In the meantime, on Tony Laplume's Comics Reader blog yesterday I was ranting again about why hasn't anyone done a Wonder Woman movie? I mean there aren't even plans for a movie, just crappy TV show pilots. WTF, WB/DC? This is one of DC's Top 3 properties and they've done nothing to merchandise it since 1978.
Just to prove how freaking easy it would be for someone to write it, I came up with a whole treatment on my commute home yesterday. So basically in 30 minutes I did what Hollywood has failed to do in 30 years. Write me a check!
Now take this with a grain of salt because all I know about Wonder Woman comes from Superfriends and a few reruns of the old TV show. Which again proves my point about how easy this is if someone who knows next to nothing about the material can do it. And here we go!
She races over to help because she's brave and caring like a superhero. The only survivor is a dude named Steve Trevor--that was his name, right? She's mystified about this because she knows nothing outside the island because her mom and other old warrior babes are not too forthcoming about stuff outside the island, kind of like The Village (or my novel Forever Young...). Anyway, Steve probably tells her a little about the island and she starts to get all psyched about it, so it's a bummer when her mom says they have to kill Steve because they can't have an outsider hanging around there. Diana tries to go all Pocahontas and save him. She's successful enough in that her mom says they'll just lock Steve up forever--yay!
But that night Diana sneaks Steve out and they take a boat or something to escape the island. They get to the mainland (California or Florida or whatever) and Diana is shocked to see this whole world outside Paradise Island. There are maybe some slapstick-type moments as she interacts with all the new stuff around her.
Eventually whoever shot Steve's plane down shows up. There are a couple of different ways to go about that. If you want to go the Man of Steel route it could be a rogue Amazon who wants to enslave the rest of the world. Or you could go more Green Lantern and it could be just some big badass who wants to take over the world. Whatever. I have no idea who's in Wonder Woman's rogue gallery.
Whichever way it goes, the bad guy starts raining hellfire down on the world. Diana doesn't have a costume or anything yet but she does have her Amazon warrior training that she uses to help save people and stuff. Eventually though some of the other Amazons show up on orders from Diana's mom to bring her back to the island. They eventually capture her and take her back to Paradise Island.
There Diana pleads with her mom that they have a duty to help the rest of the world, that's it not the shithole her mom thinks it is. Eventually her mom agrees and decides to let Diana lead some Amazons to go save the world. So she gets the Wonder Woman costume with the magic lasso and tiara and bracelets and whatnot.
Then her and the other Amazons go back to wherever the bad guy is for the final showdown. Of course it has to come down to Wonder Woman fighting whoever it is and of course she wins. Hooray!
The other Amazons go back to Paradise Island, but Diana stays behind to be their ambassador to the world and to make sure no evil threatens to take over the whole world again. Maybe the Amazons have some way to wipe Steve's memory or he's just so dumb that when she puts on some glasses and ties her hair back he can't tell who she really is. Either way, she stays to work with Steve as Diana Prince and some such.
The end...until the sequel!
Seriously, that took like no time at all. Why has no one done this yet? It's so freaking obvious! Maybe I should go mail this to Christopher Nolan or something. As far as casting goes I've said for 4 years or so now that Megan Fox would be perfect. I mean just make sure she does some cardio to get in shape and boom, there you go. Again, why has this not happened? Maybe we need to petition Obama like those idiots about building a Death Star.
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10 comments:
Awesome idea! I do remember those TV episodes. The original Hulk too. Why don't they make superhero shows for TV anymore - if kids didn't watch them, I bet people in my generation would.
Here's my take on why there's no Wonder Woman movie: she's a woman. Not that there's anything wrong with that (as I am one), but the makers of superhero movies always mess up with the female badass characters. They think they can just put a tight suit on her and that's enough. They stop trying after the suit's done and don't strive for any level of excellence and then wonder why no one likes it. You need a better actress than Megan Fox.
