If there's anybody out there who you'd think could crack DC's Wonder Woman for the big screen, it'd be Joss Whedon. He's got a long history of writing strong (both emotionally and -- often superhumanly -- physically) female characters, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer was basically one long treatise on women's empowerment. Yet even Joss's rising star and built-in nerdbase weren't enough to get Princess Diana (the one with the lasso) into theaters.
Joss has since moved on to helm the biggest superhero movie ever for the competition over at Marvel, and DC still has yet to get their ducks in a row when it comes to making a Wonder Woman movie. It's one of those great Hollywood coulda-been stories, and fans have understandably been curious about what Joss' take on the Amazonian would have been like. We've heard whispers about comparisons to Angelina Jolie, but nothing that ever made a lot of sense or provided a clear picture of the whole. Now, in an interview with Rookie Mag, Joss has revealed a few more details about his Wonder Woman script:
She was a little bit like Angelina Jolie [laughs]. She sort of traveled the world. She was very powerful and very naïve about people, and the fact that she was a goddess was how I eventually found my in to her humanity and vulnerability, because she would look at us and the way we kill each other and the way we let people starve and the way the world is run and she’d just be like, None of this makes sense to me. I can’t cope with it, I can’t understand, people are insane. And ultimately her romance with Steve was about him getting her to see what it’s like not to be a goddess, what it’s like when you are weak, when you do have all these forces controlling you and there’s nothing you can do about it. That was the sort of central concept of the thing. Him teaching her humanity and her saying, OK, great, but we can still do better.
That definitely puts the "Angelina Jolie" comments in a clearer context. Diana was sent to "man's world" as an ambassador, after all, so it makes sense that she'd be globe-hopping rather than just hanging around in the States punching bank robbers in the face. It also sounds like had a take on the character that would have made for a really interesting movie, and a story that's actually about something.
At this point, we've seen so many superhero movies that watching people kick each other through an apartment block is almost old hat; if we're going to keep raiding the comic bin for movie fodder, by all means let's give the reins to people with a genuine passion for the material and something to say with it. Somebody like Joss Whedon.
Or, you know, you could just make a godawful Wonder Woman TV pilot. Whatever.
