stronger than some Kryptonians (beyond rare in the DC universe), can fly, and is very difficult to injure.

The world of comic book movies needs a Wonder Woman movie. She is my favorite DC superhero, in part because, unlike Superman or Batman, she has the strength of character to kill people. Sometimes it means beheading a monster (she is an immortal warrior princess), and sometimes that means snapping the neck of an evil human who is already in custody. Because she’s a badass who is determined to do the right thing.

I think that it was on Cracked.com that I read someone speculate that Gotham City was plagued by so many villains because they were all fleeing from Wonder Woman. It’s a lovely thought.

So, again, where is my Wonder Woman movie?

Or perhaps the better question is what are the major obstacles (aside from just normal getting-anything-done-at-movie-studios-is-a-real-pain obstacles) to getting a Wonder Woman on …

… the big screen?

Here are my guesses:

1 – Casting? It’s not as easy as one might think to find an actress who is the right age who looks the part and can play the part perfectly. Not to mention the accusations of ageism when you cast a woman under thirty (Despite not being six feet tall, Megan Fox looks the part; particularly in her facial shape and cheekbones.). I definitely recommend Stephanie March from Law & Order: SVU to play Queen Hippolyta, Wonder Woman’s mother.

2 – Her uniform? Wonder Woman really drew the short straw when it comes to her less-than-thorough armor, but I think that there is an easy fix. Most of her suit is red and gold, so if the ridiculous star-spangled-blue underwear portion of the armor were replaced with red or gold or red and gold, I think that the entire outfit would be tied together without being a major eyesore.

3 – Unlike the speaker in David Guetta ft. Sia’s “Titanium,” Wonder Woman isn’t bulletproof. Getting hit by a car mostly just annoys her, but bullets or poison darts can pierce her skin. She uses her indestructible bracers to deflect bullets, arrows, and futuristic energy weapons. In a world of automatic weapons, that can be difficult to address. That said, you can get around it. Batman isn’t bulletproof either.

4 – Mythological origins? Some people might look at Wonder Woman’s mythological origins as being too complex for the already complex DC Universe that we’ve seen on the big screen. But that argument really loses a lot of validity after the film Thor, the titular character of which is a (comic book version of a) deity. The fact that Wonder Woman’s people were mystically empowered by (comic book versions of) deities is easy enough to handle. It’s certainly as easy for viewers to handle as Superman being of an alien race that just happens to look exactly like humans.

5 – The “invisible jet” question? Wonder Woman’s invisible jet is stupid, and I get that. It’s easily handled: Don’t include an invisible jet. Wonder Woman can fly; while having a jet would be useful, there’s no need for it and it would just make it difficult to take her seriously.

6 – A lack of a popular villain? This one I had to think about for a while. Most people haven’t heard of the supervillain Cheetah, who has been portrayed as everything from a murdering thief (who happens to be a female covered in Cheetah-fur) to a brilliant scientist whose funding was cut so that she had to experiment on herself, which transformed her into a freak. Another prominent Wonder Woman villain is Ares, which could also certainly work. But the fact of the matter is that a film is going to succeed or fail more based upon the quality of the film itself rather than the choice in villain. I mean, no Green Lantern fan cares about Parallax, but that is rarely a complaint that you hear about the Ryan Renolds Green Lantern film.

What do you guys think? Are you completely indifferent, or do you share my frustrations? How would you overcome these obstacles?

*Voiced by Susan Eisenberg, Wonder Woman was one of the main characters on Justice League and Justice League Unlimited (essentially the same series), and she also had a leading role in the animated films Justice League: Crisis On Two Earths and Justice League: Doom (which was only released this year). A 2009 direct-to-DVD film, Wonder Woman, featured the Amazon Princess voiced by Keri Russell (a film that I definitely recommend, though there is some suggestive language, some gore, and for some reason Wonder Woman cannot fly). Most recently, Wonder Woman has been voiced by Maggie Q (who plays the titular character on The CW’s Nikita) on Greg Weisman and Brandon Vietti’s Young Justice (which I strongly recommend) on Cartoon Network. And I think that a lot of us saw that clip from that dreadful 2011 series pilot. The less said about that abomination, the better.

via Zelda Lily: Feminism in a Bra http://zeldalily.com/index.php/2012/09/themyscira-girls-theyre-undefeatable/