Wonder Woman

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Hello, dear listeners, and welcome back to another episode of What Went Wrong, your favorite podcast full stop that just so happens to be about movies and how it is nearly impossible to make them, let alone a good one, let alone a bright spot in a struggling cinematic universe.

As always, I am Chris Winterbauer, and I am thrilled to be joined by my co-host, Lizzie Bassett, who's back in the driver's driver's seat.

And I'm feeling a little bit like Dennis Quaid in breaking away deep cut.

Oh, doing that one lap, right, to keep the race going and then hopping off because he is just done.

And now it's your turn, Lizzie, to win the race and take over and guide us home.

Thanks, Chris.

Thank you for all the incredible work that you've done.

Thanks for letting me come back into the fold with Wonder Woman, which is what we are talking about today.

I thought about not inviting you back, but everybody just kept asking about you.

And then when we announced you were coming back, they were like, thank God, Lizzy's back.

So it's great.

Never leave me.

And let's dive in.

I'll never leave you, Chris, unless, like Steve Trevor, I decide to just kamikaze myself at the last second.

I was going to say, unless you decide to send me up in a plane to jump all the chemicals.

Unless I decide to kamikaze you.

Exactly.

Up in the plane.

Yes.

All right.

Well, as I said, we are discussing Wonder Woman.

Before we dive in, this is totally unrelated, but I do just want to do a little plug for our listeners.

If you are not watching the studio on Apple TV, you absolutely should be.

It is so funny.

It is so smart.

And it truly is what went wrong, the TV show, basically.

I'm really loving it.

I can't believe how many Pratt Falls Seth Rogen is doing.

Every episode, he falls into a different glass table.

It's just well worth your time.

So not sponsored in any way.

Just please check it out if you have not already.

It's fantastic.

I can only watch one episode every few days because it is both so funny, but also so depressing at the same time.

Yes.

As our industry dies and collapses in on itself like a star, it is very funny, but

it's pretty uncanny, you know, obviously.

It is.

And I think, I do think actually relevant to today's episode because, boy, what a mess and how long it took to get this movie made.

The end result, I would argue, is very much not a mess, but the process to get there was a long, winding, slippery and at times disgusting road.

So let's get into it.

I'm excited.

All right.

Chris, I actually want to start not with Diana Prince, which is of course Wonder Woman's name, but with Clark Kent.

And I know that you are covering the 1978 Christopher Reeve Superman at some point in the not-so-distant future.

Have you watched that movie recently?

Not recently.

No, not in 10 years, saving it for the episode.

Okay.

Do you remember having any particularly emotional reactions to that movie?

No.

Okay, well,

then this is not going to connect to you in the way that I perhaps hoped it would, but

in 1978, Chris, a seven-year-old girl road tripping from Kansas to San Francisco with her mother and sister, stopped at a theater to watch Superman.

And in two hours and 23 minutes, it changed her life because she had just lost her father.

He was an Air Force pilot who had died during a combat training exercise.

And of the experience of watching the movie, she said, I sobbed and sobbed and sobbed through that movie.

And it had a profound influence on me because I was Superman.

I thought I was Superman.

I could be Superman.

I could find love.

I could go on.

This little girl was, of course, the real hero of our story today, an actual Wonder Woman director, Patty Jenkins.

So today we're going to learn how to quote Meredith Werner in the LA Times.

It took 75 years to make a movie about a female superhero motivated purely by love.

Let's get through the basic info as always.

Wonder Woman was released on June 2nd, 2017.

Directed by Patty Jenkins, written by, Oh boy, Alan Heinberg, Zack Snyder, Jason Fuchs, William Moulton Marston, Harry G.

Peter, and probably more based on what we're going to learn in this.

Produced by Zack Snyder, among many other people, but he is who is relevant to this story, I would say.

Stars, of course, Gal Godot, Chris Pine, Connie Nielsen, Robin Wright, David Thulis, Danny Houston, and many, many more.

The IMDb logline is, when a pilot crashes and tells of conflict in the outside world, Diana, an Amazonian warrior in training, leaves home to fight a war, discovering her full powers and true destiny.

So, Chris, had you seen this movie before?

Yeah, no, I saw it.

I saw two of the DC Snyder vs.

you know, movies.

I saw Saman of Steel in theaters and I saw this in theaters.

And I think those are the best two.

And I I think this is the best one of all of them.

Having recently watched Batman versus Superman, I can confirm that that's.

It's very dour.

But this movie, I watched it then.

I enjoyed it, re-watched it for the podcast with Carmella, who'd never seen it.

She really liked it.

And

I will be honest,

I don't love the first half hour of this movie.

I struggle in...

The mosquito or however you pronounce the mosquito coast where they live.

The mosquito coast.

Every time they say the mosquito, I would just go,

the mosquito coast.

It's fine, Chris.

It's not a real place.

It can be whatever you want it to be.

Exactly.

But the minute she shows up in London,

the movie clicks into place.

And I especially love Lucy Davis around her is fantastic.

She plays the secretary.

She's obviously from The Office, The British One, and Shot of the Dead, and many more.

And Chris Pine is very funny as the straight man opposite her naive comedic performance.

And so for me, it's a movie like the first 30 minutes is a little tough just because there's a lot of lore and math to get through that I don't super care about.

But that 90 minutes or so in the middle is so much fun.

Great set pieces.

Love the trench warfare.

And then, you know, you kind of get your like last 15 minutes of Snyder vs.

CGI rock'em sock'em that I could live or, you know, keep, you could, I could do without personally, but overall, very much enjoy this movie.

Well, Chris, I think Patty Jenkins would very much appreciate that rundown of this movie.

And I think you're going to learn over the course of this episode why that is a very, I think, accurate depiction of some of the problems with both Wonder Woman and this movie.

I enjoyed it from beginning to end.

I saw it in theaters.

I remember just being absolutely blown away by it.

I watched it again for when I thought I was going to be covering this episode before our entire neighborhood burned down.

And then I watched it again.

Yeah, where was Wonder Woman?

Come on.

Where were you, Diana?

Not in Altadina.

Protecting the Palisades.

No, I'm just kidding, quick.

That burned down too.

Yeah, I really enjoy this movie a lot.

I know that there are problems with it.

I would agree with you that the least interesting part to me is the origin story, if you will.

So

let's actually talk about Wonder Woman's origins.

She may be a superhero motivated by love, but her creator, Chris, was a man with more complicated motivations.

According to him, quote, Wonder Wonder Woman is a psychological propaganda for the new type of woman who I believe should rule the world.

All right.

Let's get into it.

And by the way, listeners, we are going to spend a lot of time before we actually get to the production of this movie because that is where the mess is.

So just bear with us.

I promise it will still be interesting.

In 1933, a former elementary school principal named Maxwell Charles Gaines began repackaging comic strips into their own magazines.

He's often called the father of comic books because this is the first time anyone had ever really done this.

He goes on to found All-American Publications that later would merge with another company and become DC Comics.

In 1938 and 1939, yes, Chris?

No, I said, oh, I didn't know the origin of DC.

Yeah.

Yeah.

We're flying through this.

I'm not going to really.

Okay, I'm sorry.

No, I got my notepad.

Let's rock and roll.

Okay.

In 1938 and 1939, as the U.S.

is on the precipice of World War II, Superman and Batman were respectively introduced to the world, kicking off a comics craze.

And by 1941, something like 15 million comics were selling monthly.

But they're also getting a lot of backlash.

Understandably, I think people weren't huge fans of their children consuming violent material when World War II was raging.

Right.

Concerned about his bag, Maxwell looked for a way to reassure audiences that comics weren't the devil.

And he was encouraged, Chris, by an article that he read in Family Circle magazine.

I promise it's about to get fun.

Family Circle as hell.

Family Circle.

That's what I'm in right now.

Just kidding.

We love our baby.

I love my baby.

In it, a staff writer named Olive Richard visited an eccentric man named Dr.

William Moulton Marston at his home in Rye, New York.

Sorry, his middle name is Moulton.

Moulton.

Like he's a Moulton, like he's shedding.

Oh, got it.

That type.

So the slang of...

Well, no, it's Moulton.

M-O-U-L-T-O-N.

But when I say Moulton, I hear like that bird's a moulton.

Yeah.

Anyway, she interviewed him about his expert opinion on comics.

Now, he was seemingly overqualified.

He had three degrees from Harvard.

He'd been a lawyer, a professor, and along with his wife Elizabeth, also kind of invented the lie detector test, or at least the earliest version of it.

Lasso of truth, Christopher?

Well, but also, how have we learned that those don't work that well?

Yeah, you can fake those.

In the article, when Olive brought up that so many comics were, quote, full of torture, kidnapping, sadism, and other cruel business, Marston agreed, but countered that when a lovely heroine is bound to the stake, comic followers are sure that the rescue will arrive in the nick of time.

The reader's wish is to save the girl, not to see her suffer.

So, back to Maxwell Charles Gaines.

He hired Dr.

William Moulton Marston as a consultant to help him reassure audiences that comic books weren't so depraved.

But here's the thing, Chris.

William Moulton Marston was a polyamorous freak in both the fun and unfun sense of the word.

Well, freak is a strong word, but I had hey, he was a freak in the sheets first.

There we go.

Yeah, I had heard that he, I didn't know this was his name.

I knew there was somebody associated with Wonder Woman who had non-standard interests is what I

complicated relationship with women.

