What Might’ve Been: A Look At Those Wonder Woman Shorts

That’s kind of the first time she’s looked like Wonder Woman to me. The belt is a bit big though. 

I’ll probably get people disagreeing with me, but I prefer the version with the trousers with the stars down the side and the red boots.  Not to say I specifically liked that either, but it looked more balanced.

If it was me designing a wonder woman costume – either for TV or comics or whatever, I think I’d go the route of trying to give strong hints of an ancient greek armour, probably the skirt route.  Also, I’d made sure that the metallic bits of it looked like metal rather than metallic plastic.

That being said, the main issue with that is that for my vision of the character, the actress here looks too delicate.  I’d more expect someone taller and with the build and muscle tone of an athlete (or as comics would put it “the fitness level of someone who regularly engaged in intense physical excercise”).  Not to mention the fact she should probably look more mediteranean…  But as the concept  for this TV show seemingly had nothing to do with Amazons, it does at least make sense that they weren’t too concerned about that…

Taller? The actress was almost 6ft Tall… 

The actress is fairly tall (almost 6 ft) and fairly solidly built. She is by no means frail. 

The obvious implants and the manly face are bigger issues, I think, than the crappy outfit.

I like it.

I liked the long pants version as well. I’ve accepted a LONG time ago that superhero costumes generally suck when put on film. Some suck less than others, and I thought the costumes they had for Palicki were well done. I don’t know what this feelings of nostalgia of the old WW series. I grew up watching those shows as they aired and I was a fan. When I tried to introduce the series to my daughters the three of us thought it was rather boring and decided to watch Bugs Bunny cartoons instead.

Oh my God this looks even worse than the other versions of the costume.  The belt and breast plate look TOO chunky.  They should look metallic in my opinion….instead they look plastic with cheap stars on them.  The shorts just look wrong for some reason.  Her legs do not seem nearly long enough.

Typical network ‘Yes’ man drone. Oh, oh yeah NOW I agree with the president of NBC after he posted the schedule and blah blah blah. Too bad there’s more of those pissant types running tv than there are those who know what people do and do not want. That said, the costume sucks. PERIOD. It’s a cheap piece of shit and she looks like a hooker in it. Wonder Wears ARMOUR. Not cheap Fredericks Of Hollywood polyvinylplastic…

To go further – was havign a quick flick through the internet and found this:

http://fanartexhibit.files.wordpress.com/2008/09/wonder_woman_new.jpg

Perhaps slightly too grim and gritty, anI’d personalyl say make the skirt uniform at the bottom the whole way round, but in general I think something like this definitly looks a bit classier than shiny plastic.

 i think its her upper body, its to long for her legs

I don’t know anything about the actress, but she has no muscle tone and this costume looks like a WW Halloween costume from a discount store. The design is close to being good, bit the shorts are too tiny (no, I’m not a prude, they just look wrong).  I’m sure given time they could have found someone to nail a great design, but I guess the point is moot.

It is the point. The character’s been around for 70+ years and
she’s never been portrayed as looking Mediterranean in any of her
incarnations, so the notion that the actress who plays her screen should
look Mediterranean has no logical basis. In the comics the Amazons have
either been portrayed as (A) a bunch of white chicks or (B) a
multicultural collection. Is that historically accurate? Who cares? WW
isn’t historically accurate. That’s the point. 

Manly face?  Implants?  I think the big issue is just how witless you are when it comes to women.  Unless you’re Heff or the Hoff, a girl like that would be a 10 to most “normal” men out there.

I think movie and tv execs listen way too much to internet feedback. They have to realize that the vocal minority which are creating all the negative reaction are the following:
1. They are doing it for attention.
2. They arent real fans.
3. They dont read comic books.
4. They dont have any creativity of their own-so they shit all over somebody elses creativity.
5. They are idiots.

el_caifan

It’s not historically accurate no, and I don’t suggest it should be.  However, this boils down to the problems Wonder Woman has as a character.  If this was Superman, Batman, Green Lantern or Flash, the latter two of which are far less famous than WW, this wouldn’t be an issue.

