Wonder Woman and Suicide Squad footage released

[Snowboarder_Bo]

@typoink

Anything to back that up? Wonder Woman is still a pretty well-known character, and this will be the first time in years (discounting that execrable Catwoman flick) a female superhero has had a starring role in a “solo” film.

:rolleyes:

Yeah, my opinion backs me up on my opinion.

You want some evidence that I’m prolly not the only person who doesn’t give a crap about Wonder Woman? Okay, lemme try: “Well-known” is not the same as “popular”, for one thing. The alliterative name is easy to remember and people may know she was a superhero, but the details are buried in our pop culture history so that it’s mostly arcane knowledge for comic book geeks. A quick search shows that the comic sells about 36,000 copies per month, far behind titles like Batman (118,000) and Star Wars (135,000).

It’s a semi-period flick, set in WW2 or the 1920s or something, which is now so long ago that to the target demographic, it might as well be the Civil War or even the Revolutionary War. Oh, well, I guess WW2 does have the advantage that subtlety can be disposed of and the Nazis can be cartoonishly evil, so there’s that. (Note: I’m not watching that crappy link upthread again to see which period the film takes place in, because I don’t care.)

I googled the film and according to the wiki page, the script is a textbook basis for utter failure: [

A day before Whedon’s departure from Wonder Woman, Warner Bros. and Silver Pictures purchased a spec script written by Matthew Jennison and Brent Strickland. Set during World War II, the script impressed executives at Silver Pictures.[26] However, Silver has stated that he purchased the script because he didn’t want the rights reverting; while the script has good ideas, Silver doesn’t want the Wonder Woman film to be a period piece.[27] By April 2008, Silver hired Jennison and Strickland to write a new script set in contemporary times that would not depict Wonder Woman’s origin, but explore Paradise Island’s history.[28]

](Wonder Woman (2017 film) - Wikipedia)A spec script by two guys with no experience is being re-written by the same two guys… yeah, that sounds like a winning formula. I see that Jason Fuchs is now listed as the screenwriter, so apparently the spec script was thrown out the window; who knows?

The director, Patty Jenkins, made a terrific movie in 2003 starring Charlize Theron, but the truth is that it was Theron’s performance that made the film, not Jenkin’s direction. Since then she has directed a LifeTime network made-for-TV movie, two pilot episodes for TV series (one of which failed to even get picked up) and the series finale for the series that did get picked up. Another notch on the “sure-fire hit” totem, I’m sure.

Gal Gadot stars as the title character and looks like she would have a tough time fighting a persistent butterfly; she’s no Ronda Rousey.

Wonder Woman is an out-dated character and title and the film’s production history is a mess.

And while this may show a profit, my prediction is that it’ll be small because (almost) no one gives a crap about Wonder Woman. With Zack Snyder onboard as a producer, I bet he ensures it looks good, but it’ll be craptastic to watch (like Sucker Punch, etc.)

YMMV.

I don’t know why the studios keep trying to mine ancient nostalgia (I have no doubt we’ll eventually see a Katzenjammer Kids movie FFS) when there is more recent pop culture nostalgia to be mined. Instead of Wonder Woman, reboot Xena as a truly dark, ass-kicking movie franchise, for instance. Then you have nostalgia in play for the people slightly out of the target demographic and a fondness for a character that the people in the target demographic have due to watching the show in syndication while they grew up. And since those people are all adults (or very nearly adults) now, they can make it a gritty, explosive filled fight-fest without worrying about alienating anyone. I guess that’s too forward thinking or something for Hollywood tho. [shrug]

[marshmallow]

@Quimby

If you think Wonder Woman sucks I would recommend seeking out the Direct to Video Wonder Woman movie from 2009.