Fair enough.

Including with his interviewer, Olive Richard, who was in fact actually his live-in girlfriend.

And he created Wonder Woman inspired by both his wife and Olive.

So now let's untangle it.

Olive Richard was really Olive Byrne, niece of Margaret Sanger, who along with Olive's mother Ethel Byrne opened the first birth control clinic in the U.S.

and founded Planned Parenthood.

12 people in the United States at this point in time, as we remember it.

Olive and Marston hooked up when he was her professor at Tufts, and a little problem is that he was already married to Elizabeth Holloway.

Worth noting, Elizabeth and Olive were both extremely accomplished, wicked smart, and highly educated.

So he's like, listen, Lizzie, you can either pack your bags or let me move this college student in here who I I will also be banging.

Elizabeth said, yes.

And then, Chris, they were a thruple.

Progressive.

It actually was kind of progressive.

They're very, no, it wouldn't be for me personally, but they are ahead of their time.

And

if they're all consenting adults.

I think they were.

I don't think that they were too upset about it.

By 1933, both women had had two children by him, with Elizabeth going back to work and Olive staying home to raise all four children.

Another weird side note, half those kids did not realize Olive was their mom until 30 years later.

There was apparently also a third woman who sometimes lived in their attic, but we don't have time for her.

All right.

Naturally.

Moving on.

Okay, and then there was the basement family, but we're going to skip over that.

Yeah.

By the way, we don't have time to get into any of this, but their relationship is fascinating.

They actually stayed living together long after William was dead and like all the way up until Olive died.

They were living together.

What's the great show with the late Bill Paxson?

My brain is saying big wives, but that's not what it is.

Big love.

Big love.

There it is.

Not big wives, which is what my brain was saying.

Big love.

Thank you.

Great show.

Quick, go right, big wives.

So naturally, our boy Maxwell did not know any of this when he hired Marston to head up an editorial advisory board for his comics in 1940.

Marston offered an unconventional way to solve their problem.

He's like, listen, masculinity, that is the root of comics evil.

so it's time to introduce a lady into the mix.

He said, it's smart to be strong, it's big to be generous, but it's sissy-fied according to exclusively masculine rules to be tender, loving, affectionate, and alluring.

Women's strong qualities have become despised because of their weak ones.

The obvious remedy is to create a feminine character with all the strength of a Superman, plus all the allure of a good and beautiful woman.

The logic's sound.

I know.

It gets a little complicated because this man is also problematic, but I don't necessarily disagree with what he's saying.

So Gaines is like, fine, but you have to write it.

I'm not paying anybody else to do this because, you know, lady stuff.

So in 1941, Wonder Woman debuted in All-Star Comics, a predecessor that, again, would merge to become DC, written by Marston and drawn by artist Harry G.

Peter.

The very first story featured Steve Trevor crash landing on Paradise Island, not the mascara yet.

Then Wonder Woman learns the story of her people and Trevor's history, and then I believe through a series of trials involving bracelets, becomes the ambassador to America and gets her iconic costume, which, Chris, looks like this.

Yeah, feels appropriate for the time.

What do you notice about it?

Strapless seems dicey, dangerous.

The eagle, kind of a Bustier corset, the American flag style skirt with the stars on blue, the

crown,

the red, white, blue, and yellow color scheme.

She does have her bracelets or wrist sheaths or gauntlets, I guess they would be called.

What am I missing?

She's in heels, which is wild.

So, Chris, as you pointed out, some of those parts of her outfit are a little risque, and there was backlash against the fact that she wasn't really wearing a ton of clothes.

And it also seemed like she was always getting tied up or chained up, bound, gagged.

You get the idea.

So, Gaines forwarded some letters of complaint to Marston, including one written by Dorothy Rubisek, who was actually the first female editor at DC and who had helped edit Wonder Woman.

So, naturally, Marston took this constructive criticism from an actual woman in stride, right, Chris?

Wrong.

He wrote to Gaines, of course, I wouldn't expect Miss Rubisek to understand all of this.

After all, I have devoted my entire life to working out psychological principles.

She's been in comics only six months or so, hasn't she?

And never in psychology.

But, quote, the secret of women's allure, he told Gaines, is that women enjoy submission, being bound.

Some do, I'm sure.

Yeah.

But I would not suggest that's universal, sir.

Well, he disagrees.

Worth noting that Olive and Marston's son thinks that this was not meant literally, i.e., he was not out there tying up ladies on the regular.

He also said, my whole strip is aimed at drawing the distinction in the minds of children and adults between love bonds and male bonds of cruelty and destruction, between submitting to a loving superior and submitting to people like the Nazis.

Okay.

Yeah, so this push and pull continued through Wonder Woman's early days, with Marcon arguing that the kind of eroticism present in Wonder Woman was pretty harmless.

At the end of the day, she was powerful, strong, and in control.

So chains in all, she was mostly on equal footing with her male counterparts, which was very unusual, especially for the time.

They were also all influenced by Byrne's feminist icon aunt, Margaret Sanger, though they kept their connections to her completely secret.

So for the Chains, for example, they are a frequent visual reference to the women's suffrage and feminism movements.

Makes sense.

So in 1944, Gaines commissioned Marston to turn Wonder Woman into a comic strip, which is when he finally hires a woman, 18-year-old student Joy Hummel, to help him write it.

1954, big moral panic about comics.

Wonder Woman becomes particularly offensive to a psychiatrist named Friedrich Wertham,

who testified before a Senate subcommittee that Wonder Woman was a strikingly advanced concept of femininity and masculinity.

And he didn't like that.

Chris didn't like that at all.

But pretty cool for Wonder Woman.

Strikingly advanced.

Yeah, he wants to go ahead and advance that backwards.

I like that the criticism is this is a little too sophisticated.

We're going to need to burn it.

Like I just, you know, imagine like taking that approach today, you know what I mean?

With something where everything is debunked by saying it's wrong or it's stupid.

What if you went in and said, no, this is actually pretty advanced stuff.

And for that reason, we're going to need to just not

go ahead and put this in a bonfire.

So, under a new, relatively restrictive code, Wonder Woman actually became a babysitter and model.

And a feature called Wonder Woman of History that had previously run in the comic, which was highlighting, like, you know, Marie Curie and noted babysitter.

No, no.

That was replaced with something called marriage a la mode, which is describing different and honestly horrifying marriage customs.

Our researcher, Jesse, dug up some of these and they're not fun.

I don't know why you would do this.

Let's hear them.

Well, here's a charming one.

This is a little cartoon of what I'm about to read.

It says, the conclusion of a wedding in rural Croatia, Yugoslavia, is marked by the husband striking his bride three times on the ear to signify that henceforth she must be subservient to him.

And she looks really happy in this sort of comic book picture of him just hitting her on the ear with a big slap with an exclamation point written above her head.

Marriage a la mode.

Two thumbs up.

Okay.

Maybe the whole thing is just trying to make you feel better about your marriage.

That probably is what it is.

It's like, you know,

you think Bob's a stinky pig?

Imagine if he was five times older.

It would work.

Yeah.

All right.

1968.

She becomes a bit of a female James Bond who does martial arts and has a very 1960s outfit.

But Gloria Steinem in 1972 put her on the cover of Ms.

Magazine back in her original getup from the 40s.

And she's basically like, the message was better in the 40s.

So shortly after that, Wonder Woman gets her powers back and she ditches the Fembot outfit.

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All right, 1974, Chris Diana Prince makes it to the screen for the first time in a TV movie.

And then one year later, played by, of course, the iconic Linda Carter in the TV series Wonder Woman, which ran from 1975 to 79.

Have you seen any of that?

Yeah, and it's super campy, super fun, very much in line with the old, you know, Batman show, for example, or we just discussed Lou Ferrigno's turn as Hulk.

Very much in that vein, great costumes, bold colors.

Alexandra Didario always reminds me of Linda Carter for some reason.

Oh, yeah, she does look a little bit like her.

Yeah, she had very piercing eyes, if I'm remembering correctly.

Yeah.

So, fast forward to 1987, comic book artist George Perez, at this point, kind of fully rebooted Wonder Woman with a 62-issue run.

And this is where he changes the name of her homeland from Paradise Island to the mosquito.

Favorite name, the Mosquito Coast.

Yes, The Meskira.

The Meskira removes her high heels and expands on the relationship between gods and mortals.

Now, Patty Jenkins referenced both the original Marston run and George Perez runs as the main sources of influence for Wonder Woman.

Right.

Now that we have waded through all of that background, what is your main takeaway about Wonder Woman's origins/slash/origin story?

Men.

A lot of them.

I think an interesting perspective at first, or at times, from men about this woman and the role of women and the strengths of women, etc.

But there's just a lot of projection of this is either what a woman should be, or what a what a man, maybe what a woman can be, or what a woman needs not to be, or you know, but it's all from that.

Or what they want to consume.

Yes, it's also all over the place and extremely convoluted.

It seems like nobody really knows what to make of her, and every artist and author seems to have a different idea of what she should be, as you said.

There's also an immense amount of pressure to get Wonder Woman right, and it seems to me also to represent all women with this one character, and that's just gonna keep on, keeping on.

Yeah, it's like you get Superman, Krypton, Orphan, American Farmboy, right?

That's true.

Yeah, it's like it's all very clean, is my point, right?

