Thursday TV Time: All the World’s Been Waiting for You
Lee French, the Sequential Art Collective’s resident self-admitted “fanboy” is taking a month off of rambling to collect his thoughts about life, the multi-verse and everything for future rants and raves. This week, Matt. Murray, executive editor of the SAC Blog and author of our regular Monday Media Madness feature fills in with a ramble about an animated coming out party for a certain princess of Paradise Island.
by Matt. Murray
Warning: May contain “spoilers” for the recently released Wonder Woman animated feature from Warner Premiere.
In this week’s Alphabet of the Arcane, Mr. M. described Wonder Woman as the booty “that launched a thousand issues” referring to her status as the go-to sex symbol for a certain comics publisher. For over 68 years, she’s been the pre-eminent female force in DC Comics, starring in numerous titles and presiding in their Pantheon as one of the company’s “Big Three” heroes (with Batman and Superman). However, until Tuesday March 3rd, 2009, she has never headlined her own animated venture – while Batman and Superman total no less than 40 individual cartoon projects between them.
Granted, she starred in four live-action television projects in 1967, 1974, ’75 and ’77 but Wonder Woman (aka Diana, Princess of the Amazons) has for the most part been relegated to the status of Justice League Den Mother in animated form. Part of the problem could be her dueling status as both a fetishized sexual fantasy and powerful proto-feminist icon, equivocal qualities that were imbued in her at her conception by William Moulton Marston – both a feminist and a sexual deviant, himself. (Marston also created the lie detector, a fact that is constantly brought up in reference to WW’s golden Lasso of Truth, her weapon of choice. ) Balancing, or even properly depicting either one of these key character traits on Saturday morning TV would be problematic in any era from the Golden Age of 1966-90 straight through to today.
Her history on the page is also problematic at best. As societal values and mores have changed with the times, she has gone from being a female answer to Superman steeped in Greek mythology rather than sci-fi, to a mere secretary for the Justice Society of America, to a kung-fu trained, gun touting every woman — all while showing enough flesh to keep boys interested in picking up the books she was in. Perhaps it was just easier for writers and animators who worked on the various incarnations of the SuperFriends between 1973 and 1986 to leave her orbiting in her Invisible Jet as Marvin and Wendy’s or Zan and Jayna’s contingency plan.
Production drawing from Challenge of the Superfriends, 1978
All that considered, it proves a bold choice, and one that shows dedication to Wonder Woman’s character, that the creatives behind the DC Universe line of animated films chose to give Diana a PG-13 direct-to-video project as her first star turn. As Bruce Timm, the film’s producer states on the disc’s commentary, the choice freed them to “not pull our punches,” and that comes across in a figurative and literal sense as what they arrived at is a sophisticated, thoughtful and surprisingly violent depiction of the warrior princess. One that is perhaps the best representation of the character in any medium.
Starting with an epically bloody opening battle between the legions of Ares, the god of war and the film’s chief baddie, and Hippolyta, the Queen of the Amazons, Wonder Woman covers the origin of the character and her universe from the exile of the warrior women to Themiscyria, to the divine creation of Diana as a daughter for Hippolyta, to the contest that allows the princess to enter the modern world and her subsequent adventure to protect that world from Ares, while coming to understand the foreign culture of modern man — specifically modern men.
Screenwriters Gail Simone and Michael Jelenic make full use of the seven decades of Wonder Woman’s history to tell her origin, so that its true to the spirit of the stories without being beholden to a particular continuity — although it bears its closest resemblance to George Perez‘s 1987 reboot. The biggest alteration to any of the histories that this film makes is in changing the famous “Bullets and Bracelets” challenge that wins Diana her ticket off of the island to arrows and bracelets. Timm and director, Lauren Montgomery, acknowledge that they replaced the guns with bows because the presence of a modern firearm wouldn’t make sense in a world that has been cut off from the advancements of modern weaponry for over 2000 years. However, one gripe that I have, and it’s really one of two problems that I have with the entire film, is that kind of logic was not applied when it came to the inclusion of the Invisible Jet. Attempts that didn’t make the script or the final cut of the film were apparently made, but evidently there was no line of dialogue that could suitably and sensibly explain the irrational “Geordie LaForge science” (Timm from the commentary) of it all, and ultimately the creative team had to say: “You either accept it, or you don’t.” (Again, Timm.)