Yeah, but she was the least interesting character in her own movie outside of some humorous fish out of water situations. Those amazon sisters stole the show. I’m curious to see how they portray her, though. Often in the DC movies she’s sorta dull. In others they play up her self righteous anger and have her be for extreme measures to contrast her with Superman. In a couple she even flirts with the dark side. I think it was Flashpoint Paradox where she was basically a tyrant. Or a scene like this from Final Frontier. I’m kinda worried they’ll go the dull route, playing it safe for general audiences. I can see the blog posts now. They made WW an impulsive, emotional edgelord! They think all women are angry and on the rag 24/7! Rabble, rabble.

Might just be me, but I think super hero action scenes work way better when animated compared to live action. Not just in believability, but choreography too. I’m thinking especially of WW’s rope. Probably not as bad as the Green Lantern, though. Or the Last Airbender movie. But it’ll probably look really silly if she starts swinging around a semi-truck with her lasso.

[MrDibble]

My hope for Suicide Squad is that it is as near a live-action remake of Batman: Assault on Arkham as the revised casting choices will allow. Not a high hope, you understand.

@Snowboarder_Bo

It’s a semi-period flick, set in WW2 or the 1920s or something, which is now so long ago that to the target demographic, it might as well be the Civil War or even the Revolutionary War.

Yeah, I hear you, that must have been why *Captain America: The First Avenger *bombed so hard…

[Barbarian]

@Lemur866

Suicide Squad maybe could be good. But the Juggalo version of the Joker? That’s a horrible horrible creative choice, and it’s going to be horrible.

Maybe the rest of the movie will be good.

Meth is the drug of the decade, and so goeth the Joker.
Heath was the heroin Joker.
Jack was the cocaine Joker.

[Dale_Sams]

@Snowboarder_Bo

Wonder Woman looked like nothing anyone will give a shit about; I certainly don’t.

Suicide Squad looks like it will totally fucking rock. And I say that knowing absolutely nothing about the comic.

Oh really? Well treat yo self to number #1 back in the 80’s. It was a great and unexpected comic.

Of course it’s not all gritty and grimy like this, but definitly solid work.

[G0sp3l]

@Dale_Sams

Oh really? Well treat yo self to number #1 back in the 80’s. It was a great and unexpected comic.

Of course it’s not all gritty and grimy like this, but definitly solid work.

It really was a great series. I’ll never forget badass, suicidal Deadshot shooting Enchantress in the head to stop her rampage. Then a few issues later the team needs Enchantress again. First thing out of her mouth? “Floyd, I have bone to pick with you. Preferably a vertebrae!”

Ostrander turned a bunch of C-list characters no one wanted into real people and Great Characters. He made Bronze Tiger probably my favorite character. I’ll never forgive DC for what they did to him in the new 52.

ETA: Gail Simone’s Secret Six is probably the only series that comes close. Secret Six was great on its own merits.

[typoink]

@Snowboarder_Bo

Instead of Wonder Woman, reboot Xena as a truly dark, ass-kicking movie franchise, for instance.

…you seriously think a reboot of a Hercules-spinoff TV franchise has a better chance of success than a superhero flick starring the single best-known female superhero? I think you’re simply wrong about people not liking WW; she’s pretty popular right now as a feminist icon. Yeah, nobody reads the comics, because nobody reads DC comics aside from Batman. Their sales are terrible across the board, which is why they’re going bimonthly.

[Snowboarder_Bo]

@typoink

I think you’re simply wrong about people not liking WW; she’s pretty popular right now as a feminist icon.

Cite?

[Miller]

@Snowboarder_Bo

You want some evidence that I’m prolly not the only person who doesn’t give a crap about Wonder Woman? Okay, lemme try: “Well-known” is not the same as “popular”, for one thing. The alliterative name is easy to remember and people may know she was a superhero, but the details are buried in our pop culture history so that it’s mostly arcane knowledge for comic book geeks. A quick search shows that the comic sells about 36,000 copies per month, far behind titles like Batman (118,000) and Star Wars (135,000).