Batman, Richmond, Parristide, Vigilante, Understood, Spider-Man, Bugbite, Superbuff, Toby Maguire.

And Wonder Woman's like, well, when Hippolyta was punished by Hercules for having to, she had to go to the...

I can't.

I tried to read the origin story for this, and I don't know.

It's complicated, and I think one of the reasons it's tricky is that it's also not revealed to her until very late.

You know what I mean?

At least in the movie.

I don't know how it is in the comic books.

It's revealed to her, I believe, in that first comic strip.

It's like all exposition and it's her exposition and Steve Trevor's exposition, I think, in the first one.

And there's like a fun gladiator style, are you not entertained battle where she goes in disguised with a mask and her mother couldn't possibly tell that it's her and she wins the battle to be the emissary from Paradise Island, excuse me, to the United States.

All right.

Woo!

We're finally at the movie, Chris.

So in April of 1996, you mentioned this in the Hulk episode, but a slate of 25 superhero movies were announced as being in development, including James Cameron's Spider-Man.

No, that was actually originally announced in 92.

So that was still in

four years later.

They're like, it's definitely happening.

As he's in pre-production, he's shooting Titanic in 96.

So I love how they're like, it's the next thing up.

He's going to follow up the all-time Oscar-nominated film with Spider-Man.

No, he's not.

It would be Avatar.

Yeah.

It also included Wonder Woman, produced and directed by, do you know this?

No.

Ivan Reitman.

Oh, really?

Coming off of Junior and Twins, which we just talked about.

A natural segue into Wonder Woman.

All right.

Well, 1999, say goodbye to Ivan Reitman because he's already off the project.

But Joel Silver, producer extraordinaire, who we've talked about before, signed on to produce alongside John Cohen.

And they're going to, quote, transform the star-spangled siren Wonder Woman into an edgy action film for Warner Brothers.

Yeah.

Gonna fly a helicopter over some buildings.

Too close.

Way too close.

It's going to be fun.

Chris, what else has Joel Silver done that people will know?

He's an extremely accomplished producer, but mostly of more male-oriented fare.

48 Hours, Commando, Lethal Weapon, Predator, Die Hard, Roadhouse, Predator 2, Die Hard 2, The Last Boy Scout, Demolition Man.

Again, a natural fit for Wonder Woman.

Yeah, exactly.

Any guesses for who they're wooing for the lead role here?

What year is this exactly?

This will be right around 1999, 2000 at this point.

Can you give me hair color?

I know that's almost always brown.

99?

She's charming.

She's quirky.

She

somehow they think that she can play an average woman, even though she looks nothing like an average woman.

She's funny.

She's Jennifer Anison?

No.

Too early.

Sandra Bullock.

Oh, Sandy B.

Old Sandy B.

She's a great choice.

Yeah, I could see it.

She's great in speed.

Right, coming off of speed and miscongeniality at this point.

So a whole host of screenwriters come on to take a stab at the script, including a draft by Todd Alcott, one of the writers of Ants.

Now, this draft leaked online and didn't exactly get a glowing response, with one reviewer calling it, quote, a silly disappointment.

The draft takes sort of a mask of Zorro approach to the story with a younger woman, Donna Troy, taking on the mantle of Wonder Woman from the more established Diana Prince.

Donna Troy, by the way, not a name they pulled out of their ass.

She is the original Wonder Girl, a member of Teen Titans, and in her comic debut, Wonder Woman's younger sister.

Cool.

It sounds like a good concept.

I like that idea.

The review I read of this draft by Stax on IGN, though, made this very salient point.

Quote, overall, What bothered me most about Todd Alcott's draft wasn't that it deviated from the established lore, but that his Wonder Woman was a composite of other movie and comic book characters.

It's as if the filmmakers are reticent to really make a Wonder Woman movie.

Which they probably were because they were nervous.

Exactly.

I think that is spot on.

So October of 2003, Warner Brothers does the unthinkable and decides to actually hire a woman to write the script.

And we wouldn't get a movie for 14 more years.

Yeah.

So that idea didn't pan out.

Yeah, so go ahead and fire her.

Kick her to the curb.

Leta Calligrades, sorry if I mispronounced that, is now writing the screenplay.

By the way, she would go on to create Altered Carbon, write a ton of other films, including Shutter Island, Alita Battle Angel, a lot more.

So, a side note, she also was once fired off of her own show, Bionic Woman, because a male exec told her she didn't know how to write women.

Gotta love the 2000s.

Her draft is fun, but it does feel a bit less grounded than the end result, even though it's set in present day.

opens with a big sort of top gun fighter jet sequence.

Also, Aries is very present from the beginning versus kind of being the monster that you don't see in Jenkins' version, which I actually think works very well.

Now, July of 2004, Chris, Halle Berry's Catwoman is released.

Halle Berry and Sharon Stone's Catwoman.

Sorry, yes.

But mostly Halle Berry's.

Yeah.

It did real bad.

Financially a disaster.

One of the best basketball scenes of all time.

Her playing one-on-one against Benjamin Bratt and like just dunking on him and him being like, wow, you're really good at basketball is amazing.

Yeah, it's gained a cult following in the years since it's released.

It's so fun.

We got to cover it.

It's so fun.

It is fun.

It was, however, absolutely shredded when it came out.

Shredded.

Yeah, mercilessly mocked.

In January of 2005, Electra was released and is also a stinker.

And I would say a lot less.

Not as fun.

No, neither is Ben Affleck's Daredevil.

Neither of those are super fun.

You know what else isn't that fun?

Murder Bat.

Ben Affleck's Batman.

Just murdering left and right.

It's okay, but it's like killing a lot of people in that bat suit.

All right, I suspect these two big-time floppers contributed to a course correction by Silver and Warner Brothers because they decided to put a real feminist on the project, Chris.

Someone who understands women, you know, really knows what they want.

Michael Bay?

No, give me another guess.

This is a writer and director.

He's a feminist, Chris.

Joss Whedon.

There we go.

Yeah.

He was at the time considered publicly

a feminist.

Yeah, I mean, he called himself a feminist, you know, whatever.

In March of 2005, Joss Whedon entered the picture as both writer and director.

Now, at this point, he had created Buffy, the Vampire Slayer, Angel.

Fantastic show.

For some reason, I never watched it.

I think you'd really like it.

It's really, really, really fun.

I bet I would.

Also created Angel, and his first movie, Serenity, was going to be released in September.

Serenity is very good.

Very good.

And Chris is canceled.

Yep.

Now.

Let's hold on talking about the contents of Whedon's actual screenplay because it's going to come back.

And by the way, listeners, we're joking.

Like, it's totally fine to love Buffy the Vampire Slayer and, you know, all of this content.

However, two years later, Chris, on February 1st, 2007, the Hollywood Reporter claimed that Warner Brothers was in the process of buying a spec Wonder Woman script from screenwriters Matthew Janison and Brent Strickland.

Now, allegedly, they did this to avoid any legal issues due to similarities with Whedon's script, but that doesn't really make sense because the similarities seem quite scarce.

That version was set in World War II, and Whedon's was very much present day.

So maybe no big deal, right?

Wrong.

He was warned by a friend about the purchase before it happened.

And two days later, on February 3rd, he makes this really annoying and long announcement on his now thankfully defunct fansite that I'm not going to read all of because it's just too many words.

But here's a little bit, Chris.

You hopefully heard it here first.

I'm no longer slated to make Wonder Woman.

What?

But how?

My chest.

So tight.

Okay, stay calm and I'll explain as best I can.

It's pretty complicated, so bear with me.

I had a take on the film that, well, nobody liked.

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 going to work.

Non-sympatico, it happens all the time.

I don't think any of us expected it to this time, but it did.

Everybody knows how long I was taking, what a struggle that script was, and though I felt good about what I was coming up with, it was never going to be a simple slam dunk.

I like to think it rolled around the rim a little bit, but others may have differing views.

The worst thing that can happen in this scenario is that the studio just keeps hammering out changes and the writer falls into a horrible limbo of development.

These guys had the clarity and grace to skip that part, so I'm a free man.

Blah, blah, blah.

Joss Whedon keeps writing.

He keeps talking an awful lot.

And then at the very end, he says at least he doesn't have to answer the question of who would play Wonder Woman, but then he signs off with P.S.

All right.

It was Kobe Smelters.

Sorry, Cobes.

Interesting.

I think Jack Dorsey read that and said, a tweet should be shorter than this and set it to 140 characters.

It's not the saltiest.

It's not salty.

I think, honestly, pretty like...

Pretty chill post.

It's very long, but.

Oh, it's so much longer than what I just read.

I think this post is indicative of how much power Joss Whedon really had at this time, especially within...

you know, a bit of a nerdy subculture that he'd helped create.

And Kobe Smolders, that's really interesting.

I never would have guessed that, candidly, she was known enough at this time

not to say that she couldn't do it.

She's a wonderful actress.

But maybe Whedon had the power, as I was saying, to put her in the lead role and

have her carry the film.

Yeah, maybe.

Now, Joel Silver also said nice things about Joss Whedon.

They're both very effusive about each other, but based on a lot of things that I read, it sure sounds like Joel Silver really hated what Joss Whedon was writing.

And Joss Whedon was very frustrated that Joel Silver and the studio wouldn't just tell him what they wanted.

And I think that's because they didn't know what they wanted.

