Studios affraid of a solo female centered comic film?

[CoolCadaver49]

Well, maybe I don't get out much, but I haven't heard anything about Katie Holmes recently, so that stuff is news to me. It doesn't seem like anyone else around here has a strong opinion about it. But surely you don't think this is a good idea right? In terms of quality? I don't think Warner Bros is dumb enough to cast someone so terrible that they can only fool the audience into seeing the first movie once, killing any chance of a franchise for the foreseeable future. At least, I hope not, but I've been wrong before

[Blackman]

Not true at all about Wonder Woman making a fortune for putting Katie Holmes in it.

Wheres the proof of that? Because she's popular in the tabloids right now? That doesnt equal box office success or at least not to the extent of a blockbuster. That's just not true at all.

[Chewy]

Making a Wonder Woman movie starring Katie Holmes, because she's in the tabloids right now, would actually be a pitch-perfect example of how studios usually handle big budget movies starring females.

They consistently fail to understand what people want to see in an action movie starring a woman, why people would want to see it, and what would make the film work on even a single level. And then they're shocked that no one likes their garbage, and that no one goes to see it.

[cherokeesam]

Originally Posted by CoolCadaver49

Well, maybe I don't get out much, but I haven't heard anything about Katie Holmes recently, so that stuff is news to me. It doesn't seem like anyone else around here has a strong opinion about it. But surely you don't think this is a good idea right? In terms of quality? I don't think Warner Bros is dumb enough to cast someone so terrible that they can only fool the audience into seeing the first movie once, killing any chance of a franchise for the foreseeable future. At least, I hope not, but I've been wrong before

The only thing that would make a Katie Holmes WW movie better would be if Kristen Stewart played her nemesis. Maybe Giganta. "SHE'S A TRAMPIRE!!!"

[CoolCadaver49]

Lol, okay, I'm not even going to touch that one.

[Jordacar]

Originally Posted by cherokeesam

The only thing that would make a Katie Holmes WW movie better would be if Kristen Stewart played her nemesis. Maybe Giganta. "SHE'S A TRAMPIRE!!!"

In all honesty, I would watch that.

[Baramos]

I think men will watch a Wonder Woman movie. They all watched Xena (well, nerdy men did) back in the day. If it's connected with an overarching Justice League movie mythos that's another aid to getting people to watch it (I ended up liking it in and of itself, but I think the only reason I actually went to see Thor originally was that I felt like it was going to be important to Captain America and then the Avengers).

The problem with the Elektra and Catwoman movies were they were terrible. I don't think we'd have to worry about a Black Widow or Hathaway Catwoman movie being popular box office successes.

[Project862006]

i don't get how studios get afraid of a female centered blockbuster yet they gladly eat crow with 200 million flops like gl,battleship and john carter which all starred men

[cherokeesam]

Originally Posted by Project862006

i don't get how studios get afraid of a female centered blockbuster yet they gladly eat crow with 200 million flops like gl,battleship and john carter which all starred men

Regardless of whether the lead is male or female, it's just a matter of the studios trying to gauge fan interest in a character and their story. In most cases, studios are completely off the mark. 15, 20 years ago, they could get away with it, because it's not like audiences had many alternative entertainment options. These days, we do: nobody's willing to "gamble" 25 bucks a head for a (forced) 3D ticket, a bucket of popcorn and a Tub O' Coke to watch a movie they're not sure they're going to love.

In the case of female leads, Hollywood still hasn't figured it out yet. They either gamble on characters that general audiences don't recognize (Elektra, Aeon Flux), or completely screw up and "redesign" characters that they do (Catwoman). When Hollywood uses common sense and picks a RECOGNIZABLE female character and sticks close to canon, they're actually successful (i.e., Lara Croft). They can do the same with an AUTHENTIC Wonder Woman film. But they're too stupid to realize that.

[johnrain]

Someone should play Red Sonja again. Maybe Lindsey Lohan?
Also how bout Kim Kardashian as Wonder Woman?

