It’s been nearly two full months since Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice hit theaters, and while the movie has done well for itself commercially (earning almost $870 million worldwide), it’s taken quite a beating critically. The negative reviews for the second DC Extended Universe installment largely outweighed the positive, and weeks after its arrival, people are still talking about where they believe it went wrong. One of those individuals is longtime DC Comics artist Neal Adams, and among the many issues he had with the blockbuster was how Wonder Woman barely served a purpose.
While voicing his complaints about Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice during an interview with Audibly Exquisite, Adams spent a little time discussing Wonder Woman and how he believed she didn’t contribute significantly to the movie. He said:
Then we have Wonder Woman, who apparently can't do anything. I mean, she doesn't do anything in the movie. She just looks good, ya know. But, and she does look very nice. Those close-ups are fantastic, and she poses well. But she's got a lasso that I understand its latest power is to be able to control people. Like, she throws around somebody, and they not only have to tell the truth, but she controls them. Should've been the end of the movie. Wasn't. Wasn't. So she was useless, So why was she there? So now I'm given a teaser for a Wonder Woman movie that I want to see. I want all this to happen. But I can't understand why they keep on throwing it in in the wrong way, and so I'm not going to get it.
It’s interesting to hear Neal Adams take aim at Wonder Woman, given that despite all the criticism Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice received, Gal Gadot’s Wonder Woman, a.k.a. Diana of Themyscira, earned a lot of praise from fans and critics alike. To be clear, Adams isn’t criticizing Wonder Woman herself, as he clearly is looking forward to her solo adventure. He simply wasn’t content with how the movie used her, which is subject to debate. It’s true that compared to the two lead heroes, Wonder Woman didn’t get a lot of screen time, but when she was around, she did help move the story forward. That Lasso complaint is certainly valid, though perhaps in this movie, it doesn’t have that truth magic it often does in the comics. That, or this function simply didn’t work on a brute as powerful as Doomsday.
The DCEU’s Wonder Woman was introduced in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice as a mysterious woman who Bruce Wayne encountered twice at formal social functions. The first time she stole the files he took from Lex Luthor’s private computer server, and the second time she returned the files to Bruce and hinted to him that there was more to her than meets the eye. Bruce later found a picture of her from World War I in the files, outing her as a “metahuman” (or to put it simply, one of Earth’s enhanced beings). Despite originally not wanting to get involved with the affairs of “man,” Wonder Woman joined the battle against Doomsday, and had she not shown up, Batman would have died and Superman might not have defeated the monster on his own. That’s a significant contribution.
Gal Gadot’s Wonder Woman will return for her solo movie (an origin story set in World War I) on June 2, 2017, and following that, she’ll fight alongside the other main DC heroes in Justice League: Part One, hitting theaters on November 17, 2017.