Now, actresses considered during the Joel Silver years included Beyonce.

Okay.

I'm going to leave that there.

Angelina Jolie.

I mean, she is, she's the most obvious.

choice for sure.

Sure, but she's not any fun.

I love Angelina Jolie.

I don't think she would be funny or a little too easy.

Mr.

and Mrs.

Smith, she's very charming in that movie.

She is charming, but I would not qualify her as funny.

Anyway,

Jessica Beale.

Okay.

Yeah.

Sarah Michelle Geller, Megan Fox, and Kate Beckinsale, who had this to say to Yahoo News after she had seen Patty Jenkins' version.

Quote, the incarnations that I was seeing were, they weren't this one.

I don't know if I was desperate to be an Eleotard.

I'd already done the rubber trousers.

You have to take in that you have a child at some point, and how much could you possibly embarrass them?

I like Kate Beckinzale a lot.

She's great.

And also, I mean, Underworld.

That's what she meant.

Yeah, one of my favorite vampire werewolf series ever.

It's Twilight for Boys is what I like to call it.

Totally.

Is fantastic and so silly.

And she's great in those movies.

I love it.

Twilight can be for boys too.

An underworld can be for girls.

And Michael Sheen's in both.

He loves it.

He's my favorite.

So by September of 2007, we're now in George Miller Justice League territory, which you can hear a little bit more about in our Mad Max Fury Road episode and our eventual Justice League episode, which we will be doing.

But for the sake of time, all you really need to know is that it fell apart.

So back to our screenwriter, Caligritas, about why Wonder Woman was stuck in development hell for so long.

She said that the performance of female-led superhero movies, Catwoman, Elektra, helped feed into the erroneous perception that women can't be the lead in superhero movies.

This perception, by the way, ignores the fact that both Catwoman and Electra are anti-heroes at best, villains at worst, and the movies themselves had other issues.

And then she goes on to point out that, like, nobody looks at Daredevil or Ghost Rider and says, oh, well, men can't be the leads in, you know, superhero movies.

Well, and I'd also point out like Aeon Flux, which we spoke about, which is Karen Kusama and Charlize Theron.

And I also struggled, you know, at the box office.

And Karen was put in director jail for a while as a result.

When there were flops by male directors at the time, who just, you know, rolled into the next thing.

Yeah.

So, October of 2010, Warner Brothers decide they want to move in a totally different direction when it's announced that David E.

Kelly,

best known for creating Alien McBeal and the practice, was going to create a Wonder Woman series.

By the way, they took Wonder Woman away from Joel Silver.

According to the New York Times, they wanted to be able to exert more control over the property and hire some cheaper producers.

He wanted too many helicopters.

Now, there was public outcry about David E.

Kelly.

People thought he was a wrong choice.

He had issues writing women characters.

I think that's interesting since sort of complicated women become kind of his bread and butter later on with big little lies.

But in February of 2011, Adrienne Palicki of Friday Night Lights was attached to star as Wonder Woman.

And Chris, have you ever seen this footage?

I have.

Okay, would you like to see it again or do you want to...

Okay, great.

Adrienne Palicki, who makes a lot of sense physically, especially for the role.

She's very beautiful.

She's very imposing, I think.

She's tall.

She looks strong.

Yeah, all I can say is poor Adrienne Palicki.

She did not deserve this.

And just so you know, in this iteration, Wonder Woman is a public-facing figure, but it is her norm core alter ego, Diana Prince, who's kind of a cat lady Clark Kent, minus the exciting journalism career.

So let's watch a little bit of this and we'll be right back.

Okay.

All right.

That's enough.

More than enough of that.

So what's hard is it's like it's broadcast television, right?

It does not, if you were to put that up on, for example, the CW next to the flash or

arrow,

it would look fine.

The problem, the costume feels extremely dated, right?

And she's very Amazonian the way she's built, but that makes it feel even more exaggerated, how teeny tiny that costume is.

Yeah.

None of it looks like something that I think women actually want to watch.

I don't know.

But I would argue with a few minor tweaks, you're not too far from the tone that eventually She-Hulk, attorney at law, kind of took.

That's true, which was fun.

Exactly.

So there could be a version of this that could have worked, you know, altered 15 degrees in a few ways.

When I watch it, people really like to dunk on this footage, just my point.

Yes.

And I see a misfire, but I can understand

almost every decision here, especially given the context in which it was made.

And it just didn't quite add up.

I don't know.

I don't, to me, it's not.

It doesn't work.

I think it doesn't work on a lot of different levels.

It's certainly not her fault.

It's, you know, I do feel bad for her for how much this got dunked on.

Yeah.

Also, Pedro Pascal was in that pilot.

And, of course, he would come back for Wonder Woman 1984.

Well, he wasn't hot enough yet.

That's right.

That's kind of true.

He had to

hotness has grown.

He's gained some weight.

He got the facial hair.

I think he looks better now.

Good for you, Pedro, that glow up.

Yeah.

In September of 2012, Warner Brothers announces they're pivoting again, but staying in TV with a CW show called Amazon that would focus on Wonder Woman's origin.

Year and a half later, the project is dead, but it's important to our story today because it's how writer Alan Heinberg entered the picture.

So a little bit of background on him.

He was a TV writer with a long history at this point of writing female-driven content with a wide appeal.

Think Gray's Anatomy, Party of Five, my personal favorite early aughts masterpiece, The OC.

Yeah, fantastic.

Let's just say

still the greatest episode.

According to Heinberg in an interview with the Backlot podcast, he said, I'm a gay man and always have been.

So I've never looked at women as a sexual object.

I never sexually desired or objectified a woman.

And so it would never occur to me to write a woman from that point of view as a sexual object.

I don't approach them any differently, except that, and this is important.

I know the world treats women differently.

It's a really interesting point.

Yeah.

I thought you were going to end that quote with, with, I don't approach them.

Yeah.

And we'll leave it there.

He also wrote for DC Comics Wonder Woman series and had an obsession with Wonder Woman going all the way back to childhood and was able to move to LA and get into screenwriting thanks to a play he wrote called The Amazon's Voice, starring Tim Blake Nelson, of all people, by the way.

Cool.

So, meanwhile, Zach Snyder.

has started to make his mark on the DC cinematic universe with Man of Steel premiering in June of 2013, which was a box office success, of course, starring Henry Cavill.

I stand by, I still like Man of Steel.

It's good.

It's long, but it's good, and it created one of the best memes ever, which is Kevin Costner calmly putting his hand up and telling Henry Cavill not to save him when he's about to get sucked out of a very preventable hurricane in the beginning of that movie.

All he has to do is cross 10 feet to the overpass, and he'd be fine.

He's like, nope, son, I want to die.

Let me go.

It's great.

So Henry Cavill signed on for three more films, and Warner Brothers says, Hey, Justice League, it's back on.

This time it will feature Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman.

One story that was pitched from Paul Feig around this time apparently had Wonder Woman, quote, hitting the glass ceiling of the superhero world, butting heads with somewhat sexist Batman and Superman.

And then she has diarrhea in the sink.

Oh, man, I don't want to see this.

I love Paul Feig, but yeah.

For God's sake, though, when are they going to hire a woman to treat it?

They got a few more to get through.

Oh, it's going to take several more years.

All right.

So fall of 2013, Snyder is hard at work on his follow-up to Man of Steel.

As we said, Batman v Superman, Dawn of Justice, aka Murder Bat via versus Alien Man.

I watched it.

It's not the worst thing I've ever seen.

Anyway, they're looking for Wonder Woman.

So actresses who tested included Olga Kurilenko from Quantum of Solace, of course.

And Taskmaster in Black Widow and Thunderbolts, briefly.

And also Ela D.

Young, who you may know from Daredevil or the Cleaning Lady on Hulu.

Fun fact, I went to acting school in London with Ella D, and she's a very lovely lady who I think would have made an interesting Wonder Woman, although she is French and also extremely tiny, which I think is interesting.

Like one of the tiniest humans.

Very nice.

By December of 2013, former Miss Israel Gal Gadot was officially cast in the role.

Now, she was best known at this point for having played Giselle Yashar in the Fast and the Furious franchise, although known for more in her home country.

She'd gotten her start as a model before putting that career on hold to join the Israeli army.

Eventually, she was studying law and international relations when her old modeling agent reached out.

A British casting director was looking for the next Bond girl, and they wanted Gal to audition.

The role was in English, which of course not her first language.

She had almost no acting experience, and so she was very close to not going.

But she said, what the hell, showed up, and didn't get the part.

Too tall.

Get out of here.

She enjoyed it quite a bit and told her agent that she was open to more auditions.

And just the way that it works for every other actor in Hollywood, she booked an Israeli TV show and Fast and Furious within three months.

Exactly.

I think I'll try this acting thing.

Yeah.

Okay.

Now, her second bit of Kismet happened sometime in early 2011 when she was pregnant with her first daughter, Alma.

She was actually offered the role of a villain in a Superman movie, but had to turn it down due to the pregnancy.

Had she accepted, of course, she would not have played Wonder Woman.

Now, fans speculate that was referring to the villain role in Man of Steel.

By January of 2014, Gal had signed a three-picture deal as well.

So this is interesting because they move really fast with her.

Yeah.

Why do you think that would be?

I just think they literally probably did like a screen test slash photo shoot and they were like, great.

