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This Makes Sense

Joss Whedon Talks About His Strong Female Obsession And How Sad He Still Is About Wonder Woman

by Jill Pantozzi | 2:43 pm, November 8th, 2011


For me, Joss Whedon will always be the man responsible for creating my favorite female character of all time – Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Young ladies of a younger generation may come to revere him for his work on The Avengers but what Whedon really can’t get off his mind is that no one will remember him for creating a kick-ass Wonder Woman movie. In a new interview he laments the loss of that project while also discussing his ongoing love affair with strong characters of the female persuasion. 

During the in depth interview with Rookie, Whedon was asked whether his penchant for young female characters had anything to do with him going to an all-boys school to which he told them, his obsession came long before that. “I have never really known why I need to write about really strong adolescent girls. I do know that I have issues about helplessness, and that seeing [girls] portrayed as helpless, for all the years of my youth, got very old,” he said. “I am much more interested in some of the older comedies, particularly the black-and-white comedies of the ’30s, when most of the movie stars were female and they actually had things to do and a lot to say before they were sort of sidelined in the mainstream, in movies. And I was raised by a super strong, very interesting woman. And I was also very tiny and helpless. Those are the things that I know about. But I still don’t know why my avatar’s a girl. But she always has been, and I’ve just given myself up to it.”

Although Whedon is currently still putting together his superhero team film for Marvel, he’s still pretty upset he never got to make Wonder Woman for DC as planned. He spoke briefly about what she and the film as a whole would have been like. “She was a little bit like Angelina Jolie [laughs]. She sort of traveled the world. She was very powerful and very naïve about people, and the fact that she was a goddess was how I eventually found my in to her humanity and vulnerability,” he said, “because she would look at us and the way we kill each other and the way we let people starve and the way the world is run and she’d just be like, ‘None of this makes sense to me. I can’t cope with it, I can’t understand, people are insane.’”

Not one to shy away from every aspect of a character’s life, Whedon also had interesting plans for Wonder Woman’s heart. “Ultimately her romance with Steve [Trevor] was about him getting her to see what it’s like not to be a goddess, what it’s like when you are weak, when you do have all these forces controlling you and there’s nothing you can do about it,” he said. “That was the sort of central concept of the thing. Him teaching her humanity and her saying, OK, great, but we can still do better.”

MY GOD, WHY DIDN’T THIS HAPPEN?!?!

(via Blastr)

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  • http://www.facebook.com/amodeen Andrew Modeen

    Because his script was set entirely in WWII and that didn’t make any sense for how WB wanted to position Wonder Woman.

  • http://amidstdancers.blogspot.com/ Shard Aerliss

    It’s a really good interview over at Rookie, by the way. Go read it.

  • http://www.facebook.com/JimmyTrappTheHeretic Jimmy Quentin Trapp

    I completely agree!  A Wonder Woman film would be freaking amazing…especially in the hands of Joss Whedon.

  • Anonymous

    Going to slightly dissent by point out that as writer Whendon would have been perfect for Wonder Woman, but his instincts as director when it comes to casting probably wouldn’t have been. I mean, wasn’t he talking up Mischa Barton? Don’t get me wrong, Joss is great but he does seem to prefer the Amy Acker’s of the world Cathrine Zeta Jones’ of the world.

  • Francesca M

    I know he was also eyeing Morena Baccarin for the part.

  • Francesca M

    This is something I actually really trusted him with, I think that’s why a number of us had such minimeltdowns when we heard about David E. Kelly’s Wonder Woman tv series. We knew it was going to be bad, but it was going to be like HORRIBAD compared to what Joss could have done. Btw I’d really love for Jaime Alexander to play Wondy, she was fantastic in Thor.

  • Carmen Sandiego

    Morena Baccarin would have been an AWESOME Wonder Woman.

  • Anonymous

    I’m still gunning for someday having Joss be able to revisit this project, and with Gina Torres as Wonder Woman. *SWOOOOOON*

  • http://twitter.com/Nakedhobo Glenn Buettner

    While part of me is sad that Whedon’s Wonder Woman never got made, there is also a part of me that is relieved.  What he says about his ideas for Wonder Woman make me fear that she would have ended up too much like Buffy Summer, a super badass who is lost in the world and needs to rely on a man for support.  If done right though it could have worked, but if not done correctly I think it would have made Wonder Woman seem weaker.

  • http://amidstdancers.blogspot.com/ Shard Aerliss

    Yeah, he always casts skinny girls like Amber Benson, Miracle Laurie or Jewel Staite… and those seriously thin actresses like Morena Baccarin, Gina Torres, Charisma Carpenter or Eliza Dushku.

    If he was thinking of Mischa Barton though, I think he may have been high. She’s really not action hero material… though to be fair I’ve only seen her in The O.C. (yes I like The O.C… shush).

  • http://amidstdancers.blogspot.com/ Shard Aerliss

    This, absolutely this.

    And while we’re on it; Gina Torres totally should have been Storm in the X-Men film, damnit.

  • http://amidstdancers.blogspot.com/ Shard Aerliss

    Buffy didn’t need to rely on a man for support, she just sometimes thought she did. Many women do, but eventually Buffy learnt that she didn’t need a man to look after her (be it a boyfriend or a father figure), she could do it on her own. She was, however, supported when she did need it by her friends and family.

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_7G4SWUX2MCWWXLMYNN347JMIZY Frodo Baggins

    I feel for you, Joss. I’m sorry Nicolas Winding Refn is such a better writer and director than you.

  • Anonymous

     Ach, no thanks.  The last thing we need is giving those Black Athena nutcases further fuel for the fire.

  • Anonymous

    Wow. People who choose to critique our world closely and examine revisionist theories in the wake of an incredibly western, white, and male biased institution and assumption of history, nutcases? Unnecessary. Nevermind the fact that Wonder Woman is an Amazon, and there have been NUMEROUS studies that postulate the historiography of Amazons being rooted in Libya and Northern Africa. 

  • http://amidstdancers.blogspot.com/ Shard Aerliss

    Kinda like how making Starbuck a woman was more fuel for the fire for those man-hating type feminist nutcases…

    Essentially you’re saying that an actor shouldn’t play a part she was practically built for (see Nebula in Hercules) because she’s not got the same skin colour as the character was originally portrayed with 70 years ago. Samuel L Jackson as Nick Fury anyone? That scene at the end of the Iron Man credits; the cinema was awash with multiple geekasms. Didn’t matter what colour his skin was; he fit the part, in all our humble opinions.

    No one’s demanding Gina Tores for Wonder Woman because of her skin colour, but because she is an incredible actor built like a warrior goddess, with grace, poise and a butt load of gravitas.

  • http://amidstdancers.blogspot.com/ Shard Aerliss

    Wait what? lol, where did that come from?

  • http://taste-is-sweet.livejournal.com/ Taste_is_Sweet

    Definitely too bad, since Captain America was beautifully set in WWII. I know that the movie ended with him in the present, but I can’t see how a goddess couldn’t easily continue unchanged for 60+ years.

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_7G4SWUX2MCWWXLMYNN347JMIZY Frodo Baggins

    He’s the current front-runner for making a WW film.

  • http://amidstdancers.blogspot.com/ Shard Aerliss

    Can’t comment as I’ve never even heard of anything he’s done. I’d have to see his work before I made an educated disagreement (or agreement).

  • Anonymous

    Thank you for saying everything awesome!

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