Wonder Woman - The Animated Feature Trailer
August 05 | 8:47 PM by Devlin

WONDER WOMAN DVD (Feb 2009)

The live-action feature film is never going to be made but at least we will have this straight to video DVD animated feature come February 2009.  And the trailer looks good, featuring a formidable warrior princess with strong ties to Greek mythology.

Don't know why the Warner Bros. project to make a live-action feature film of Wonder Woman never took off. Heaven knows, the story is already there.  Just use George Perez's six-issue arc that re-launched Wonder Woman comics back in 1987, update it for the new millennium, avoid the silliness that sank the Catwoman movie (i.e. treat the source material with RESPECT), find someone with the right mix of beauty and toughness, and we're all set.  The Lynda Carter TV series was successful because it treated the source material with respect, whereas an earlier pilot, featuring Cathy Lee Crosby as a powerless and (blasphemously) blonde Wonder Woman whose only link to the character was the name and nothing else, failed.  Of course, the Lynda Carter version of Wonder Woman would never work on the big screen now (we're no longer in the campy 70s - and even then, Lynda Carter always treated the character with respect and portrayed Wonder Woman with real warmth and humour), but something more akin to Xena: Warrior Princess should find an audience.  After all, Wonder Woman had always been a warrior, and more so after Perez re-launched her series back in the late 80s.  Since then, Wonder Woman has consistently been portrayed as a formidable warrior, able to fight even a crazed Superman himself to a standstill.  Although compassionate, she is not hesitant to use deadly force when necessary.  She was lopping off the heads of gods and demons alike, for heaven's sake, years before Xena appeared on our TV screens.  Perez also brought back with a vengeance Wonder Woman's strong ties to classical Greek mythology.  As a matter of fact, Sam Raimi must have ripped off Wonder Woman when he created Xena.  Wonder Woman is one of DC Comics' three flagship characters to have survived all the way from her creation in the early 40s right down to the present.  Done properly, a Wonder Woman movie should be just as big a draw as a Batman or a Superman movie.  But, as usual, Warner Bros., the owner of DC Comics, dithers and stumbles (only the recent Batman movies have been true commercial and critical successes - even Superman Returns was really a dud) while Marvel successfully milks its franchises like the X-men, Fantastic Four, Ironman and Spiderman.  Sigh ... at least there's the animated feature to look forward to ...