A Modest Proposal


Image used under a Creative Commons license courtesy of Wouter de Bruijn.

I recognize this idea may strike people as really strange.  I'm not even sure of it myself.  But wouldn't it be interesting to see Guillermo del Toro do a Wonder Woman origin story?  io9 got me thinking about this with their post on why there hasn't be a Smallville-equivalent show for Diana Prince.  I think that's independently a great idea, and I'm sort of platform-agnostic as to whether I'd like to see that origin story on the big or small screen.

I recognize that del Toro tends to operate in a somewhat grimy register as he did in the Hellboy movies, and I do tend to think of Wonder Woman as clean, sleek, streamlined.  But I actually think Hellboy holds the keys as to why del Toro might be wonderful for Wonder Woman.  First, I think it's important to remember that Wonder Woman is an Amazon, technically humanoid but separate from humanity.  She's kind of a low-scale deity.  And del Toro understands beautifully that distinction, the struggles of people who are more, and in some cases much more, than human, but still want to live in the world of human interactions and emotions.  Hellboy gives up his horns, Wonder Woman her immortality.  They make particular sacrifices for the chance to connect, and to act in the world, I like that.  Second, del Toro's really quite good with women characters.  I love his (and Selma Blair's) Liz Sherman.  I'd like him to have a chance to play with a female character who is a little less conflicted about her powers, simply to see what he'd do with it.  I also think the ambivalence about a particular man in Hellboy might translate into a more generalized ambivalence about men, which would be pretty critical to Wonder Woman's introduction to the wider world.

Anyway, it's really just wishful thinking.  But I do like del Toro's very particular vision.