And I'm guessing she wasn't that expensive too at this point in time.

And so that's also fantastic because Zach Snyder is going to shoot everything in such slow motion, it's going to take up all the hard drives in Hollywood.

Yes.

So despite Godot being locked in long term, the creative team was still in major upheaval.

According to Jenkins, even by the time she had signed on, there was, quote, an internal war at every level about what Wonder Woman should be, but we are still not to patty yet.

Now, in November of 2014, Michelle McLaren was announced as the director of the standalone Wonder Woman film.

She would quote, lasso together a script.

You get it?

Yeah, because that's how that works.

Yes.

With as of yet unnamed writers, Zack Snyder, Charles Roven, and Deborah Snyder would produce.

Now, she's mostly known as a TV director.

She worked on Breaking Bad and Game of Thrones.

By the end of that year, Jason Fuchs, who had just written Pan, was attached to Wright.

Now, he does end up with a story credit, so elements of his draft must have remained.

2015, our old friend Alan Heinberg gets a call from Wonder Woman producer Jeff Johns.

Now, remember, Amazon?

They had worked together on it.

Johns wants Heinberg to come just talk to Zack Snyder and basically just share everything he knows about Wonder Woman because he knows this guy is a super fan.

Heinberg said that there have been five writers, two scripts, three treatments, a director.

Basically, he says they were not coalescing into a vision that everybody felt comfortable moving forward with.

So he goes into a dinner meeting with Zack Snyder and he's nervous because he's exclusively been a TV writer up to this point.

And Snyder is basically just like,

what's your take on the script that we have?

He says it's not working.

It's too close to Batman versus Superman.

And both of those characters, as you said, Chris, already have very established origin stories.

He's like, Wonder Woman needs to be a fish out of water movie.

So think Splash or The Little Mermaid.

And it needs to be emotional and relationship based.

Yeah.

Which, to your point, that is the best part of this movie.

And at the end of a three-hour dinner, Zack Snyder's like, okay, you and I are going to do a page one rewrite on this.

And Heinberg's like, I have a day job.

I work on scandal from 10 to 6 every day.

Of course, Shonda Rhimes' show.

So what does Zack Snyder say?

I'll meet you at 6.30.

Be here at 7.15.

And we'll work till 11.

Yep.

Good for Zach Snyder.

Smart move.

Over the next three nights, Heinberg, Snyder, and Johns broke the movie.

That weekend, Heinberg wrote up a pitch, and it was pretty much immediately greenlit.

So Zach Snyder is like, you have to write a treatment.

Chris, what is a treatment versus a pitch?

Well, they pretty much require a treatment when you pitch now anyway.

But if you pitch, I think you can get by with these are the major beats of the movie.

This is our, these are our characters.

Here's our break into act one.

This is our fun and game section of the script.

This is the midpoint reversal.

Here is our end of act two low point.

Here's our act three tension, our twist, and we'll get you to the end.

You can be relatively vague between those plot points.

A treatment is going to require all of the necessary scaffolding to get the audience from the very beginning of the movie to the very end.

But it's written in prose form as opposed to screenplay form.

So it often omits dialogue.

It would read to the layperson like a very detailed summary of the movie.

One thing I would mention, Lizzie, while I have a moment, is I wonder if Zach Snyder, who seems like a

relatively, you know, self-aware filmmaker and, you know, for better or worse, knows what he likes.

He had made this movie called Sucker Punch a few years prior that I don't think really worked and was criticized pretty heavily for the way that it portrayed its almost entirely female lead cast.

And I wonder if part of this was

him recognizing, yeah, I might need help with this female character here that, you know, I think so.

I think he knew pretty early on that he needed help and that he needed someone who was an expert, which is what he found in Heinberg.

But as you just described, a treatment is a lot of work.

A lot of work.

Heinberg says, no, thank you.

But Snyder convinces him and he turns it around in a week.

Wow.

Now the treatment gets approved.

And Snyder's like, all right, buddy, write this thing.

And Alan Heinberg is having an absolute meltdown because he thinks he's setting himself up for failure with way too much work.

But Shonda Rhimes actually stepped in and helped him rearrange his entire schedule to be able to make this work, which is pretty unusual for being on an active TV series.

Yep.

Now, his apprehension was not off base.

He said at one point there were up to 12 writers all working off of his outline with their own scripts.

He tried to quit 16 times and they would not let him.

What?

What are the 12 writers doing?

They're writing their own scripts off of his outline.

I don't, it sounds horrible.

It sounds absolutely horrible.

It's like in a studio's attempt at doing the 900,000 monkeys like clanking randomly until they can get to somebody else.

Exactly.

However, they did let Michelle McLaren quit, or more likely, she was let go.

It sounds like the studio did not like her story concepts.

Sure.

And two days after she's out, on April 15th, 2015, Patty Jenkins finally got the job in a budget of around $150 million.

So Jenkins would have been hired, I'm sure, earlier, right?

We're going to talk about it.

She's been in the mix for quite a bit longer than it appeared.

Got it.

Now, the script was halfway done, and the only person officially cast was Gal Gadote, which Jenkins wasn't exactly stoked about.

She told Playboy, I remember when I read in the news that Wonder Woman had been cast, my heart sank.

I'm sure we wouldn't have made the same choice.

And then I started paying attention to her and watching her and looking at her, and it was just unbelievable.

At this point, Patty Jenkins, best known for writing and directing Monster, of course, starring Charlie Sarin, in 2003.

In fact, Monster was the only feature film that she had directed at this point.

She'd been steadily working in TV for years on shows like Arrested Development and The Killing, which she was nominated for an Emmy for.

I thought the killing was great.

She directed The Pilot.

Oh, that's right.

And The Pilot is awesome.

Yep.

It wasn't for lack of offers that she didn't make a second feature.

She was very cautious.

As she said on the Talking Pictures podcast, quote, I thought it would ruin my career to make a movie if it wasn't great, which I think is really smart.

Now, as you said, Chris, two days after McLara left the project feels really fast for her to have been hired, but Jenkins had been in the mix for over 10 years at this point.

As early as 2004, she had pitched Warner Brothers on her version of Wonder Woman.

And this makes sense.

She's a young indie director.

She's coming off of a big female-led Oscar-winning hit at that point.

They came back around to her in 2007, ready to move forward, but she was pregnant.

So that would have been around George Miller time.

In 2010, she pitched the studio her idea again.

Some sources say this was the pitch to set it it in World War I.

Others say that was Heinberg's idea.

That's a bit unclear.

Either way, they went ahead and moved forward with McLaren over Jenkins because Jenkins didn't like the direction they wanted to go in, but something must have been nagging at producer Charles Roven because he asked his daughter Rebecca Roven to stay in contact with Jenkins and she did.

Just one year later, Jenkins almost became the first woman to direct a Marvel movie, Thor, the Dark World, but she trusted her gut again and she bailed.

She told Vanity Fair, I did not believe that I could make a good movie out of of the script they were planning on doing.

I think it would have been a huge deal.

It would have looked like it was my fault.

It would have looked like, oh my God, this woman directed it and she missed all these things.

So she's very accustomed to people not trusting her, dismissing her ideas, even though her ideas are what got her hired.

And of course, she had taken her time to get here and she knew how to handle it.

She said that even by the time she got to Wonder Woman, quote, even all the way up to Wonder Woman, when I first joined Wonder Woman, it was kind of like, yeah, okay, but let's do it this other way.

And I was like, women don't want to see that.

Her being harsh and tough and cutting people's heads off.

I'm a Wonder Woman fan.

That's not what we're looking for.

So I could still feel that little shaky nervousness of my point of view.

So she and Heinberg get together to finish the script very quickly.

At this point, they move really fast.

With Wonder Woman in place, Jenkins got to work on casting the rest of the principal roles.

It sounds like this is just a rumor, but Sean Bean may have been under discussion for a villain in this.

I think who they ended up with, David Thuleis, is a perfect pick because he really does not telegraph the villainy, is an excellent actor, and is somebody who, though he's been in a ton of films, including obviously major franchises like Harry Potter, I think remains a bit of a chameleon and sort of hard to pick out.

Although, if you're a big Dragonheart fan like me, you know he's going to be the villain the whole time.

So, yeah.

Just leave that there.

So Charlize Theron was offered the role of Diana's mother, Hippolyta, but she told Andy Cohen on Watch What Happens Live it was a bit of a wake-up call because she assumed she was being offered Wonder Woman.

I was gonna say.

I mean, yes, they're all like ageless, technically.

That is confusing.

She's not that old.

That's my point.

Yeah.

No, no, no.

I'm saying the only way you could justify it is by saying once they all hit the age of 35 or 40, they stop aging.

They just stay that way.

Exactly.

Yeah, exactly.

Connie Nielsen makes a lot more fun.

Makes a lot more sense.

And more fun.

Yeah, more fun.

Hippolyta ended up being a difficult role to cast.

Nicole Kidman was in talks to play her, also, I think, would have made sense.

But when a press release came out in November of 2015, her name was not on it.

Allegedly, Robin Wright was cast at this point, and they were trying to figure out whether to make her Hippolyta or give her another role.

They actually didn't even get Connie Nielsen until after Principal Photography had already started.

So I don't know why that was so hard to fill.

I, you know,

I feel like if you're an actress, that role is

effectively telling the audience, I am introducing you to the next generation of leading lady,

and I

don't really matter anymore.

