Amanda Seyfried seems to have forgotten her Red Riding Hood for her Esquire photoshoot, and girlfriend is smoking in a black lace body suit, or a corset, or well, anything. To hell with Jennifer’s body!
Robot Chicken has its sights set firmly on two genre targets this year for the full-episode treatment like they gave Star Wars. Both James Cameron’sAvatar and the Twilight series are going to get the Robot Chicken treatment, with Avatar getting spoofed with its own action figures. I expect teary Twihard YouTube protests in 3-2-1.
There are 20 Phrases To Make You Sound Brainier. My favorite?“Avatar, on a contextual level, is an abomination. But when divorced from its own merits, the sensory experiences are ceaselessly winning.” Best part? You can replace “Avatar” with “Rachel” or “Ben” or any friend and get away with calling your friends pretty but stupid to their faces.
I don’t have a specific fantasy angle on this clip, but I think anytime you can bring the sun to a town above the arctic circle in the middle of winter, you’ve performed a kind of magic, and from the looks on the kids faces, I think they’d agree. Oh – and it’s a commercial for orange juice.
The Telegraphspent a lot of time hanging out with Matt Smith on the set of Doctor Who. In addition to talking to his improbably mini-skirted companion Amy Pond, they got to look (but not photograph) the interior of the new, multi-level TARDIS, complete with swing.
Friday I mentioned that it was a good year for Browncoats, as nearly the entire cast of Firefly had gigs. Now comes word thatSummer Glau is joining The Cape, the “everyman” super hero show that NBC is piloting. She’ll play a low rent (blogger) Lois Lane to the low rent Batman knock-off the show is about.
This amused me to no end, and I’d like to know what goes through someone’s mind to have them do Hutts and Recreation as a mashup of Star Wars and Parks & Recreation. I suspect it’s large doses of a psychotropic substance.
Despite losing its Mary Jane, Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark on Broadway is apparently moving forward according to the Green Goblin, Alan Cumming. Oddly, he says he has “flying rehearsal” two weeks before he has “rehearsal.”
SyFy’s next dark fairy tale reimagining is Red, which like the Amanda Seyfried movie above, is about Little Red Riding Hood fighting werewolves. SyFy tweeted the first look at their own Red, Felicia Day. I think it’s fair to say they’re going for a contemporary look.
There’s a rumor of a Dr. Who game for Nintendo Wii. The little game system that could is being targeted because it fits neatly into the same “family friendly” demographic that Dr. Who has always attempted to occupy. Plus I’m guessing a Wiimote is a very early-edition sonic screwdriver when you come right down to it.
Entertainment Weeklytries to settle the debate of Batman vs. Superman that’s raged for so many decades, and comes down squarely in the Superman camp, because just like Spock in a game of Rock-Paper-Scissors-Lizards-Spock, Superman beats everything.
There is a new Shrek film, and it’s a rip off of It’s a Wonderful Life. Shrek Forever After is what they are promising us is the last in the series, and I intend to hold them to that, even if arson is involved.
Does Wonder Womandeserve theSmallville treatment? There seems to be a decent case for bringing her youth to the small screen.
Chris Weitzgives a long interview about Twilight: New Moon. I can’t think of anything nice to say, so I’ll stop.
As we prepare for a new Nightmare on Elm Street, we get a newFreddie Kruger action figure, both pre-burn and post-burn Freddie.
Finally, Robert Rodriguez showed up at SXSW with a sneak peek of Predators, his “fresh take” on the classic franchise, that he swears will make us forget the films that came before were connected.
The 1940s may have been the Golden Age of comic books, but we are living in the Golden Age of geeks. In the last five years, we have seen 24 — 24! — superhero movies hit the big screen. And Marvel and DC have five more in production for release this year. When A-list actors are breaking in line for a shot to play Captain America, and fanboys and fangirls are getting, er, action everywhere you look, I think it’s finally time to ask the question: Where is our female superhero movie?
Some of you will hold up a Catwoman or Elektra DVD and say, “Here is your female superhero movie!”
To which I will say, “Get that crap out of my face before I Hulk right out on you!” (What? My last name is Hogan.)
Catwoman and Elektra are half the reason we don’t have more female superhero films. Both movies bombed at the box office in 2004 and 2005, respectively, which caused studio execs to draw the conclusion that women heroes won’t play with a paying audience.