However Wonder Woman has the issues of:

A severe lack of anything resembling an iconic Rogue’s gallery, or even one solid nemesis.
A severe lack of anything resembling any iconic storylines
Several classic character features that are frankly bizarre even by comics standards (invisible jet anyone?) 

What Wonder Woman mainly has, is a very iconic name and a very iconic costume.

Therefore, if I was adapting Wonder Woman (and I don’t mind if you disagree with me, this is just my take) I’d want to look at the basics of the character, and tweak accordingly there.  She is from a race of warrior women who live on a hot sunny island in the Mediteranean, therefore, for consistancy purposes, the Amazons should probably look like they live on a hot sunny island in the Mediteranean.  They don’t really have to look Mediteranean persay, but they should probably look likey are women who practise fighting in the sun all day.  Ditch the invisible jet - perhaps make her flying a property of some item she has about her person. Probably go for one of her mythological villains first time round – they are probably easier to set up because people will already have some innate knowledge of them, therefore you can spend more time defining WW herself without having to do any sort of villain origin. Establish the supporting cast of Amazons and Steve Trevor, perhaps have some background characters who will go onto be villains later.  As I suggested before, have a more realistic take on the costume while maintaining it’s iconic colours and features, and make sure to address that thign about non-american heroine runs around in a patriotic costume – it’s fine, but justify it.

The basic point being, you want to distill the concept of the character into something that is consistant enough to work in a “real world” setting, without doing as this pilot seemed to be doing and ditching everything and just keeping the name and costume. 

boy you really don’t know anything about the character. you need to stop posting until you go back and study the character.

Alex is correct I am a big ww fan and he is on to something. she has no build, she doesn’t look like she has fought all her life. just like some chick with boobs dressing up for halloween

Ok granted Amazons come from greek mythology but I will say it again. Study the character.  If you look in greek mythology Amazon means breastless. Women archers who would remove their right breast to make it easier to shoot a bow and arrow. In the comics I have seen WW has both breasts. So I think it is safe to say just the Gods are really based on this. Go back and read when Diana was sculpted on Paradise Island. Centuries after the Amazons were placed there. William Moulton Marston even wrote their features became softer, their skin and eyes more fair all while building strength in their femininity. Who cares what the comic book aritsts are making her look like. They are never consistant. This is why WW is so hard to cast and so hard to make a movie for. Everybody has a different idea of what she should look like. I say start from ground zero and build up. Really get to her roots.Then everything will fall into place. The costume needs to be updated of course but it can be done and keep the feel of WW there as well.

No one was being rude. My point is that so many people like you say what they think the character should look like instead of going back to the origins of WW learning about her and making an educated comment. Not just any actress could play the role or the movie would have been cast and done years ago. I know adrianne has no muscle tone.I don’t think she made a good WW. I don’t believe I even said anything about her in my statements. I have followed this character for 35 years. Most people get on these boards and just want to put their two cents in without even knowing what they are talking about.

Well, I have studied the character.  I have all the Wonder Woman Archives volumes, the Les Daniels book Wonder Woman: The Complete History, both versions of the Wonder Woman Encyclopedia (Fleischer’s and Jimanez’s), and have read pretty much every version of WW from the Kanigher/Andru/Esposito version up through the most recent JMS version (I dropped it after 2 issues, since I thought it was terrible).  Now, I don’t claim to have read every issue, or even most of them, but I am familiar with all of the major eras and reboots.

But then, that is really one of the basic problems with Wonder Woman. 
Everyone that looks at the character can come away with a different
take.  Is she an ambassador of Peace, Love, and the Amazon Way?  Or a
fierce Warrior Princess sent to Man’s World to kick ass and take
names?  In the golden age comics there is a lot of preaching about the
gentler ways of women, but there are also a lot of weird themes of
bondage and submission to discipline, and the battle of the sexes.  Is
she an icon of feminism, or gross example of the sexual objectification
of women for crass commercialism?  How much Greek mythology should a
Wonder Woman story delve into?  Are the amazons immortal, or do they
lose their immortality if they choose to enter “Man’s World”?  Does
Wonder Woman lose her amazon strength if her bracelets are chained
together?  Can she fly under her own power or does she need an
invisible plane? What are the exact powers of her magic lasso?  These
are all points on which the comic books have been inconsistent over the
years.

