@Dr.H.:
Batman 89: No explanation for why Bruce wears a Bat-suit other then, "waah, my parents were killed!." You could offer the counter argument that Bat's doesn't have superpowers or whatever but..let's not fool ourselves with how ridiculous Batman is. If Tim Burton could make a concept as ridiculous as a human dressing up as Bat semi-believable then why not a badass Amazonian warrior? Who actually is less ridiculous overall?
His batsuit is explained many times. When he was thinking about his costume, a bat came into his study and scared him. He thought dressing as a bat would immediately frighten criminals. Also, in a lot of his origin stories, it was said that he had a fear of bats as a child, and he adopted that fear and personified it into his costume (this was also seen in Batman Begins).
Who is more ridiculous? Definitely Wonder Woman. Why? She's an isolated Amazonian woman fighting for women and their rights, yet she wears a tight American themed spandex that makes her into a sex symbol. There is barely an explanation, if there is any, as to why she wears a red white and blue spandex when she's from Amazon.
Just don't do her origin, just humanize her well enough. Characterize her well enough, write her well enough and the audience will buy it. Her lack good rogues gallery doesn't really matter I mean Iron Man doesn't exactly have one either but they do have a charismatic actor that carries the film. Get a great actor(presumably an unknown) and there! Winning formula! You make a great superhero film with a weak villain–again look at Iron Man. So that's not really an excuse.
If you don't do her origin, the audience will be confused as to where she came from and what her powers are. And I'm sure fans will be pissed. Cutting out her origin will just make everyone mad and feel like the character wasn't done justly. If a character's origin are just so nonsense you feel the need to cut it out, then the character probably isn't well suited for film in the first place. Iron Man has great rogues. The Mandarin, AIM, Technivore, Whip… I don't even know who Wonder Woman's rogues are really besides a Cheetah woman and Giganta. I mean, they could do a movie about one of them, but they're not spectacular villains, and I don't know how you can link them with Amazon.
But the problem with Wonder Woman is no one will take her seriously. Being a woman already hurts her, unfortunately in today's society, so she's already handicapped. Her costume will either be interpreted as sexy or ridiculous which gives her even less credibility. And her villain will probably not be very good. Leading to a not so great film.
I have to disagree. DC characters are just as easy to adapt for film, you can do a Wonder Woman film with the visual aesthetic of 300 film. And actually do away with the campy elements( invisible jets, her being born from clay) and base it on the more modern comics. I would nominate Nicoloas Winding Refn who has admitted interest in doing it . Flash, whom I heard from comic reading friends has some of the best rogues galley in comics after Spiderman and Batman. I would get Duncan Jones and cast Ryan Gosling as Barry Allen, Jones is a comic fan and actually was approached by Nolan for Man of Steel. If Marvel is doing Ant-man–which is a pretty hokey concept, then you can make an Aquaman work. Getting the right director WITH A VISON is the key. I honestly think a Wondy film would be a nice change of pace since from the traditional flare that DC flare as she's more mythological based so you get her to interact with gods. It's not hard at all. Tricky, yes, but not hard.
If it wasn't so hard, we'd have a lot of DC blockbusters. But we only have Batman (and MoS I guess but that was really only commercially. Critically it did well below average). These characters are just hard to work with. You say we should cut out some arbitrary/ridiculous stuff out to make them more believable… but there's a lot of that when it comes to DC heroes. Can it be done? Yes. Is it easy? Absolutely not. Personally, I'd love to see a Flash and Aqua Man film. They are very interesting characters, but they're hard to deliver, especially Aqua Man. Marvel is doing Ant-Man, but that's very iffy. So is Guardians of the Galaxy. But until they're released we can't really compare. If they're successful, fantastic. I never said these movies were impossible, I just said they were difficult to sell to the general public.
However, a 300 styled Wonder Woman would be pretty cool.
I dunno, I haven't seen Man of Steel but DC barely even has a realized universe. Green Lantern… I did see and it wasn't that bad, but it's issues were almost entirely scripting and editing. It had very little to do with the inherent hokeyness of the source material.
I didn't say the hokeyness of MoS was the problem, just the pacing and writing. The writing made it seem hokey, but if they delivered better I would have accepted things better. It could have been a good movie.
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