Comic book fans have been clamoring for a Wonder Woman movie for years, hoping and praying Warner Bros. would give the Amazonian princess her rightful chance to shine on the silver screen. Now that they’ve finally got their wish with Gal Gadot starring in the studio’s forthcoming Wonder Woman, the focus has shifted to how exactly Princess Diana’s tale will unfold, and it seems her first standalone appearance won’t be set in the modern day but in a bygone era, or so says a new rumor…
Bleeding Cool reports Wonder Woman will be set in the 1920s, according to some unnamed sources who have apparently seen the greenlit treatment for the film. If you are hoping to go into the film entirely out of the loop, you can skip the quotation below, but it gives an idea what Wonder Woman is going to be about on a very basic level.
“[T]he film will spend the first half on Paradise Island with warring Amazon factions vying for control. An arrival of a man on the island changes that status quo, as he asks the Amazons for help. Not necessarily Steve Trevor either… Because when Wonder Woman joins [the man] on his return to the world of Man, we all discover that it is the 1920s. And the film will then show Diana exploring that world – a world where women have only just got the vote – from her… unique perspective.”
It’s an interesting route for Wonder Woman’s cinematic origin story, showing an empowered woman entering a world of newly empowered women. Frankly, the concept feels like Marvel’s Captain America: The First Avenger in a way, and if Warners was following that route I would expect the film to launch Wonder Woman into the future in preparation for Zack Snyder‘s Justice League Part One.
Well, apparently that’s not the case, at least according to Bleeding Cool, and what comes next in their story makes it a little difficult to decipher Warners’ plans for its chief female superhero, at least as they pertain to the Justice League.
“A planned sequel would then take place during World War II in the thirties and forties. This of course was the period that the seventies TV show began in, before shifting to the then-modern day. And a threequel would then take place in the modern day, with the Justice League Of America.“
So, first an origin story set in the 1920s, scheduled for a 2017 release; then a sequel set in the 1930s and 40s, presumably to come after Warners’ recently-announced DC Comics slate, which is set through 2020; and finally a third film set in the present-day with the Justice League, which I assume couldn’t come out any sooner than 2023, if not later.
How, then, does Wonder Woman fit into the grand Justice League narrative? After all, the first film in Gadot’s three-picture deal is Snyder’s Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, which is due in theaters March 25, 2016.
I’m not opposed to seeing Wonder Woman’s origin story, but to have it play out over the course of two period-set standalone films, while concurrently appearing in Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice and presumably Snyder’s two Justice League films, is a bit confusing, not to mention unnecessary. Maybe it’s just me, but it feels like inefficient storytelling, though the obvious point of these movies isn’t necessarily the stories they tell, but the tickets they sell.
Another option is that the treatment reported by Bleeding Cool was recently altered to fit Warners’ upcoming slate, which is to say the 1930s- and 40s-set Wonder Woman sequel might be an older idea for the franchise. Obviously I never saw the treatment, so I can’t say exactly, but if it was in fact an older treatment, it’s reasonable to wonder why this story is making the rounds in the first place. So, stay tuned, I guess.