And also, I disappear at the end of the first act.

Going quietly and

exactly.

At least Robin Wright gets like a cool death, you know what I mean, in the first act.

But and she gets to do badass stuff.

And Connie Nielsen does too.

But

I can completely understand not wanting to

be the one who says, look, it's the new model.

I will exit stage left now.

Scott Eastwood, also considered for Steve Trevor.

I like Scott Eastwood, but Chris Pine brings the energy in this movie.

Yeah.

Yeah.

In May of 2015, Chris Pine, as you said, is announced as Steve Trevor.

To me, this is just pitch perfect casting.

Could not do better than this.

It makes so much sense after Captain Kirk.

Also, my favorite celebrity, Chris, hands down.

Yo, yeah.

Secret best Chris and Heller High Water.

Oh, best one.

Not even a secret.

He just is the best one.

But also DC Chris versus all the other three are Marvel Chris's.

And so this is

true.

Oh, that's true.

And he's the only non-super Chris in these movies.

Super Chris in my heart.

Although, arguably Star-Lord has no powers.

So don't at me, nerds.

So he actually took some convincing.

He told the Hollywood Reporter, I had no interest in playing the boyfriend, and it sounded like second fiddle.

Then, in talking to Patty, the way she described it was, forget the superhero of it all.

This is a romance.

This is Casablanca.

That's the movie I want to make.

And I was like, oh, now that is very cool.

Because when have you seen a superhero film that was a love story, ultimately, that had nothing to do with blowing shit up?

Which I do think is what this movie does really, really well.

Yeah, until he gets blown up.

Until he literally blows himself up in midair.

For love.

For love.

No, the movie, their dynamic is very charming and it really motors the movie.

It does.

It's very sweet.

It's believable when Steve, as she says, dies.

Steve!

It did make me cry.

She put on 17 pounds of muscle to prep for the role, working out for six months, six hours a day.

Now, initially, there was backlash to her getting the park.

People felt like she was too skinny.

I just want to say, that's dumb.

Nobody said that about Christian Bale when he got Batman.

He just went to the gym and so did she.

Okay, hold on.

Really?

No.

Christian Bale put on a hundred pounds for Batman Begins from the machinist when he weighed 120.

She put on a whole 17 pounds.

I know, and good for her, but I'm just saying that's not an entirely fair comparison.

It is because he put on a hundred pounds.

You can do it.

That's my whole point.

You can do it.

I know.

He hadn't done it before.

I know.

I'm just saying.

He was not beefy yet.

But she did not do the exact same thing.

She did do the same thing, but I'm just saying she looks great in this.

She does.

She just went to the gym.

Jesse just texted me that I'm canceled.

Thank you, Jesse.

Yes.

No, she looks great.

She looks fantastic.

She did everything she needs to get in shape for the role.

I'm just saying it's not exactly the same.

I stand by my comparison.

My whole point is you can just go to the gym, I say, as someone who refuses to currently go to the gym.

Well, I was going to say, you say you in in a really loose way there.

I say you, meaning anyone but me.

I mean Hollywood actors with trainers and steroids.

That's right.

They can go to the gym.

Also, Chris, you have mentioned this when we've been talking about it, but her accent.

Now,

I know you have said this.

I have read this before that, oh, you know, everybody has an Israeli accent because she can't.

I kind of said like a generic accent.

Like they kind of just assign an accent, it seems like, to the island that's kind of Gal Gadot.

That's a lie.

You said everybody has Gal Gadot's accent because she can't do an American accent.

Yes.

Now, that is what I said.

I want to push back on that a little bit.

If you watch Batman versus Superman, Dawn of Justice, which again, can't say I recommend it.

But if you do, you'll notice that she has almost no accent in that, which is much closer to what her normal accent is.

And in future iterations of Wonder Woman, including 1984, it is much less there as well.

It's also different from what her natural accent is.

They made a choice here to go with a very thick, sort of like almost ancient Greek type accent.

To me, that makes sense.

Why not do that?

Themeskira is some kind of ancient Greek island, and I don't think they're all just doing her accent.

I think they made a choice to do this.

Yes, it is a version of hers, I think, but it's certainly thicker.

It's more pronounced.

It is something where they're, they, I don't think it's just them being like, well, she can't do it.

I was being, I was being a dick and facilitator.

And a lot of people on the internet.

So I stand corrected.

Here's the only thing I'll say, because

I don't care.

The movie's super fun.

The accents don't bother me at all.

I think what's interesting when I was watching it, I was thinking about this.

Accents are so hard.

Because especially when the movie is going to cross language barriers, which this movie kind of does with Danny Houston's amazing scenery-chewing

German accent.

You can either do the Ridley Scott, where you say, Everyone's British.

Everyone's just whatever they are, basically.

It's just, who cares, man?

It's fine.

Or you do like the Tarantino with Inglorious Bastards, where like language is going to be a real part of this plot.

And the joke is going to be Brad Pitt trying to sound Italian, which is ridiculous and will tip off Christophe Walsh.

And I think, you know,

what I felt like a couple of times this movie, because of the lore, tries to weave between those two.

You know what I'm saying?

What all of a sudden, my point is, what bothered me, the the only thing that actually bothered me in this movie was chris pine doing

a german accent i am 100 with you that i was like wait hold on a second what's going on i know so it felt like he didn't like it either i don't think he did i think he was like this is dumb get to me out of this car

well the other amazons also spent about four to six months training and worked with trainers from 300 yeah obviously another zack snyder classic i love 300.

Now, Connie Nielsen revealed that Warner Brothers flew her from her home in San Francisco to London to shoot so she could still be with her kids every week.

That sounds like a nightmare.

But one day she realized she was able to lift her gigantic bag overhead with one arm because she'd gotten so jacked from all the training that they were doing.

It sounds like it was very accommodating of a lot of moms on set.

Chris Pine said that in Italy, all the husbands showed up with kids and strollers to watch the moms work, which is very cool.

And just side-eye Chris Pine the whole time.

Like, what are you doing?

Yeah, you better keep your eye on him.

You handsome bastard.

Now, the actual production sounds like it was a bit of a slog.

It began in November of 2015, and they shot six days a week for six months straight.

Godot was freezing cold because they shot mostly in England and she was wearing a pretty skimpy outfit.

Here she is talking about the first time she put the costume on with Jimmy Kimmel.

Oh, it takes time to

Then they got me into the fitting room and then I tried the costume and I was so happy and so grateful and

thankful for being there and doing this role that I didn't say anything about the fact that it was so tight and I literally could not breathe.

So I was just

trying to get myself together, keep it all together.

It was so small, but I didn't say anything because I was just so

was it a guy that made the costume?

Of course, but I love him.

But right before I passed out, they noticed that I was breathing quite heavily.

And then you have to fight and it's very active in an outfit like that.

And you must feel

vulnerable in that.

No, just cold.

Just cold, yeah.

I guess it would be weird for Wonder Woman to have like a Wonder Parka or like a Wonder

Hardigan or something like that.

I don't know who came up with the idea of shooting Wonder Woman during the English winter.

This was the guys, again, the guys on the...

Yeah.

You saw the costume.

Is that what it was?

The No Man's Land shoot was particularly grueling.

She told the Hollywood Reporter the shoots were so intense, six days a week for six months, but what Patty really cared about most was the emotional fate of a fight because we do the drills and the choreography and you can have them down technically, but if the emotion is not specific, Patty would say, let's do it again.

She also was not confident with the way she ran.

So they actually shot a lot of that sequence with her on a treadmill.

Also, apparently Jenkins had to really fight for that scene.

Studio executives didn't get the no man's land thing.

They were like,

go to the town where she blows shit up.

You don't need to do this sequence.

Here's what I'll say to that.

I could totally understand reading it on the page.

Because from a plot perspective,

you could say, what are we doing here?

Like, let's just keep moving, right?

But it feels very important from a plot perspective to me.

Sure.

I don't know.

I just feel like you could just, if the goal is to get to this town and that's where the people who are, you know, in danger or whatever, blah, blah, blah.

Yeah, okay, that's fair.

I just, it's like, it's a very expensive scene and it doesn't feel entirely necessary to the mechanics of the the plot.

Therefore, it could be at risk of being cut in post-production.

That's all I would, but having seen it, yeah, it's great.

Come on, it's the most important imagery in the whole movie.

The scene where she's like got the moment where she has the shield up, and the bullets are hitting so hard that she's literally getting like pushed back in the dirt and she's digging her heels in.

I even got a little emotional there, and I'm not a feminist.

And

so, and I'm famously not a woman, and I'm you know, Joss Whedon cried really hard during that scene.

No, but it's an amazing scene.

It is the centerpiece that the whole movie is hung on visually.

Yes.

It's fantastic.

The beach scene was similarly grueling.

It took three weeks to shoot that beach battle.

The TP Matthew Jensen described the process: quote, the second unit and the first unit joined together on quite a bit of it.

And we had six cameras out shooting all these Amazons and Germans.

It was just mayhem when you have so many cameras and I'm trying to control the exposure, making sure the shots are right, yelling instructions to the F-camera operator who has a small camera buried in the sand and is 100 yards away from me.

It's a complex dance.

To populate the beach scene, the team hired several female athletes, including an Olympic bob sledder, a heptathlete, I don't even know what that is, and a police officer, plus American CrossFit champion Brooke Entz and Swedish pro fighter Madeline.

