It’s amazing how quickly the narrative surrounding [easyazon_link identifier=”B0714QRG4Z” locale=”US” tag=”tvovermind00a-20″]Wonder Woman[/easyazon_link] has changed since the start of the summer. In the months preceding the Themysciran princess’ first solo movie, Warner Bros. could hardly be bothered to advertise for it, evidently content to use it as a placeholder until they could get the higher-profile Justice League into theaters. Incensed movie-goers balked at the idea of the square-jawed men of their childhood being momentarily put aside to give one of the comic industry’s biggest icons her long-overdue shot in the spotlight.
While it was always guaranteed to be a hit, I don’t think anybody anticipated quite how strongly it would resonate with audiences. It broke box office records as early as its first week, and has held steady worldwide in the months since. It quickly rose to become the DCEU’s highest grossing movie, and then left [easyazon_link identifier=”B0718Z9G5W” locale=”US” tag=”tvovermind00a-20″]Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2[/easyazon_link] in the dust to become the summer’s top performer. It’s now well past the $400 million mark and still holding strong the world over.
When it comes to the Amazon goddess, Warner Bros. has decidedly changed it tune. Not only are they planning a full Oscar campaign for it in the fall — including the categories of Best Actress, Best Director and Best Picture — but they’ve shifted their marketing approach for Justice League to highlight the statuesque warrior.
Diana has become, in essence, the Tony Stark for DC’s “Phase 1” slate of movies. Both heroes proved to be the breakout characters from their companies’ initial movie lineups that nobody expected to do better than average. Both were perfect storms of writing, casting and direction: addressing a particular need that we didn’t even know we had for them in the first place. Both of them even got sequels greenlit way too soon, before anybody really figured out why they did so well in the first place.
Where the two differ is the specific context of their success within their franchises. Iron Man launched the MCU in 2008, while Wonder Woman was mostly released to tide audiences over until the company’s answer to The Avengers arrived.
Before his big screen debut, Iron Man was never really more than a B-lister in the Marvel universe. Sure, he was a founding member of The Avengers, but that entire team was made to boost sales of books that were falling behind heavy hitters like The Fantastic Four and Spider-Man at the news stand. Nobody but the most diehard niche of comics fans cared about him in 2007, and the flippant “genius, billionaire, playboy philanthropist” had the entire world at his feet before anybody realized what had happened.
Not so with Wonder Woman, however. She has always been an icon in the comic world: the premiere female superhero and one of DC’s “Big Three,” standing toe-to-toe with the likes of Superman and Batman. She was a founding member of the Justice League which, unlike The Avengers, was a dream team of A-list superheroes crammed into one must-buy book. And while the likes of Supergirl, Bat Girl and Starfire have all attempted to dethrone DC’s First Lady in the past, none have come close to matching her appeal with genre fans the world over.
It’s also noteworthy to point out that while the MCU has achieved near-universal acclaim since day one — regardless of what movie for narrative tie-in they’ve put forward — the DCEU has been nothing but divisive. Man of Steel sharply divided fans over its cold, unfeeling and more than just a little murderous version of Superman.
Its follow-up, last year’s Batman v Superman hoped that throwing their two heaviest hitters in a ring together would solve all of their fledgling franchise’s problems, regardless of how little sense literally anything happening on-screen during its excruciating two-and-one-half hour run-time. And although Gal Gadot’s Harley Quinn ultimately proved popular with DC fans, the train wreck of a movie she was in — complete with the worst Joker to ever grace the big screen — was easily a net loss for the company struggling to keep its would-be cash cow mooing.
And now that Wonder Woman has become the only unreserved success of the entire franchise, Warner Bros is desperate to use her to sell Justice League: a movie that has all the ear-marks of being another Dark Tower (right down to its monstrously troubled production). The film’s final round of reshoots evidently added extensively to the Wonder Woman side of things. Its synopsis has been rewritten to emphasize Diana’s role in the action. Trailers prominanty feature her exploits and her sequels are getting rush through as if they were the one thing keeping the DCEU afloat (and, by all accounts, they just might be).
I’m not saying more Wonder Woman is a bad thing. Far from it: the movie — and character — are both great. They are collectively the only thing worth recommending about the DCEU in its entirety and have more than earned every scrap of praise that’s come their way since June.
The problem is that I don’t believe for one second that Warner Bros. understands why Wonder Woman was successful in the first place. Before the movie’s even left theaters, they’ve rewritten entire movies to highlight her presence, overhauled marketing campaigns to focus on her and greenlit sequels whose one saving grace is the fact that the character is in it at all.
Marvel survived Iron Man 2 because, for as lackluster as that movie was, they had built up enough goodwill by that point to offset whatever losses they took because of it. With its abysmal track record and clear lack of direction, Warner Bros. can’t afford that kind of a hit and it’s not Diana’s place to singlehandedly carry the entire DCEU on her shoulders.
She might be a Wonder Woman, but she’s only the first among equals. She cannot possibly hope to support an entire multi-media line all by herself.
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