Last night I read an article from Geeks & Gamers about some cancelled projects at DC Studios for theater and HBO Max. In what might be a coincidence after the failure of the Superlessgirl movie, DC apparently dropped the idea of Catwoman and Poison Ivy shows for HBO as well as a movie focused on the James Gunn version of Viola Davis’ Amanda Waller, and a Wonder Woman movie. That’s four female led projects joining the Batgirl movie, which was considered so bad by David Zaslav that deleting it and using it as a tax write-off felt more financially viable.
Personally I would think a Poison Ivy show would be a bad idea. She evolved into an eco-terrorist and I have a feeling they’d try to make a hero out of her. Selina Kyle at least bounces back and forth between hero and villain, kind of like Ric Flair to you wrestling fans out there. Exploring that might prove interesting provided they don’t go the same route as the Haley Berry helmed movie. When you can make straight men uninterested in watching a movie where she’s wearing that outfit, you done messed up. If it wasn’t for animation and the first Snyderverse Wonder Woman, DC Entertainment outside the comics would be 0 for everything as far as good entertainment starring a superheroine. See also Batwoman, Birds Of Prey (the series and the movie), and then look at how lousy Marvel’s track record is as well.
I was going to do a pushback against the commentary I know is coming, that men don’t want to see female heroes. While I have multiple lists denouncing that, just recently posting one about anime heroines, I’m willing to bring up more. It’s not that we don’t want to see women be awesome, it’s that our version of awesome is the same as we want from male characters, just with feminine characteristics and perspectives to set them apart and let them be awesome in their own way. As I was re-reading the article, however, I think there’s a new angle, or at least one rarely asked: has the heroine gone from being cool to a gimmick? Especially in DC, if they DID (and there’s no confirmation, just circumstantial evidence) cancel solo projects because of Supergirl flopping so badly, does that mean they were using a superheroine for the wrong reason?
“I told you buying off the clearance rack at a thrift store was a bad idea.”
I want a good Wonder Woman project…and Paradise Lost wasn’t it. They pitched it as Game Of Thrones on Paradise Island. That means an all female cast. Maybe there was some other proposed Wonder Woman project I’m not aware of. I know the first movie was praised and the second movie was panned. Wonder Woman 84 made mistakes the first movie didn’t. It didn’t showcase Gal Gadot’s talents, it had Wonder Woman with a creepy reunion between her and Steve Trevor’s ghost, and the story itself didn’t hold up for people who went to see it. It wasn’t because it was a woman, because male viewers, the usual audience for superhero stories male or female, loved the first movie.
An Amanda Waller solo flick? How? Waller hasn’t been the same since The New 52 slimmed her down. She worked as an antagonist in various incarnations of the Suicide Squad (if the story was good) and the Cadmus arc of Justice League Unlimited (me being one of the detractors for various reasons, though it did give us the Huntress and Question connection), but that’s where she works. She’s not female Nick Fury. That’s not her role in the DC universe. She’s a tough as nails woman who thinks she’s doing the best thing for her country, which is debatable for readers because she’s not totally wrong. Just mostly wrong. And we already discussed the issues with Catwoman and Poison Ivy.
So why not go back and try to do them right? A straight-up Wonder Woman story that goes back to classic Diana I would be there for. A Catwoman series…I’ve have to hear about it first. Stuff like Pennyworth and The Penguin don’t interest me, either. I would love a Supergirl movie that made Kara heroic. If they didn’t cancel these projects under the belief that a girl can’t sell superhero movies, then what was the goal? Social? The women demanding more heroines aren’t watching these movies. If the heroine isn’t more perfect than her male counterparts, superior in every way, and demeaning the male heroes, especially older existing ones, they’ll get mad, but they also weren’t watching them anyway. They didn’t buy the comics, watch the shows and movies, or play the game. They didn’t put their money and time in to see it, but get mad when the fans don’t. Their opinion is useless. Women who were already fans also walked because what they liked about the characters was as gone to them as it was the male audience.
The only reason (and a reason is not an excuse) to drop female-led DC projects is that they weren’t invested in the project to begin with. You don’t sign off on money-draining pre-production or accept a time-draining pitch meeting unless you think there’s potential either from the story or the people making the pitch. Why even make a movie like Birds Of Prey And The Fabulous Emancipation Of One Harley Quinn unless you think it could work? (Also, why did you think that would work?) Other superheroine shows from Wonder Woman to The Secrets Of Isis to…I don’t know, Buffy The Vampire Slayer (I’m trying to think of successful ones still talked about today and not enough people give Electro Woman & Dyna Girl a second thought) worked out. What made them special?