36,000 is pretty good business for a comic book, these days. And compare those numbers with some other high profile comic book movies. The best selling Iron Man book right now shipped about 38,000 copies, and that’s after he’s starred in five successful (to varying degrees) movies. Captain America’s best book is around 50,000, and he’s got a highly anticipated film coming out in May, on top of the four films he’s already been in. The best X-Men book pulls in around 48,000, despite the new film they’ve got coming out, and more films than I think any other franchise except Batman.

It’s a semi-period flick, set in WW2 or the 1920s or something, which is now so long ago that to the target demographic, it might as well be the Civil War or even the Revolutionary War. Oh, well, I guess WW2 does have the advantage that subtlety can be disposed of and the Nazis can be cartoonishly evil, so there’s that. (Note: I’m not watching that crappy link upthread again to see which period the film takes place in, because I don’t care.)

Well, this is sort of a moot point, as apparently the Wonder Woman film is going to be set during the first World War, but the idea that audiences today wouldn’t be interested in a period piece (particularly a WWII period piece) is kind of bizarre.

I don’t know why the studios keep trying to mine ancient nostalgia (I have no doubt we’ll eventually see a Katzenjammer Kids movie FFS) when there is more recent pop culture nostalgia to be mined. Instead of Wonder Woman, reboot Xena as a truly dark, ass-kicking movie franchise, for instance. Then you have nostalgia in play for the people slightly out of the target demographic and a fondness for a character that the people in the target demographic have due to watching the show in syndication while they grew up. And since those people are all adults (or very nearly adults) now, they can make it a gritty, explosive filled fight-fest without worrying about alienating anyone. I guess that’s too forward thinking or something for Hollywood tho. [shrug]

Xena? Jesus, talk about properties nobody cares about any more. And God save us from more “gritty” remakes. “Gritty” is why selling 118,000 copies of a comic is considered a runaway success, when thirty years ago it’d get the book cancelled for low sales. I’m also not sure why you think the Wonder Woman film won’t be a “gritty, explosive filled fight-fest,” considering it’s being made under the watchful eye of Zack “Neck-Snappin’” Snyder. If anything is going to sink this film, it’s almost certainly going to be because it’s “gritty” instead of “fun.”

[Jonathan_Chance]

The errors in Snowborder Bo’s post about Wonder Woman are astounding.

1. It’s set in WWI.
2. It’s being set up by her appearance in SvB
3. She sells fairly well for these days. Claiming it doesn’t sell as well as the top selling comics is like blaming Ex Machina for not competing with The Force Awakens at the box office.

And the central theme? That no one knows who she is? That may or may not be true - I’ll bet it’s not. But who the hell knew who The Guardians of the Galaxy were before that movie started production? Hell, I barely knew them and I’ve been collecting comics since the mid-70s. They were on no one’s radar.

Hell, Iron Man was a b-lister before the first movie came out. That whole ‘Marvel Cinematic Universe’ thing seems to have paid off well.

The simple fact is that Warner Bros is entering the ‘shared comicbook universe’ with a few well-placed risks.

1. Superman as a killer
2. Superman v Batman - not a huge thing
3. Suicide Squad - the first of the recent spate of superhero movies to make the bad guys the stars. It could be argued that Heath Ledger’s joker was the star of ‘The Dark Knight’ but that’s a matter for interpretation.
4. Wonder Woman - the first of the recent spate of superhero movies to feature a woman in the lead.
5. Casting a Wonder Woman who actually LOOKS the part. Instead of another northern European they chose to cast an eastern Mediterranean looking woman. WW should look Greek/Levantine and I hope they let her keep the accent in the movie. She sure didn’t grow up speaking colloquial English, after all.

Heck, the first place she appears in the trailers she actively saves Batman’s life. That’s not your standard reliance on the big two. And we’ll be better from getting away from the same stories that DC has been telling about Superman and Batman for the last 40 years.

