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Friday, March 29, 2024

An Open Letter to DC

As regular Geek Pride readers will know, we all love our superhero movies. You will also know that the lack of a female lead in the aforementioned superhero movies is a sore point with our female contributors, who by the way, make up half of the GP staff. So it won’t be any surprise that we’re a little annoyed at DC Entertainment’s stance on a Wonder Woman film.

The president of DC Entertainment, Diane Nelson, has this to say on the subject:
“We have to get her right, we have to. She is such an icon for both genders and all ages and for people who love the original TV show and people who read the comics now. I think one of the biggest challenges at the company is getting that right on any size screen. The reasons why are probably pretty subjective: She doesn’t have the single, clear, compelling story that everyone knows and recognizes. There are lots of facets to Wonder Woman, and I think the key is, how do you get the right facet for that right medium? What you do in TV has to be different than what you do in features. She has been, since I started, one of the top three priorities for DC and for Warner Bros. We are still trying right now, but she’s tricky.”

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Apparently, a Wonder Woman movie would be “tricky”, and I can understand why. A world unlike our own spawns a great warrior, who comes to our world and takes it upon themselves to defend their new home. It’s a ridiculous premise which could alienate potential viewers… except that it’s the same premise as Man of Steel, which DCE didn’t seem to think was too “tricky” to make. This gives off the impression that the only thing potentially  “tricky” about Wonder Woman is the fact that she’s, well, a woman.  DCE can try to dress it up all they like in a pretty little “oh, but we have to make sure we get her absolutely perfect” outfit, but that’s a weak excuse; either they just admitted to not caring about making Batman and Superman perfect, or it’s a delaying tactic.  Look, if making movies is your job, you don’t get to use “I want to do my job properly” as an excuse for taking almost a decade to get something done.  If I told Matt that he wasn’t getting any articles from me for the foreseeable future because I was determined to write nothing but perfection, I’d be fired and rightly so.

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If you’re not sure how to make a Wonder Woman movie work, how about talking to some of the many amazing female comic writers: Gail Simone, Jodi Picoult -both of whom have written for Wonder Woman, even!- Ann Nocenti, Amanda Conner, Devin Grayson… even Kelly Sue DeConnick and Marjorie Liu if you feel like poaching from Marvel’s workforce. Not just the women, either, why not have a chat with male Wonder Woman writers Brian Azzarello, J. Michael Straczynski or Allan Heinberg, who’s also got a fair bit of screenwriting experience to boot! Talk to Joss Whedon, who has proven not only his love for Wonder Woman and desire to see her on the big screen, but also his ability to produce a superheroic behemoth that generates oodles of tasty, tasty money for the production company. Talk to Jane Goldman, who co-wrote X-Men: First Class and is working on X-Men: Days of Future Past and a further two comic book adaptations. Talk to Geek Pride, or DC Women Kicking Ass, or The Mary Sue, or any media outlet that is expressing so much anger and frustration at not only your complete and utter failure to deliver a Wonder Woman movie, but the fact that you are crying “But it’s haaaaaaard!” like a petulant child instead of addressing and fixing the things that make it hard.

As for the fact that Metal Men is in your top five “priority” movies and Wonder Woman merely gets an implied mention as part of a Justice League movies, I will not dignify that with a response.  Mainly because I physically can’t respond without using bad words and violent gestures.

 

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Laura Maier
Laura Maier
At the time of character creation, Laura Maier made the mistake of putting all her points in charm. While this was probably an unwise decision, it's served her well so far. Her power animal is the platypus.

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