Not a Super-Team Family cover.
Because “girl” wasn’t the sole reason they were launched. Even The Bionic Woman, a spin-off of The Six Million Dollar Man, was more than “what if a girl had bionics?”. They came up with stories unique to a female hero, stuff they couldn’t put Steve Austin (not another wrestling reference) in certain situations that they could with Jamie Sommers. It’s also why Charlie’s Angels was first made. They didn’t think people would come because they didn’t want to be sexist. They were expected to come because it was a good premise for a potentially good story, and most of the time they were rewarded for their risk of time. Now you’re somehow sexist for not thinking Marvel Studios’ Captain Marvel was the greatest thing ever and must be punished by She-Hulk: Attorney At Law. DC hasn’t gone quite that hard into payback…yet, but they have assumed you’d go to see a Supergirl movie because it was Superman’s cousin and a girl. That was after James Gunn’s Superman By James Gunn also failed and painted her in a negative light, as did promotion for the movie. So not only did nobody show up, but Spider-Man: Brand New Day made more early on than both movies did in their whole run, and it’s still in theaters as of this writing.
“All girl Game Of Thrones” sounds more like those old Jungle Girl stories. When writers in the 1940s ran out of ways to make poor copies of Tarzan, they tried with jungle heroines. Only Sheena had any traction to rarely make a return as a movie or series. Nobody’s clambering for Blanda, and she’s public domain. She’s also as bland as her name, but Golden Age comic readers already know that. If not, check out my Miracle Comics review. I’m surprised there are any tribesmen left alive after issue #3 and that’s where I stopped. Actually, I’m not sure she does. Ripoffs like them are the reason Stan Lee ran a girl Hulk and woman Spidey so that wouldn’t happen to their two biggest characters. They managed to get past just being a woman.
Wonder Woman’s creator was under the belief that femininity was the future of mankind, and built her and her island around that belief. Supergirl had been tested out in imaginary stories or Jimmy’s latest messing around with a wishing totem that must have been made of wooden monkey paws. Batwoman and Bat-Girl were made to show Batman and Robin weren’t gay, kind of like Lola Bunny with Bugs, and that was a bad idea, too. Nobody remembered them, which is why bringing Betty Kane back was an odd choice When they brought Batwoman back in a rebooted continuity she was rewritten into Bruce’s cousin and, possibly as payback, a lesbian. Good writers could go past that and make her interesting as a crimefighter while bad writers worked for the CW show. She was still created as a gimmick. It’s just the gimmick was sociopolitical rather than “can we make a good story with this?”, and thus it failed on TV. Remake Batwoman totally has a place on the Batman team, when she isn’t reduced to “a woman/lesbian”.
So were these projects created because someone thought they could do something with these characters, and tell a story unique to them, or did they just want to appease members of a group who weren’t going to see it anyway and just wanted to “own the chuds” or push some agenda? Because if its the latter, it explains why they keep failing. If they had focused on “what would make a good story”, these could have worked. Paradise Lost might still be in “pre-production” but according to the article they might as well say it’s in development hell, because it’s certainly heading there. They didn’t have a good story to tell with the Amazons. They just wanted Girl Of Thrones, a cheap gimmick of both ripping off a popular brand and using an existing one. If a gimmick is all you have you will not succeed. That’s why Supergirl failed. They had a gimmick, they had a derided story that they couldn’t adapt poorly and somehow made worse. Making a male hero is never a gimmick. There’s a reason the ” put a chick in it, make her lame and gay,” meme works: because that’s the gimmick they’ve been using, with no thought into how it works. It’s like Dr. Evil setting up the trap and assuming everything will go to plan. It doesn’t.
It’s not the first time I’ve noticed that the social pandering has become as much a gimmick as some new film technique, some stunt casting or even creator “casting, or special event comic story. I’m against wanting more female heroes. You just better have more than that because you will fail. Look at the good ones and see how they did it. Try to figure out why. Do more than surface level lazy stereotyping of a heroine who is somehow supposed to represent all of womankind, when all of womankind doesn’t agree on what that means. The other heroines worked because they cared about making good stories, not just because they called themselves “woman”. A woman shouldn’t be a gimmick, she should be a character. Worked for the guys for centuries…and it used to work for the women, too.
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