Valbanier.

I am sorry about that one, Madeline.

Oh, she's gonna beat you up for that pronunciation.

I deserve it.

This scene was also a challenge in post-production.

Here is VFX producer who, Chris, you might know because she actually worked on Moonshot, Amber Kirsch, talking about how Amber completed this.

Amber's fantastic.

Amber really helped us out with a lot of stuff.

She's wonderful.

Well, here she is explaining how they completed this shot in post-production.

One of the most challenging shots was a shot on the beach battle where it had many, many layers, around nine layers.

And we had to shoot shoot each of those actions, the foreground action, the mid-ground, the back, and nine layers deep, all in separate passes.

And then feather them together and add various elements, including the whole entire background of the cliff, to make the shot possible.

Yeah, there's a lot of great stuff on that page, including there's some really effective like digital double takeovers where the actors' bodies become digi-doubles.

And, you know, as the

as the trained warrior Amazons destroy the starving farm boy German soldiers on the beach.

Chris, you seem awfully sympathetic.

No, I'm just kidding.

I'm just teasing.

I just always, in superhero movies, it's always funny when, like, for example, like, you know, it's like, oh, Superman takes down the bad guy.

It's like, yeah, he can't be killed.

Like, he's Superman.

He's Superman.

Of course.

It was additionally challenging because they shot mostly on 35 millimeter film.

I was going to ask, it looks like film.

It's film.

It looks great.

I was so happy.

Yeah.

Yeah.

DP Matthew Jensen again said the poor camera assistants were just freaking out every day, asking him if the shots from the previous day had been in focus because of course you don't get the same immediate confirmation that you get from digital.

Yep.

What are your thoughts on how the movie looks?

Overall, I really like the way the movie looks.

It has kind of like a almost harshly exposed, like bleach bypass sort of look to it.

Some scenes are, it's not this extreme, but reminiscent of something like Saving Private Ryan, especially in the World War I sequences.

I think it does a good job of, it's a little more colorful, it's a little more fun,

but it still has enough of the Snyder-verse feel to it that it feels like it exists.

It still fits in.

Exactly.

It fits in that same ooze

as I like to say.

As the French say.

Yes, exactly as they say.

Yeah, I think that's exactly right.

It sits, I think, between the sort of very washed out Snyder verse Man of Steel and the very cartoony Marvel universe.

They used John Singer Sargent paintings as references.

And if you look at some of those, that looks really comes through.

I think it looks beautiful.

I think it looks very elevated compared to a lot of other superhero movies at the time.

They shot across almost 40 locations, including Trafalgar Square, which they shut down for the Armistice Day scene.

Also, they shot at King's Cross Station in London, bringing in a pre-World War I train on the tracks and shutting down two platforms for the weekend.

I bet people were stoked about that.

Yep.

And here's the thing, Chris, we're not going to spend a lot more time on production because not that much went wrong.

Patty Jenkins and her team absolutely kicked ass once this thing was in action.

She firmly believed that the 14 years she'd spent working and learning between Monster and Wonder Woman had trained her for this level of project, even though she sometimes said she felt like a loser.

Quote, in retrospect, the amount of political savvy and adulthood and maturity that I needed to not lose my shit and just be able to handle those jobs all those years were super helpful to getting there.

Well, now I know that as I feel like a loser every day, it's just getting me that much closer to directing a fantastic superhero film.

That's right.

She viewed herself as the CEO of Wonder Woman, and that is really what this job is when you're doing it right.

However, that came with an overwhelming sense of responsibility.

She said she would literally just think to herself, please don't die, because she was the only person who knew how every piece of the puzzle went together.

This is sad, but also kind of funny.

She was was on a flight about three-fourths of the way through the movie and they hit some really bad turbulence.

And her first and only thought was to email her team to be like, if I die, I am not okay with this change to the movie.

And her second thought was to send those same instructions to her husband, just in case they didn't make it to the team.

Yes, exactly.

So let me ask you, what's your feeling about the final fight scene between Wonder Woman and Aries?

I think it is

again, I think visually it actually is pretty strong compared to some of the other like end of third act fight.

Like The Flash got really wonky recently, you know, stuff like that.

But to me, it just doesn't,

it's not as interesting as the rest of the movie, is what I'll say, because it's no longer grounded in the world that we've established and really care about and has the interpersonal stakes that we want to be engaged in.

All right.

Again, you are spot on.

It was never Jenkins' intention for Aries to actually become a god.

Yeah.

I thought that's such an interesting idea, right?

That naive belief that, like, oh, you know, if we can kill Aries,

men will be good.

I really like that,

that kind of moral compass that she has, as flawed and childlike as it is.

She told Mark Maron, quote, the whole point of the movie was that you get there to the big monster and he's just standing there looking at you and saying, I didn't do anything.

And then the studio studio kept saying, Okay, we'll let you do that, and then we'll see.

And then I could feel it creeping up at the last minute.

They were like, You know what?

We want Aries to show up.

And I was like, God damn it, we don't have time to do that now.

And so it pisses me off because sometimes I'll read the reviews and I'm like, The only thing that we got unanimously some shit about was that the end pyrotechnics and that, like, DC always does this.

And the truth is, it was them.

The studio did make me do that, and it wasn't right, but that's okay.

Yeah, and I think she's right.

And and

it doesn't quite work it's it is a bit of a bummer because i do think this would have been so much better and honestly creepier to have it just be

david zulis like it's yeah it sucks the wind out of the sails of a lot of things and and

again it just it's kind of it becomes something that you have to endure to get to the end of the movie as opposed to something that you're surprised to discover and a lot of what's fun about wonder woman are the moments of surprise i also think that they they only did a couple of reshoots.

They only reshot one entire scene.

It's actually towards the end when she, right before she fights Aries, they reshot it to really ramp up the tension, showing the horses getting whipped and stuff.

I wonder if that's also because when they had to add in all this stuff with Aries, it just didn't quite work the way they had shot it previously.

By the way, Godot was five months pregnant with her second daughter during the late reshoots, and they had to cut the costume open and put a green screen over her bump.

Now, in March of 2016, Batman v Superman Dawn of Justice was released and introduced the world to Godot's Wonder Woman.

The reviews for Gal were great.

The reviews for the movie were not.

And, you know, it's not the worst thing I've ever seen.

No, it's fine.

But it led to just one of the greatest memes of sad Ben Affleck.

Have you seen that?

Of him and Henry Cavill doing the interview?

And it just

slowly cutting to Hello Darkness, my old friend.

On him as Henry Cavill speaks animatedly about the movie.

And you can just see Ben processing, like, wait, am I going to be stuck doing Batman for the next five years?

He had to be tired.

The number of scenes in that movie that are just him lifting like tires with his legs doing pull-ups, leave him alone.

Anyway, it made money, and the hype started to build for Wonder Woman's solo feature.

So, after Batman vs.

Superman, Dawn of Justice, Wonder Woman, and Justice League, Gal was understandably very tired.

She had also gotten a hernia and had a whole ass baby, which let me tell you, that's enough to make you just want to lay down for 10 years.

So she did all six weeks of press with a hernia and again, having just given birth.

And she actually had to stand for all of the press because her back hurt so badly.

She was in the OR getting surgery when Wonder Woman finally premiered.

Jesus.

Speaking of the press for this movie, it initially got some backlash because people pointed out that it had a lot fewer marketing assets out ahead of release compared to Suicide Squad.

Although Sue Kroll, head of marketing for Warner Brothers at the time, said this was not accurate.

But I couldn't really find a ton to back up that there

was the same amount of promo.

It seemed like maybe there was not.

Suicide Squad had a bigger cast and it had a more recognizable cast with like Will Smith, for example.

So maybe they were doing more, you know what I mean, around that.

And it, I don't know, may have been.

That could also be a sign of faith in the movie.

I'm reaching at straws.

Who knows?

Well, don't reach for those because some seriously questionable marketing decisions were made, including putting Wonder Woman on the wrapper of a condom?

Think Thin Bars.

Oh, that's worse.

It is worse than condoms.

Yeah, it is worse.

It's particularly strange.

Here on the Mosquito Coast, we eat our Think Thin Bars.

Side note: I love Think Thin Bars.

We'll be happy to have them sponsor this podcast, but I don't need them to be Wonder Woman's sponsor.

Yeah, exactly.

Also, strange choice, considering the criticisms of Godote were that she was too thin.

Yeah.

Now, Chris, remember that Joss Whedon script?

Yes.

It's back.

Love it.

One month before Wonder Woman's release in June of 2017, as

the press is a boiling, the hype is building, Joss Whedon's old script burbled to the surface of that cauldron and people actually got to read what he had written.

Nice.

They did not like it.

It is heavily focused on Steve Trevor.

Wonder Woman is very sexualized and also frequently tied up.

And I think this quote from Steve Trevor to Diana really sums it up.

Quote, I think you're dangerous.

I think you mean well, but you're looking for trouble and you're wildly adept at finding it.

I think you've got delusions of grandeur and some actual grandeur, which is confusing.

I don't like confusing.

I hate the fact that I'm so attracted to you.

Just touching you is overwhelming and I keep hoping you'll turn around so I can see more of you naked.

Folks, that's what we would like to call subtext.

It's the part you don't say out loud when you're writing a screenplay.