But the problem with Catwoman and Elektra wasn’t that the stars were women; the problem with Catwoman and Elektra is that they were terrible movies.
Batman movies don’t sell because Batman is a man.
Chris Nolan’s Batman reboot is one of the most celebrated superhero franchises in history because it is the perfect storm of great acting and directing, neat gadgets, an energetic score, authentic themes, killer SFX, complex moral quandaries, and stellar scripts.
Again, I say: stellar scripts!
You can’t hang the failures of Catwoman and Elektra on Halle Berry or Jennifer Garner. They could only be as good as the material they were given — and the only material they were given was spandex.
And that brings us the other half of the reason we still don’t have a good female superhero movie: Apparently, no one knows what to do with breasts when they get anywhere near a cape.
In hero movies, women either embrace their sexuality, which makes them villains; or they are completely desexualized, so that they don’t accidentally scare any small children.
For an example of the former, see Michelle Feiffer’s Catwoman, Famke Janssen’s Jean Grey/Phoenix, Scarlett Johansson’s Silken Floss and Eva Mendes’ Sand Saref. In one case, a man’s brain actually exploded because of his proximity to the sexy.
Now, don’t get me wrong: I love a femme fatale as much as the next person (Jessica Rabbit, call me!), but does it have to happen every time a woman in a hero movie wants to get laid?
For the second thing, well, I’m looking at you, Sam Raimi, and your pitiful excuse for Mary Jane Watson. I get that she was supposed to be a hybrid Watson/Gwen Stacy, but Stacy was in the third movie. Even so, all Mary Jane managed to do was frown and shriek and remember that one good time she kissed Spider-Man upside-down in the rain.
You see the problem? Sexy women are scary! Unsexy women are boring! But none of that matters because Catwoman and Elektra only made ten dollars between the two of them!
Still, I think there’s hope. People continue to happily drop ten bucks a pop to watch superhero movies. So, I’ve got five tips for studio execs and screenwriters if they really want to make a good female superhero movie:
1)Call Gail Simone and Greg Rucka. What they have done with Wonder Woman and Batwoman is the best thing to happen to women in comics in, well, ever. Their heroines are strong and complicated and smart and lovable and sexy. Under Simone’s pen, even Wonder Woman has started exploring her sexual side.
2) Embrace the standalone heroine. Both Elektra and Catwoman were sidekicks. There are plenty of female comic book characters who have held their own titles successfully for decades. Read the books! You’ll see!
3)If you’re too scared to launch an entire movie dedicated to a woman, at least test the waters by writing a strong female character into an already successful franchise. The things a Nolan script could do with Talia al Ghul (or even Catwoman) make me shiver with delight.
4) Don’t stunt-cast. No Alicia Silverstone. No Uma Thurman. Find your Heath Ledger and your Christian Bale.
5) Fish Joss Whedon’s Wonder Woman script out of the trash. I hear he’s looking for a job. And no one writes empowered women like him.
Now, light the Catwoman and Elektra DVD bonfire, and let’s get this party started! It’s time for the female superhero movie!
No, seriously. In the third season “Amazon Hot Wax” episode of the campy 70s series Wonder Woman, the title character, famously played by Lynda Carter, sang several songs from an album that the actress was releasing at the time.
Flash forward thirty or so years, and the iconic beauty has finally found her way back into the recording studio with a new CD, the appropriately-titled At Last.
Recently, we got a chance to chat with Lynda, who truly seems to have spent a few of the past decades on ageless Paradise Island, about her passion for music, her time in those very famous tights, and a possible role for her in a new Wonder Woman movie.
TheTorchOnline:So it sounds like you’ve been in touch with the producers of the Wonder Woman movie, and it sounds like there is some progress. Is there a role for you?
Lynda Carter: I have a lot of friends over at Warner Brothers, and I get updates now and again, but it really depends on the director and the script. I hope it’s a blockbuster. If there’s a place for me, great, but if there isn’t, that’s okay, too. I don’t think I would do a cameo. Unless there was a real part where there was something more than just a little, bitty thing, I’d just let them bask in the glory. It needs to be done and done well. I wish them the best.
TTO:Has there been any talk of a specific role for you?
