The Multiple Personality Disorder Cheetah* could be interesting. And, if you lose the name, the Golden Age version of Dr Psycho (woman-hating demented dwarf with the ability to materialize stuff out ectoplasm) has some potential. Think “Hannibal Lector meets The Mask”.
And hey! C’mon! What about Minister Blizzard? Or Dr. Poison. Or Paula Von Gunther–everyone loves “Icy but hot Nazi chick gets spanked” scenes, amirite? Or Dr. Cyber with the power an armored battle suit that makes her as strong as powerless/Kung-Fu Wonder Woman…Or…and this’ll wow 'em: Egg Fu! I’m sure that audiences everywhere would love a giant egg dressed in “coolie” garb who speaks “Engrish”. Who could possibly be offended by that?
Seriously–The schizo Cheetah and Dr Psycho have some potential. All the other villains? Not so much.
*The silly-looking were-cheetah who had something to do with a vegetable god(?) was one of Perez’s very few WW misfires, IMO
I’m pretty sure that in one of the recent Wonder Woman runs (maybe it was Perez, maybe it was Gale Simon’s?) Hercules succeeded in enslaving the Amazons and there was a lot of rape going on. Here’s a comic book forum discussion on the topic.. So it’s canon. So Hercules IS a rapey guy in the DCU. No reason he needs to be one in the retcon.
Of all the retcons so far, other than mine, which admittedly would not make for a family film, I think I like the one where the Amazons on Thermiscyra keep track of the modern world but are not interested until the arrival of Superman, whom they recognize as someone powerful enough to pose a threat to them. It seems to me to be the best way to link Wonder Woman to the Superman mythos without her becoming a supporting character. Hercules I think has been done to death in the peplums.
The fact remains that there is no evidence this alleged iconic status make people interested in her as a character.
She was on the cover of NOW magazine in 1973? Wow, that’s great if you’re sixty. I was two, and my fiancée wasn’t even born, and our daughters haven’t a clue who Wonder Woman is. They want to be Merida from “Toy Story,” or zombie hunters. Feminism itself has moved on. To many women today, the Lynda Carter Wonder Woman doesn’t look like a feminist icon. She looks like an embarrassing relic. Why is she fighting crime in hot pants?
Now, I’m not saying you can’t make a successful Wonder Woman movie. You sure could. After all, they made a wildly successful series of Iron Man films despite Iron Man being pretty low on the superhero ladder prior to that; they were simply good films starring an excellent actor and they alone propelled Iron Man way, way up in the public’s consciousness. The evidence would suggest that good movies do well and bad movies do poorly no matter who the superhero is - you can even just flat out invent superheroes, like The Incredibles, and make a mint if your movie holds up. But Wonder Woman is not the best known superhero, isn’t third, and probably isn’t top ten anymore.
Well if DC’s going to be stealing stuff from the Marvel movies, they’ve got their chance soon. The Scarlet Witch and her weirdo hex powers is the closest we’ll see magic for a while and Avengers 2 will be in a year or two. DC should just copy whatever they do with her
Wonder Woman has always fought crime in hot pants! She was in hot pants on the NOW cover. And I suspect that there are a lot more women who know about Wonder Woman than you think.
I agree, quality is key, and DC’s track record wrt quality does not leave one hopeful.
Even Marvel doesn’t know what the hell Wanda’s powers are: mutant power? chaos magic? Mishmash of both? Recently she’s been some kinda anti-Phoenix Force that was apparently similar to Iron Fist’s iron fist… which really clears things up, doesn’t it?
However, I suspect that movie audiences don’t really care. They don’t care if Captain America’s shield is made of vibranium or adamantium or unobtanium; they’ve been trained to accept that it’s a magic shield because technobabble, and move on.