What did make it into the script however, perhaps through that same take it or leave it dedication, is a substantial exploration of modern gender politics – especially uncommon for an animated superhero film. The film returns Wonder Woman and her supporting characters to their feminist roots in more than just a “girls kick ass” way, by engaging them in multi-sided, multi-faceted conversations about female sexuality and feminine power. Diana herself questions the behavior of Etta Candy, who plays the coquette to Steve Trevor’s manly-man in one scene; and both Trevor and the once virtuous, now villainous warrior Persephone criticize Hippolyta’s choice to close off Themiscyria to the world of men as destructive to human nature and the possibility of an honest dialogue between the male and female genders. This criticism leads the Queen to change her mind and value system, as at the end of the movie she opens the doors to her society and allows her only daughter to remain in America and with Trevor.
Credit should not only go to the writers for including this plot thread, but to the cast for pulling off this kind of script without making the characters sound completely like shrill harpies or piggish chauvinists. Extra kudos go to Nathan Fillion, who as Steve Trevor projects charm and likability even while “trying to get” Diana drunk (presumably so he can “take advantage of her”) or delivering awkward lines like: “What happened to the one with the nice rack?” (In his defense, Trevor was punch drunk and under the influence of the magic lasso when he delivered the “rack” line, and he only succeeds in getting himself intoxicated to the point where he needs Wonder Woman to hold him up and defend him from thugs.)
Keri Russell does an adequate job of holding her own as a young Wonder Woman (commentary: it should be “unclear” as to whether she’s “18 or 1800”) and all but one of the other performers give believable, conversational readings of highly stylized dialogue. The one weak link, and my second problem with the movie — is Rosario Dawson, who as Artemis, uses a distracting, ov-er-ly a-nun-ciate-ed, “tough” voice that makes her sound like an untrained high school-er trying to carry off a performance of Macbeth.
From an artistic perspective, the animation is adequate with a few flashes of cool (like Steve Trevor’s early aerial dog fight), but the character design, especially that of the lead, is what really grabs the eye. Montgomery’s Wonder Woman isn’t the rounded-with-an-upturned-nose, voluptuous DCAU style of heroine that has become the industry standard since the premiere of Batman: The Animated Series. Instead, she’s a long, lean, muscular character with a Roman nose and tanned olive skin that signify her Mediterranean heritage and athletic upbringing.
All-in-all, Wonder Woman is well worth a watch, and perhaps if your wallet can take it, a purchase to ensure multiple viewings. It will be interesting to see if in a few years, the progressive script still holds up to scrutiny or, in hindsight, seems as dated as an episode of the Lynda Carter “jiggle TV” series (which for it’s time was equally progressive and inspiring to an entire generation of boys and girls alike, though perhaps for different reasons). Also, it seems as if it will have to do for feeding a fan’s Wonder Woman fix in the short term, as Hollywood tries to straighten out it’s own problems with bringing the Amazon to the silver screen. Perhaps the executives behind that proposed live-action film should pick up a copy of this and take note on how to get it right, for now at least.
All characters and screen captured images are property of their respective copyright holders. Artwork from Challenge of the Superfriends is currently on loan to the Sequential Art Collective from a private collection.
BTW: Anyone who needs explanation for the title of this piece, here it is:
Matt. Murray earned his BFA in film, television and radio production from NYU. He has curated exhibits focusing on the art and commerce of Saturday Morning cartoons and the adaptation of illustrated media into live actions films and animation. Murray is the country’s leading (if not only) Smurfologist. His personal blog, It’s Time for Some Action, can be found at http://actnmatt.blogspot.com/
I love that Dick Van Patten is the guest star in the clip at the end. One can only guess what hijinks the old boy gets himself into. I pray that he was a NAzi spy…somethin’ about the DVP just screams SS!!
DVP was like the Sam Jackson of 1970’s television. I think he was contractually obligated to make a guest appearance on every series made for network consumption. Oh that and he was a complete badass, in an I want to sell you vitamins kind of way.
Really good article here, and it really makes me want to go find this DVD now.
I especially love that they’re giving her an appropriately Greek look, which really doesn’t happen often enough in her various incarnations. I remember first seeing it done in Frank Miller’s “Dark Knight” books and being surprised both at the unusualness of it, and at the same time that something so obviously “right” hadn’t really been done before.
What a pleasure to find someone who ideiitfnes the issues so clearly
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