LC: Yeah, there has been. Off and on, but then they switch gears, and they’re not happy with the script. It’s fairly simple. Everything has to be character driven. It has to be a good story. It’s not about the effects. Those will all take care of themselves. There’ll be some great things, but if they have a good story, just the story itself, it doesn’t even have to be very complicated, you know?
TTO: I’m not the first to say this, but you’re so associated with the role. They really need to get the casting right. It needs to be someone who can really reinvent the character.
LC: Sometimes that’s a problem. I don’t think it’s as much reinventing as not playing Wonder Woman. You can’t play “Wonder Woman.” You play a person who happens to have these powers, these skills. You have to play her as just a woman. You have all the opportunity in the world, because this is a dual role. I would never dumb her down. I wanted people to know Wonder Woman through Diana Prince.
TTO: When did you become aware that you were a feminist icon? Were you aware at the time when you were filming Wonder Woman?
LC: Oh, absolutely. Yes. I was very aware of it. As a matter of fact, I also felt that my personal character had to be non-predatory in any way. I would be the first person if some woman’s guy was looking at me wrong, I’d pop him upside the head and say, “Get a grip!” Wonder Woman would expect that. She was never against men, she was just for women. I was very deliberate in my approach.
TTO:I’m curious if you’re friends with any of the other female action icons: Lindsay Wagner, Charlie’s Angels, or even Lucy Lawless who plays Xena? Have you met any of them?
LC: I’ve met Lucy Lawless, and she couldn’t have been nicer. We had a nice conversation. I think how she approached her character, how the show approached her, was great. Lindsay Wagner was a friend of mine a million years ago, I just don’t have the opportunity to see her, but whenever I meet a mutual friend, I always send her my best. Same with Jaclyn Smith. I never knew Kate Jackson, but Farrah, we used to all go on the same interviews for the same one part. [laughs]
TTO: What do you think when you look back on your years in tights? You were one of the most famous people in the world.
LC: You know what? It’s very isolating. It’s about your work. That’s not a boohoo or anything, I don’t expect anyone to feel sorry for anyone, but by virtue of the fact that you are so popular, you lose a piece of your everyday stuff, of a certain kind of interaction that is important to keep.
TTO: I suppose you have people telling you you’re great, exactly what you want to hear.
LC: People aren’t going to come up to you and say, “Oh, I think you’re just so mediocre!” Unless somebody is just a jerk, they wouldn’t. It is what it is. It’s not easy.
TTO: I can only imagine how busy you were.
LC: I was pretty busy, yeah, but I didn’t have a family then, and that was what I’d worked toward all my life. But it was still isolating. I didn’t have a lot of opportunity to learn how to be in a relationship, really. We moved around a lot at first as a kid, and then I was on the road at 17, and new in town by the time I got to LA, and then famous again with that whirlwind. I did really want substance in my life, and when I stopped with the road for my children, it was really because I didn’t want to miss out. It wasn’t just selflessness. I didn’t want to miss out on that.
TTO: But where do you go once you’ve been on top of the world?
LC: Substance? [laughs] I’m going through substance, baby!
TTO: I confess, I was very pleasantly surprised by how good your new CD was.
LC: I get that a lot. I did music all my life, it’s kind of what I did, but it wasn’t something anybody knew me for. I started singing professionally at 14. That’s how I earned enough money to move to California and study acting, and get into that. That’s what I started with.
Lynda Carter singing a song she co-wrote, on Wonder Woman
TTO: Listening to the CD, it certainly seems like this project was a labor of love in the best possible sense, and you don’t have anybody to please except yourself. I think maybe that’s why the CD is so good.
LC: It’s also that I’ve sort of moved on with my performance. The more that I work with these great musicians, it’s very inspiring. I work very closely with my musical director back in the day, and we came up with a lot of things together. I may bring ten songs to this group of musicians I work with, and they might do a track for me so I can see how it feels, and then, I take it down to Tennessee and we work on it, so it ends up being something I’m having fun with because it’s irreverent, or I always wanted to do, or I like the message, I like the way it makes me feel. I’m not so much doing my parent’s old standards that have been done so much. It’s a lot of songs that growing up I knew. I’m gearing more toward that kind of thing, as well as writing some. I don’t know what’s going to end up in the show the next time. I don’t know what I’m going to end up with. It’ll just present itself. I’m not really a genre. I’m more of an iPod shuffle — surprising things. I don’t really have a bag.
