14 DAY TRIAL // With so many superhero movies making big bucks at the box-office, such as Spider-Man and Batman to name just two of the most successful, it’s amazing how a Wonder Woman film has never made it to the silver screen. Popular TV creator and screenwriter Joss Whedon knows the answer to that: because she offers nothing to which the audiences can connect, as he tells Maxim magazine.
When asked why DC Comics was having such a hard time turning superheroes into box-office gold, unlike what is happening right now with Marvel Comics, Whedon said that it was the very nature of the heroes that was working against them.
Since they were more like gods than human beings, it was very hard for fans to relate to what they saw onscreen, which, in turn, translated into poor sales and ill-advised investments. Marvel, on the other hand, created figures that were human to their very core, he adds.
“And the thing that made Marvel Comics extraordinary was that they created people. Their characters didn’t live in mythical cities, they lived in New York. They absolutely were a part of the world. Peter Parker’s character (Spider-Man) was a tortured adolescent. DC’s characters, like Wonder Woman and Superman and Green Lantern, were all very much removed from humanity. Batman was the only character they had who was so rooted in pain, that had that same gift that the Marvel characters had, which was that gift of humanity that we can relate to.” Whedon, the creator of TV hits such as “Buffy” and “Angel,” reveals.
Sadly, his Wonder Woman has suffered the same fate, and will probably never see the day to fly. Whedon wrote a first script for a movie based on the popular heroine, but it was shelved months later because of the lack of interest coming from the public and movie distributors alike. In this respect, Wonder Woman will never be like Batman, Whedon opines, unless they operate some major changes to the mythology.
“I have no idea [about] the status of the movie and, honestly, I never did. I was told they were very anxious to make it. I wrote a script. I rewrote the story. And by the time I’d written the second script, they asked me... not to. They didn’t tell me to leave, but they showed me the door and how pretty it was. Would I like to touch the knob and maybe make it swing? I was dealing with them through [producer] Joel Silver who couldn’t tell me what they wanted or anything else. I was completely in the dark. So I didn’t know what it was that I wasn’t giving them. I’ve moved on.” Whedon explains about his failed attempt to bring Wonder Woman on the silver screen.