[Snowboarder_Bo]

@Jonathan_Chance

The errors in Snowborder Bo’s post about Wonder Woman are astounding.

The errors in your post about what you think is in my post is even more astounding. Note that I said right off the bat that I don’t care about Wonder Woman; that’s why I looked up the film on Wikipedia and googled some other things. If you wanna gripe that they had things wrong, feel free.

@Jonathan_Chance

And the central theme? That no one knows who she is? That may or may not be true - I’ll bet it’s not. But who the hell knew who The Guardians of the Galaxy were before that movie started production? Hell, I barely knew them and I’ve been collecting comics since the mid-70s. They were on no one’s radar.

Cite that I said “no one knows who she is”? Please quote me on that.

Most of the rest of your post makes some good points; thanks for the info.

I still think this will be a dud, and I think Superman Vs. Batman will not do as well as expected. I’d be surprised if DC movies did as well as Marvel films overall; DC has always had a problem with their characters being invulnerable, indomitable and inhuman; that’s the difference that Marvel exploited with their own titles to great success. It’s why Nolan’s Batman movies did so well: he allowed Bruce Wayne/Batman to be flawed. What are Wonder Woman’s flaws gonna be like? Superman’s?

That’s the reason Suicide Squad will do well: DC villains are already flawed; that’s why they are villains in the first place.

To both you and Miller: I’m not alone in thinking that a period film about a superhero won’t work. Producer Joel Silver, who had the rights to the title, felt the same way.

And no, I don’t think Gal Gadot particularly looks the part. Her bio says she is 5’10" and every pic I see of her she looks like picking up a gallon of milk strains her muscles.

Hey look, if I’m wrong and the movie is a hit, I’m wrong. I have nothing invested in this movie one way or the other: I don’t care about it. I was asked to try and back up my opinion, and I did that; that’s all.

[Penfeather]

Maybe it’s time to give this guy a movie…

[galen_ubal]

Suicide Squad is looking interesting.
Wonder Woman…I’ll wait on more information. I do hope they remember there’s more colours in the world than gray…

[Dale_Sams]

@G0sp3l

It really was a great series. I’ll never forget badass, suicidal Deadshot shooting Enchantress in the head to stop her rampage. Then a few issues later the team needs Enchantress again. First thing out of her mouth? “Floyd, I have bone to pick with you. Preferably a vertebrae!”

Ostrander turned a bunch of C-list characters no one wanted into real people and Great Characters. He made Bronze Tiger probably my favorite character. I’ll never forgive DC for what they did to him in the new 52.

ETA: Gail Simone’s Secret Six is probably the only series that comes close. Secret Six was great on its own merits.

Not to mention Amanda Waller. The reboot making her into a fucking model was a top 3 sin. At least the movie has her being something of a hybrid of the two. Not a BIG woman, but at least normal looking.

[Miller]

@Snowboarder_Bo

Cite that I said “no one knows who she is”? Please quote me on that.

@Snowboarder_Bo

The alliterative name is easy to remember and people may know she was a superhero, but the details are buried in our pop culture history so that it’s mostly arcane knowledge for comic book geeks.

Sounds reasonably close to you saying, “No one knows who she is.”

I still think this will be a dud, and I think Superman Vs. Batman will not do as well as expected. I’d be surprised if DC movies did as well as Marvel films overall; DC has always had a problem with their characters being invulnerable, indomitable and inhuman; that’s the difference that Marvel exploited with their own titles to great success. It’s why Nolan’s Batman movies did so well: he allowed Bruce Wayne/Batman to be flawed. What are Wonder Woman’s flaws gonna be like? Superman’s?

“DC’s problem is that it’s characters are too powerful,” has never really made a lot of sense to me. Batman has no superpowers at all, and is one of the very few books being published today that sells in the six figures. Superman is the poster boy for superpowers, and they’ve had so much trouble finding interesting stories for him that he’s been in continuous publication for more than eighty years.