Wonder Woman’s most difficult balancing act has never been to find a way to save the world from Nazis, or act as an emissary from the paradise of peaceful Themyscira Island to the rest of the violent world.
No, it’s been to find a way to present a reasonably authentic female action hero to an audience that is made up primarily of male fans.
DC Comic new direct-to-DVD adaptation Wonder Woman, the latest in an animated movie series that has also included Superman Doomsday and Justice League: The New Frontier, does it by emphasizing the “warrior” aspect of the Amazon women and piling on the action — some of it pretty gritty — while also playing up the story’s feminist, female-empowering roots, and even venturing out into some mild social commentary.
And they pretty much pull it off without a hitch.
It helps that they didn’t cheap out on the production. The script is smart, the animation looks great, and they’ve hired an absolutely top-notch cast of voice talent: Kerry Russel (terrific as Woman Woman); Nathan Fillion (a cheeky Steve Trevor); Alfred Molina (always reliable, as the villain Ares), and Virginia Madsen (gloriously regal as Queen Hippolyta).
But the producers of this movie know where their bread is buttered. The action is thick and heavy, as in this scene where Steve and Diana Prince, Wonder Woman’s alter-ego, take on some heavies in an alley:
Wonder Woman is far cry from the typical female in the world of superheroes: the long-suffering crime-fighter’s girlfriend, a la Batman’s Vicky Vale or Spiderman’s Mary Jane, or even the scantily-clad, one-dimensional superhero that exists to be the object of all the male heroes’ sexual desire: the Watchmen’s Silk Spectre, the Fantastic Four’s Invisible Girl, or the X-Men’s Jean Grey.
This latest Wonder Woman even has an in-your-face feminist point-of-view.
“Remarkable, the advanced brainwashing that has been perpetuated on the females of your culture,” Diana tells Steve at one point. “Raised from birth to believe they’re not strong enough to compete with the boys, and then as adults, taught to trade on their very femininity.”
But it’s not all a treatise in Women’s Studies. When those robbers attempt to rob Diana and Steve, she not only refuses to hand over their money, she — hilariously — ask for an apology, “for contributing to my present disillusionment with men in general.”
After all of Diana’s gender-generalizations, we also get Steve’s male perspective. “Newsflash!” he says. “The Amazons aren’t so perfect either. You act brave but cutting yourself off from the outside world was cowardly. Not to mention stupid — like less communication between men and women is what the world needed.”
In other words, this latest Wonder Woman actually tries to say something interesting about the relationship between the sexes.
Still, one line seemed weirdly out-of-place in this tale of female empowerment: a character’s very retro accusation to Queen Hippolyta that “the Amazon are warriors, but we are women too” — as if women are somehow required to have motherhood and men to be “complete.”
And let’s be very clear: these women can be empowered, mostly because they’re willing to fight on men’s terms, on the battlefield, and also because they’re god-like in their beauty. Toward the end of the movie, an aide to the president says they’ve been saved by an army of “armored supermodels,” which pretty much sums up how most American men seem to like their “empowered” women.
As for the story, it didn’t break much new ground, with a relatively faithful (if graphically violent) explanation of both the Amazon’s and Wonder Woman’s immortal originals, and a mildly formulaic plot about Ares’ plan to make the modern-day world even more violent.
Still, the movie knows what it wants to do, and it does a pretty good job doing it.
Woman Woman has been released in three editions: a single movie DVD, a blue-ray edition, and a two-disc edition with four hours of material that includes two documentaries, Wonder Woman: A Subversive Dream (about the comic book’s impact) and Wonder Woman: The Daughters of Myth (about the character of Wonder Woman).
Looking to buy it? Support TheTorchOnline.com and do so through this link.
A live-action version of the classic comic book character Wonder Woman has been in the works for ages, worked on by many different writers ever since producer Joel Silver (The Matrix) picked up the project in the early 00s.
A strong early contender for the role of Wonder Woman was Sandra Bullock, though, in a frightening lack of imagination, Xena’s Lucy Lawless was also considered.
The project picked up major steam (and buzz) when Joss Whedon was hired to write and direct the project in 2005, but the Buffy wunderkind left the project in early 2007 in frustration with studio .
“I had a take on the film that, well, nobody liked,” Whedon wrote at the time. “Hey, not that complicated. Let me stress first that everybody at the studio and Silver Pictures were cool and professional. We just saw different movies, and at the price range this kind of movie hangs in, that’s never gonna work. Non-sympatico. It happens all the time.”