To be fair, I think he was sitting on her lasso of truth.

That's Joss Whedon with a dictaphone talking to a cardboard cutout of Wonder Woman in his apartment five whiskeys deep.

Like, that's, yeah, that's what that is.

It's not good.

But they didn't make it.

Like, that's the point.

Even Joel Silver was like, what is this?

Even Joel Silver, get it out of here.

Get her in the chopper.

Let's go.

I think Jesse, our researcher, made a good point that there are some interesting parallels to Wonder Woman's creator here as well in some of the sort of complicated, if at times faux, feminism.

Although I hand a little bit more credit to Wonder Woman's creator than Joss Whedon on this one.

Now, Think Thin Bars, Joss Whedon's script and a lack of marketing be damned.

It turned out people really wanted to see Patty Jenkins' Wonder Woman.

Yep.

In May of 2017, Fandango listed it at the top of their most anticipated summer movie list.

By June, it had been tweeted about or X'd about.

Don't do it.

Tweet it.

I don't like this timeline.

Over 2 million times, making it the most popular movie on Twitter that year.

Now, the studio estimated Wonder Woman would gross around $65 million in its opening weekend.

But Chris, after years of people debating whether or not a Wonder Woman movie was worth the money, it debuted with a domestic opening of $103.3 million.

It's a lot of dollars.

It was the biggest opening ever for a female director, beating Sam Taylor Johnson's 50 Shades of Gray.

Obviously, it would be usurped by Barbie.

Total box office ended up landing a worldwide gross of $823 million, almost $100 million more than Suicide Squad.

One of the most unusual things started happening in theaters, though, Chris.

Women were sobbing, and not at Diana's big speeches or Steve Trevor's death, although, yes, I did cry at that too, but at the fight sequences.

And I remember seeing that opening fight and just sobbing.

I had never seen so many women on screen fighting like that in my life and doing it with so much joy.

It was really incredible.

I don't know how else to describe it.

Now, beginning in June of 2020, Ray Fisher started to speak publicly about his experience with, we're not done with him yet, Joss Whedon on Justice League.

I'll save the details until we cover that disaster, but I want to call out that Gal Gadot confirmed Whedon's toxic onset behavior and said that he at one point essentially threatened to ruin her career if she got in his way.

She'd been expressing concerns about character continuity for Wonder Woman.

In response, Whedon told New York Magazine, quote, I don't threaten people.

Who does that?

English is not her first language, and I tend to be annoyingly flowery in my speech.

And Gal's response was simply, quote, I understood perfectly.

And then Josh said, you're confusing.

I don't look confusing.

Yeah.

Can I briefly go back to the fight scenes really quickly?

Yes.

So

my, so my favorite fight scene, I really do like no man's land trench warfare fight scene.

It's great.

My favorite fight scene is when they get cornered by

the alley by the German spies.

And

it feels very evocative of a movie we're going to cover soon, V for Vendetta, which has a reverse gender version of that where V saves Evie, Natalie Portman's character.

But I love the way it's choreographed and it

does such a good job of showing both of their surprise at her powers.

No, yeah, I love it because at the beginning he's like, get behind me.

And then she's like bulletproof.

And he goes on, second thought, maybe not.

Like get out there.

Go ahead and take care of this.

Yeah, exactly.

And she also seems a little, you know, surprised by what she can do.

And it's a really fun, I like moments like that where it.

Again, there's a lot of lore to get through in this movie and it does a great visual job of getting the exposition out.

So I really, and I i thought that scene was choreographed extremely well too i think all the fights in this are choreographed they're excellent okay sorry i have one fight beef really quickly when charlie played by the fantastic ewen remner can't take the goddamn shot at the sniper in the church tower so gal godot destroys the only church that this poor town has they didn't taking care of that one sniper i was like charlie you got to make that shot man i love how like their backup is: I'm going to go blow that church up right now.

I'm going to blow up that entire church.

And she does, and good for her.

All right, I'd like to end on a quote from Patty Jenkins herself, I think, on why her Wonder Woman works where so many others failed.

Quote: A woman doesn't have to direct a woman's film, and a man doesn't have to direct a man's film.

Otherwise, where would we be?

But the truth is, it was wonderful to direct this as a woman because to me, it's not about her being a woman, it's about a hero.

I love that.

That's a great quote.

I love Patty.

She's great.

All right, Chris.

What went right?

I'm stealing yours.

Patty Jenkins.

God.

Sorry.

You got to come up with something else.

She is the hero.

This movie looks great.

Fantastic production design.

You know,

great costume design, great VFX.

I actually always, I think a lot of the DC movies of this era have really good production design and really high production quality.

Like, say what you will about Zack Snyder.

You don't like him stylistically, but these movies look really good.

No, I actually like a lot of what Zack Snyder has done.

Me too.

But what I will say is, what I really respect about Patty Jenkins and her approach to this movie is in an era where you can feel the homogeneity across a lot of these films, like you said, Lizzie, she made something that feels true to her, but also true to the character, but also true to the broader arc of these movies that's being made.

That's a really, really tough part of the Venn diagram to hit.

And she did did a fantastic job.

And she stewarded this thing home.

She did something that is so difficult with these cinematic universes where she made something that can stand on its own completely independent.

You do not have to go into this knowing anything.

You can still enjoy it, or you can enjoy it as part of the DC extended universe.

And to your point, it does fit right in.

Also, you know, I know DC has had some misfires, but I like that they try stuff.

I like that they get a little messy messy with it and that they're not just kind of rinse and repeating a lot of the same

a lot of the same things.

Looking at you, Marvel.

All right, well, since you stole my what went right, I am going to give it to Wonder Woman screenwriter Alan Heinberg.

I think that he was able to come in and understand exactly what wasn't working about this and just pinpoint that what they needed was an emotional relationship-based story, all the fish out of water stuff, as we said.

It's so good.

It's so charming.

One of my favorite moments in the entire movie is when she tries ice cream for the first time in the train station.

Just the way that she eats it and looks at the guy and just says, you should be very proud.

It's so cute and sweet.

And I just think that Alan Heinberg did a wonderful job on this, obviously building off of a lot of other.

material, but he clearly really understood this character.

He understood what people love about this character.

And I think he managed to make a story that appealed, as he has done many times in the past, to a very wide audience without sacrificing any of what really makes her Wonder Woman.

And I think that's incredible.

So amazing job to really everyone involved.

This is an incredible achievement.

And a really great theme that is a, I read, intentional homage to Led Zeppelin's immigrant song and also evocative of the 300 theme as well.

Also, interesting, by the way, they intro her theme, her Wonder Woman theme in Batman v Superman Dawn of Justice.

Yeah, I remember that.

Yeah.

Yeah, they're really cranking these out very fast.

Well, Lizzie, thank you so much for guiding us into the long and tortured, but ultimately extremely successful efforts to bring Wonder Woman to the silver screen.

We are going to be back with you guys in just a week, and we're going to be heading back in time

not to Themiscos but instead to ancient Judea and Rome as described in what film Lizzie?

Ben-Hur.

Yes, Benjamin Hur.

So it's known the 1959 version.

There have been, I believe, five versions of that film

made.

This is the best one and also the longest one.

So if you guys are going to watch ahead of time, maybe block off two nights.

It is a three and a half hour long film.

It's fantastic.

This is going to take me seven days to finish.

It is, but it is a really remarkable accomplishment.

It's a really interesting movie.

There are a lot of ways in which it was ahead of its time, ways in which it has not aged as well, but I'm really excited to talk about it.

So check back in in a week.

Lizzie.

Could you tell the folks how they can help us grow this podcast?

Of course.

You can leave us a rating or review.

You can follow us on whatever platform you're listening, Apple, Spotify.

You can tell a friend or a family member.

You can, when they're trapped in the car with you, start playing an episode of our podcast so that they have to listen to it.

You can, of course, also support us via Patreon.

And Chris, you want to tell them a little bit about what they can get?

I will.

If you join our.

Patreon, you can join for free and get free articles written mostly by me with various musings of various various value.

And you can also get links to some of the videos and images that we discuss in the podcast.

For a dollar, you can vote on episodes, films that we will cover in the future.

For example, Ben Hur is the result of a poll.

So you asked for it, guys.

It is a very long film.

For $5, you can get an ad-free RSS feed.

And for $50, you can have your name shouted out at the end of an episode, just like this: Cameron Smith, Ben Scheindelman, Casey Boogie Simmons, Scary Carrie, the Provost Family.

The O's sound like O's.

I just messed that up and you have it in your name.

The Provost family.

Zach Everton, Galen, David Friscolanti, Adam Moffat, Film It Yourself, Chris Zaka, Kate Elrington, M.

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But wait, there's still the third-act boss fight fight that you didn't know you needed with Michael McGrath, Lon Rilaud, and Lydia Howes.

And apologies to you three for an earlier version of this episode that aired without your names.

We deeply appreciate all of your support.

You're all my wonder women.

We will see you back here next week for a classic film that you voted on, you asked for it, and you're going to get it.

Ben Hur.

Until next time, bye.

Go to patreon.com/slash whatwentwrong podcast to support what went wrong and check out our website at whatwentwrongpod.com.

What Went Wrong is a sad boom podcast presented by Lizzie Bassett and Chris Winterbauer.

Editing and music by David Bowman.

Research for this episode provided by Jesse Winterbauer.