In general, I agree that the Marston version of the character was the most-completely realized.  On the other hand, the Perez version had the most fidelity to Greek mythology, and that’s worth keeping.  Now, I’m not suggesting Amazons with mastectomies running around — nobody wants to see that. (And let’s be honest, how often do you see any of the Amazons from Paradise Island using a bow?  Rarely, if ever.)  But would it hurt if Wonder Woman looked like she could be Greek (whatever that might mean to a casting director — obviously there are far more important things to consider when casting Diana)?  You could even incorporate Marston’s bondage theme as a reference to the Amazon’s period of enslavement by men, and the bracelets symbolizing submission to the will of Hera (or Athena, or Aphrodite)…

The two things that I miss most from the Golden Age version of WW:  The golden eagle symbol (which could easily be interpreted as a sort of molded chestplate battle-armor) — that “WW” symbol has always looked awful to me.  And they should keep her origin story tied into World War II — like Captain America, this to me just works best for the character.  If you want to tell the origin and then flash forward to the present, showing Diana just as young and beautiful as she was back then, what’s the problem?  She’s granted immortality by the gods, end of story.  Steve Trevor is important to the origin story, but if you want to update to the present, he can be easily dropped and replaced by other characters.

Let’s not kid ourselves about the “why” of Wonder Woman’s creation. It was to get little girls (and boys who liked to look at girls) to part with their dimes.  As soon as the unexpected success of Superman became apparent, DC (and AA) began casting around to fill as many niches as possible, to grab rack space from the competitors who were assured to follow. And I don’t think any interviews with Marston or Peters are really relevant. That’s just publicity and self-promotion, and is usually pretty suspect when it comes to truth and fact (look at Bob Kane, one of the world’s biggest liars). So in the end, if it’s not on the printed page of the comics, it doesn’t count. (I’ve read some of Marston’s thoughts and theories regarding the proper relationship between men and women, and it’s mostly gobbledegook to me.  I don’t believe in that dominant/submissive crap.) You have to wonder, for example, why DC didn’t make a big deal like “created by the famous psychologist, Dr. William Moulton Marston” to promote the character.  No, they let it go out under the pseudonym of Charles Moulton.  I suspect DC may have had some issues right from the start with the bondage stuff (and I’m STILL amazed that in that conservative era, that stuff wasn’t blue-pencilled from the get-go…  on the other hand, who knows what they MAY have edited out!)  Have to admit, even reading these stories as as a youngster in the 1970s made me somewhat uneasy about parts of them.

Now, as to the Amazons… clearly, they had to soft-pedal some of the actual stuff from Greek myth as it wouldn’t have been acceptable then (or probably even now) to a younger audience in the American culture. Yes, the mythological Amazons were considerably more bloodthirsty (none of that peace-and-love stuff for them).  On the other hand, Marston’s Amazons weren’t living in blissful ignorance of the world around them either.  Let’s not forget that they had advanced technologies (purple healing rays and magic spheres that could see and communicate with any part of the world), so a common handgun probably wasn’t going to be beyond their grasp.  You might well ask why did they need guns or even spears and bows & arrows, but that’s getting right to the heart of the crux of the problem.  For a culture that preaches so much peace and love,.they sure do spend a lot of time preparing for war (even if they never actually wind up fighting one).  And although no man had ever set foot on Paradise Island, presumably that didn’t mean the Amazons weren’t keeping up with what was going on the outside world.  Maybe they had spies that would report back regularly (these could have been Amazons, or simply other women sympathetic to their cause).  One might even say that the Amazons were a sort of metaphor for the U.S. during the war — “we’re not warlike by nature, but we’re prepared for a fight if forced into it”

Sorry, but Lynda Carter filled it out better . . . and without padding.