In 2007, before Whedon left the project, Silver came upon an unsolicited spec script written by two little-known writers, Brent Strickland and Matthew Jennison. At the time, Silver said, “That was a script that came about. It had some good ideas in it but I didn’t want it floating around, so we took it off the market [by buying it]. It was a period movie and I really don’t want to do that.”
But Silver kept the writers on the project. It’s since been reworked with a contemporary setting, though it keeps the “origin” story on Paradise Island. The film still has no finished script, nor star or director attached; Silver mentioned mentioned the Wachoski brothers (The Matrix) as a possibility in April 2008, but this was prior to the disasterous release of Speed Racer.
Still, the film is considered actively in pre-production and is now tentatively scheduled for release in 2011.
A separate movie featuring the character of Wonder Woman, Warner Brothers’ The Justice League, is on indefinite hiatis.
Buffy, the Vampire Slayer
Buffy was, of course, a feature film prior to its TV series incarnation, which came about, in part, because creator Joss Whedon had been so disappointed by the 1992 execution of his original screenplay.
According to Variety, the series almost did become a second feature film back in 1998. Rumors have surfaced regularly since then, before and after the series finally ended in 2003, but the principles, including Whedon, have sounded decidedly lackluster at best, determined to establish for themselves some non-Buffy-related success.
In November 2008, the rumors exploded again when several international newspapers reported that a Buffy movie was in the works, especially in light of the success of Twilight.
Alas, it is not to be. Last week, IFMagazine reported Whedon as saying, “There’s not going to be [a Buffy movie]. That’s the update. Nobody has ever broached the subject from the studio side. I think everybody is busy working. I mean, I think it probably won’t happen. That’s my guess. The landscape changes constantly, but until someone who has millions and billions of dollars asks me that question, the answer is pretty much the same.”
Xena: Warrior Princess
Fans of female-oriented fantasy have been unrelenting in their desire to see a film version of the TV series Xena: Warrior Princess, now a cult classic, that ran in syndication from 1995 to 2001. During star Lucy Lawless’ recent appearances on Celebrity Duets, fans even held up a big banner that read, “Xena movie!”
And sure enough, all of the series’ principles — Lawless and co-star Renee O’Connor, as well as co-creator Rob Tapert — have expressed a strong interest in the project. But they don’t control the rights, so have been unable to proceed.
“That’s a Universal question,” Tapert told SciFi.com in October. “Meaning [NBC] Universal … Television [Group]. I don’t control the strings…We said long ago that we’d love to do something. We have a fun, 300-style idea for it. … I can’t answer [why nothing's happening].”
TheTorchOnline.com is currently working on a feature story, trying to determine exactly why nothing is happening in the Xena movie.
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Some of you will hold up a Catwoman or Elektra DVD and say, “Here is your female superhero movie!”
For an example of the former, see Michelle Feiffer’s Catwoman, Famke Janssen’s Jean Grey/Phoenix, Scarlett Johansson’s Silken Floss and Eva Mendes’ Sand Saref. In one case, a man’s brain actually exploded because of his proximity to the sexy.
Wonder Woman sings!
TTO: Has there been any talk of a specific role for you?
TTO: I’m curious if you’re friends with any of the other female action icons: Lindsay Wagner, Charlie’s Angels, or even Lucy Lawless who plays Xena? Have you met any of them?
or Lynda’s 
DC Comic new direct-to-DVD adaptation Wonder Woman, the latest in an animated movie series that has also included Superman Doomsday and Justice League: The New Frontier, does it by emphasizing the “warrior” aspect of the Amazon women and piling on the action — some of it pretty gritty — while also playing up the story’s feminist, female-empowering roots, and even venturing out into some mild social commentary.
After all of Diana’s gender-generalizations, we also get Steve’s male perspective. “Newsflash!” he says. “The Amazons aren’t so perfect either. You act brave but cutting yourself off from the outside world was cowardly. Not to mention stupid — like less communication between men and women is what the world needed.”
As for the story, it didn’t break much new ground, with a relatively faithful (if graphically violent) explanation of both the Amazon’s and Wonder Woman’s immortal originals, and a mildly formulaic plot about Ares’ plan to make the modern-day world even more violent.