[Baneis8feettall]

Originally Posted by johnrain

Someone should play Red Sonja again. Maybe Lindsey Lohan?
Also how bout Kim Kardashian as Wonder Woman?

Dat power.

[Project862006]

unplug our keyboard please

[cherokeesam]

Originally Posted by johnrain

Someone should play Red Sonja again. Maybe Lindsey Lohan?
Also how bout Kim Kardashian as Wonder Woman?

Whatever happened to that Rose McGowan Red Sonja project? Fire it back up.

And KK as WW only works if it's a silent movie.

[DrCosmic]

Originally Posted by Chewy

Well yeah, almost every superhero film has a plot-crucial romantic storyline. That's just a part of the human condition that these films try to emulate, not really gender-specific.

Also the central relationship in Aliens was the vicarious mother-daughter one with Newt.

I see what you're saying, I just think of the romantic storylines in, say, Hunger Games to be more significant than the one in say, Batman Begins or Iron Man. The entire climax/resolution hinges on her romantic relationships. It's not that she just happened to fall for someone who has skills that can help her in her crusade. Compare Salt, where her relationship is the entirety of her motivation to betray her sleeper cell, as opposed to an extra push in the right direction. They just seem more intrinsic. Now, Tomb Raider didn't have this, so perhaps its not as hard a law as I imagine it to be.

Originally Posted by psylockolussus

The Hunger Games is not based on a comic-book. Its based on a book series like Harry Potter and the Twilight Saga. Katniss is not even a superhero.

I agree with all of these statements. I suspect I'm missing a conclusion you're drawing.

Originally Posted by Lorus

What do you think makes them unable to headline a blockbuster? If you think they lack the talent then I would maintain that it's an odd generalisation. That said, I'm not aware of much of the above actresses' work so I won't really press the issue. Going for an unknown though may be the best option, Hemsworth was able to star in Thor and make an acceptable profit.

The appearance of characters, in terms of costumes, can be worked around by altering them so they are more conservative, which would only raise the ire of comic fans who will always complain about something. The alternative is to take a costume, adapt it faithfully and let the criticism come on the assumption that the product silences the claims of sexism. This essentially happened with Avengers and TDKR this year. It comes down to one success, I think, and if one female fronted comic film were a success then others would follow. I think critics and the general audience do recognise when a character is done well, even if the costume, out of context, seems overly exploitative.

Critics also recognize when something is contrived in order to justify something which is in reality exploitative. Neither critics nor filmmakers live in a fantasy world where we can take a costume designed to titilate young boys and pass it off as a symbol of empowerment.

And the headline comment was referring to their ability to attract moviegoers by having their name at the top. Hemsworth did not have this, which is why you don't see his name at the top of the one sheet, but instead, a panel of the supporting cast who are much more popular and talented than he. A Wonder Woman film could be made that way, but Haywire shows that this does not make it successful necessarily.

I'm sure that there are some stories that are good that could be adapted, I refuse to believe that there are no suitable stories in all of comicsdom. In terms of these stories being gender biased, I've read stories with female characters that are not gender biased at all. I'd argue many modern stories are driven by factors that aren't related to gender, or could very easily be tweaked so they weren't. The new 52 Wonder Woman, again, has a clear narrative that allows gender to be eliminated as a concern. It's one of siblings fighting over a throne and family.

... the one where she is married off to Hades in order to free her pregnant homegirl? Gender plays an incredibly large concern in that story, it would not work with two guys, that's for sure. There are very few quality stories about female comics characters, and very few comic book stories that are not gender biased, but I don't know that there is any overlap there, and where there is, I suspect it won't have the female hero front and center.

And even if you find one, like Batwoman's stories, it's a character that simply won't be getting a solo movie based on what we know about Hollywood.

