Why Do Male Filmmakers Struggle to Make Female Superhero Movies?

Late last week it was announced that Joss Whedon would be exiting DC's Batgirl movie project.  The excuse given was he just couldn't come up with a story.  Whedon also couldn't come up with a Wonder Woman story either back in the day.  He's hardly the only one to fail in that regard.  Until Wonder Woman last year the idea of a female superhero movie was as implausible as a Democrat presidential candidate winning Texas. 

It's never made much sense to me.  I mean I winged off 8 Scarlet Knight books, 3 Girl Power novels, 7 Girl Power short stories, a Girl Power spinoff novella, and 2 (soon 3) Gender Swap Heroes novels.  Though with the exception of the Scarlet Knight books I guess you could say they aren't entirely female heroes.  But still.  It doesn't make sense that it's such a struggle for people to even come up with a coherent idea.

And like with Wonder Woman, I'm going to throw down a Batgirl movie idea right now.  So there.

Definitely need to work in this scene.

Someone on Comic Book Resources was trying to do the same but like Joss Whedon doing it all wrong.  We need Batman to show her the ropes!  We should use the Riddler or the Penguin as the villain!  Yeah, no.  I guess if you're doing this with no eye to plausibility you could go that route.  But DC/WB don't even know who their Batman is anymore with Affleck soon to follow Whedon and Zack Snyder out the door.  And since you have an older Batman and a Nightwing movie in development, why would you start with her as a green recruit?  Unless you're setting the story in the 80s or 90s.  And using main Batman villains?  Come on.  Like they'd go for that in a project they don't think will succeed.

Anyway, I'm going to take a vaguely realistic approach that's borrowed from the New 52 reboot in 2011.  So we start with Barbara Gordon moving into a new apartment in a seedy neighborhood.  Five years ago she was crippled by the Joker but now through science she's able to walk again.

Soon after moving in, Barbara gets on her old Batgirl costume to start flexing her muscles.  She runs into some street crime and stops it, but is almost killed in the process because she's not up to speed.  So she goes to see the lady who helped with her rehab when she was learning to walk again to build up some strength and maybe work on some moves.

Meanwhile there's a crew of bad guys robbing places.  Someone we don't see is actually planning the crimes and maybe overseeing them by video feed.  Barbara is out one night when she gets wind of such a robbery and tries to intervene.  She foils the robbery but the crew's unseen boss helps them elude Batgirl and escape.

Back at the apartment, Barbara starts doing some hacking to find out who these people are and where they might strike.  But as she's hacking, her computer suddenly melts down with an ominous message like, "I can see you" or something on the screen before it shuts down.

The next day she goes to the library where she works to try again.  But as she's working on it, some dangerous-looking characters show up in the library.  They try to catch Barbara, but knowing the terrain a lot better, she's able to escape.  She goes back to her apartment to get her gear, but the place blows up!  As she's lying there, dazed, a guy appears before her.  A familiar guy:  her brother James Jr--last seen in a mental institution.  He tells her that she should have stayed crippled.  Hearing sirens, he takes off into the night.

With nowhere else to go, Barbara goes to her former physical therapist's place in the Burnside neighborhood.  She confesses how shortly after the Batman appeared in Gotham she became Batgirl.  Until one night she answered the door and the Joker shot her in the spine.  (To save on money you don't even need to show the whole Joker; you could just show the bottom half of his face and the gun before it fires.  Then you don't have to pay Jared Leto.  Hooray!)  As for her brother, he was brilliant but always a bad seed, until he killed their mother and was committed.  (If you wanted to go another way and piss off the fans, you could have James Jr shoot her five years ago.)

The therapist agrees to help Barbara.  She's got a brother or friend or something who can help her get some new stuff.  And she gets a costume like the most recent "Batgirl of Burnside" comics.  In the process maybe her and the brother or friend or whatever start to hit it off.

The next time the bad guys go to hit a place she goes to intercept them.  This time she kicks their asses and finds out where James Jr is holed up.  And so she goes there but of course he has some traps.  And maybe he has their father hostage.  But of course Barbara saves the day.  James Jr survives to go back to Arkham or wherever.

Later, Barbara moves into the therapist's place in Burnside.  And then she goes out in costume.  Hooray!

Now if you want, you could maybe replace the therapist with Black Canary or the Huntress and have the other one show up at the end or a credits scene to set up a Birds of Prey movie.  A standalone movie would be cheaper, but the Birds of Prey thing would maybe sell more toys, right?

There you go.  Just that easy.  Credit where credit is due:  someone on CBR actually gave me the James Jr angle because I couldn't think of a decent villain from the Batgirl comics.

Anyway, suck it Joss Whedon.  When is some studio going to hire me to do this for real?  If only they read my blog. lol