I wasn't a fan of Wonder Woman when it was on TV but I could get into a movie version if it was campy enough.
Well, you know, they hired Whedon to write a script for a WOnder Woman movie, because they figured with Buffy and all that he was most qualified to do it. This was before Avengers. He wrote the script. Reportedly, it's good. But it didn't even enough giant spiders or something, so the studio let him go. Instead, they half-assed a TV pilot... a completely terrible TV pilot which, then, didn't get picked up because it was so bad.
So, yeah, no Wonder Woman movie. Warner Brothers doesn't seem able to get their heads out from between their buttocks and make any decent DC movies.
I think you should read the George Perez comic "Wonder Woman" number one. There's a lot more to Wonder Woman than just the obvious Steve Trevor hook up. For one, Hercules plays a lot into it as he was the one that enslaved the Amazons and Queen Hippolyta and it's why Diana has the belt of Hercules giving her strength, and the bracelets (reminding her of the slavery they endured). All of those things make Wonder Woman the outstanding character that she is.
Note to self, add giant spiders.
There was the cartoon movie from a couple of years ago that I heard was good. And I'd think you have a sure fired hit in the making. Although I'm sure the Green Lantern concept sounded awesome too. $150 million or so later in budget spent and lots of folks are second guessing that.
Have you heard Kevin Smith's true story about Hollywood and giant spiders?
I like it. But to sell a movie you need an elevator pitch. So try "Imagine Crocodile Dundee meets The Matrix, starring Mila Kunis."
The real oroblem I suspect is that Hollywood thinks girls won't go to superhero movies and boys won't go to movies starring women. Wonder Woman doesn't fit into any of the four quadrants of tentoole movie making and so will likely never get made.
Sorry. I typed that on my Kindle. It should say problem and tentpole.
Steve Trevor indeed. Originally his plane was shot down during WWII. Then in Justice League he's simply the liaison assigned to Wonder Woman who ends up in a relationship with her, and by extension a liaison for the whole Justice League, but when the relationship with Wonder Woman ends he decides to leave.
Wonder Woman's enemies include a lot of Greek figures like Ares and Circe (who was all the rage a few years ago, used in story after story), and of course Cheetah, who popped up in Justice League.
The relationship with Steve Trevor would still be key to making the story work, so I'm glad you got that in there. Surprisingly not many writers have thought about making some of the Amazons themselves her enemy (Gail Simone gets points for doing this), or specific reactions to the Amazons themselves (Greg Rucka gets points for that, although the mini-event Amazons Attack! was done by someone else, and it was all instigated by the fact that Wonder Woman had murdered Max Lord, which was another huge thing for a while).
Part of the problem is that the Amazons are so secluded. Usually, especially in DC, when a society is excluded it produces a supervillain (i.e. Gorilla Grodd), not a superhero. Rucka used Wonder Woman's role as an ambassador pretty effectively, but there's only so much to be done there. Geoff Johns has basically done that one better, and one would imagine that if he finally did write a Wonder Woman series, he'd put the appropriate emphasis on that. Right now, strangely enough, Brian Azzarello is basically making her into Percy Jackson from the Rick Riordan novels, so she's once again pretty isolated in her own book.
To my mind, Wonder Woman would be a far bigger deal in the press than Batman or even Superman. Again, that was something that the Max Lord incident helped prove. She'd basically be the superhero version of Angelina Jolie, which is funny, because right now she's got her Brad Pitt, Superman. I expect that a lot of the fascination would be that she contradicts most of the expectations people would have about her. Modern folk consider Amazons to be exactly the opposite of what they were in Greek myth, but even Wonder Woman is best known as a warrior. We tend to be fascinated by the archetypes we wouldn't know what to do with in our daily lives.
...There's just so much that could be done. Maybe she needs that one epic villain to really make her pop. Or maybe Wonder Woman just needs people to stop being so afraid to represent her as she is.
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