I asked about the feminine issues because you occasionally see female characters criticised for not being feminine for whatever reason which is a complaint I can't understand. There are obviously traits associated with femininity but they certainly don't define what it is to be a woman. From an egalitarian perspective, the experience you want to capture with a film is a human one, gender is a largely an arbitrary barrier in my eyes. If you were to swap the genders of all the best comic films, you wouldn't have a problem, hence my attitude that gender should not be considered.

I don't know much about Eglatarianism (i just wiki'd it) but I'm not sure that's relevant to storytelling. We're not talking about equality, but sameness. Surely four quarters are worth a dollar, but they don't look/sound/taste/weigh the same. Observably, I know men and women are different, so I, as a guy, connect more easily to women who act like women in some way, or have a reason to eschew such tendencies. I know people like that girl, or I would react similarly if I had endured such trauma.

The Resident Evil films don't make huge amounts of money do they? I was under the impression that the reason the budgets remain fairly small is because they can't recoup larger numbers. If such a film were to make an impressive profit from a lower budget, I'm sure the budget for future films would increase.

I'm not aware of any sequel in history getting a significant budget increase due to success of the first one.

The stoic character type only really comes across as the least emotive in the context of an ensemble. Bruce Wayne is very much the same type of character and films can be made about him very easily in which he expresses emotions and is strong and likeable. This probably wouldn't be the best course for Wonder Woman specifically, true, but something like a Black Widow film could be very well done.

The 'every man' archetype is rarer for female characters, admittedly, but that's not the approach for Wonder Woman either, a film with similarities to Thor though (no real origin, just adventure within a fantasy land, maybe incorporating modern society) could be fairly easily done. I think it would come down to having a strong central character arc, with Thor it was about learning humility but for Wonder Woman it could be a Superman-esque idea about when to interfere in normal affairs or something.

Hmmm... Bruce Wayne isn't all that stoic compared to, say Dominic Torreto, Alice from the RE series or even Diana in the New 52. Movie Bruce Wayne cracks jokes, pouts as much as he broods and puts on his stoic Bat-personality and then takes it off again. But you are right, movies can be made about such relatively stoic personalities relatively easily. They can be de-stoic-ed to a point, but in any case, they need to be surrounded by an emotive and useful cast for it to work, that's what you see in all the cases I mentioned in this paragraph, incidentally.

I have a lot of thoughts on a WW movie specifically, but I'd rather go on with that in depth in a WW thread. But there's a reason why women don't have an iconic 'everyman' superhero.

[metaphysician]

I do tend to think there is an element of "damned if you do, damned if you don't" in trying to adapt WW, and in female-lead movies in general. Either you have writers trying to emphasize that the lead is a woman ( in which case you get one of several cliched female plotlines, typically either a central driving romance or defense of children ), or you have writers trying to avoid such ( in which case you get accused of writing a man with boobs ).

There *should* be a middle ground, but no one seems to have quite found it yet. Probably because, in part, because "acting like a man" is itself so broadly defined as to incorporate basically everything that isn't a cliched women's narrative.

[DrCosmic]

I agree with that actually, and would even say that there is absolutely no middle ground for the precise reason you suggest. I think that a really talented writer can take the cliched women's plotlines and make them shine, and I think that's what we saw in Hunger Games, which definitely has a central driving romance plotline and defense of children as its major drivers. It just twisted them (unrequited/fake/one sided driving romance, failure to defend one of the children/goal of killing children). I think that's what people want "Give me the same thing, but different." This is not fundamentally different from the cliched 'revenge' and 'become the best' plotlines we have for men, they've just been explored and twisted more. I think this lack of exploration of the female cliches has to do with male vs female sensibilities. Women, in general, tend to be into the details emotionally, so having the same general story can still be entertaining, because the details are different, hence: the romantic comedy genre. Such an approach would not work for a female action movie that's supposed to draw in male viewers as well, clearly.

There are other women's narratives, but they tend to follow a different framework than the hero's journey (or else, do so without leaving home, per se), and are also no good for a female-led action movie.