I know you weren’t talking specifically about super powers, there, but the idea that DC characters are flawless personality-wise doesn’t really hold water, either. Nolan’s Batman was fun enough, but he wasn’t breaking any ground with the character that hadn’t been well-trodden for over twenty years in the comics. There’s nothing in his characterization of Batman that wasn’t there in Frank Miller or Alan Moore’s books in the '80s.

If anything, DC’s problem right now is that their characters are too flawed. A few years ago, Batman got kicked out of the Justice League because it was revealed that he spends his spare time plotting how to kill all his friends. DC is trying really, really hard to be the “Comics are for GROWN UPS!” company, except they too often have an adolescent conception of what a grown up is. (And that’s relative to other stories about men in brightly colored tights punching each other.) I’m an admitted Marvel fanboy, so maybe there’s stuff out there I’m missing, but I have a hard time seeing DC* ever greenlighting something as unselfconsciously goofy as Squirrel Girl, and letting her exist completely inside mainline continuity. Marvel not only publishes her, they put her on the fucking Avengers.

*Well, not current DC, anyway. Julius Schwartz would have been all over that shit.

To both you and Miller: I’m not alone in thinking that a period film about a superhero won’t work. Producer Joel Silver, who had the rights to the title, felt the same way.

Well, it’s probably just the two of you, then, because there’s already been three highly successful superhero period films: the aforementioned Captain America: The First Avenger, X-Men: First Class, and X-Men: Days of Future Past. And considering how old that quote you found appears to be, I’m guessing it’s just you by now.

And no, I don’t think Gal Gadot particularly looks the part. Her bio says she is 5’10" and every pic I see of her she looks like picking up a gallon of milk strains her muscles.

Eh. Women in superhero stuff are always too willowy. I’d like a buffer Wonder Woman, too, but this film isn’t unique in failing in this regard. Keep in mind, you ask most people what their favorite version of Wonder Woman is, they’ll say Lynda Carter. Compared to that, Gadot is built like a gorilla.

[Miller]

@Dale_Sams

Not to mention Amanda Waller. The reboot making her into a fucking model was a top 3 sin.

Amen to that. Get that woman a pie. Get her forty pies. I want six month of in-continuity Amanda Waller Hostess Fruit Pie advertisements until she looks like this again.

[Dale_Sams]

@Miller

If anything, DC’s problem right now is that their characters are too flawed. A few years ago, Batman got kicked out of the Justice League because it was revealed that he spends his spare time plotting how to kill all his friends. DC is trying really, really hard to be the “Comics are for GROWN UPS!” company, except they too often have an adolescent conception of what a grown up is. (And that’s relative to other stories about men in brightly colored tights punching each other.) I’m an admitted Marvel fanboy, so maybe there’s stuff out there I’m missing, but I have a hard time seeing DC* ever greenlighting something as unselfconsciously goofy as Squirrel Girl, and letting her exist completely inside mainline continuity. Marvel not only publishes her, they put her on the fucking Avengers.

What?? Ambush Bug…Matter-Eater Lad…Blue Beetle and Booster Gold…

*Well, not current DC, anyway. Julius Schwartz would have been all over that shit.

Oh. Well that shuts me up.

[Miller]

See, Ambush Bug was a book that understod that, if you establish that there are mad scientists who make 50’ tall praying mantises, well, that tech will work just as well on a koala. And if you’re mad enough to do one, you’re mad enough to do the other.

[MrDibble]

@Miller

Xena? Jesus, talk about properties nobody cares about any more.

Errm…some people clearly do still care.

[RikWriter]

@Jonathan_Chance

5. Casting a Wonder Woman who actually LOOKS the part. Instead of another northern European they chose to cast an eastern Mediterranean looking woman. WW should look Greek/Levantine

Lynda Carter is half of British Isles ancestry, but her mother is of Mexican/Spanish ancestry.