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Post by RJ Alden Lackie on Jan 1, 2014 19:21:26 GMT
The Compass Network Presents...
Name: Wonder Woman Written By: Alex McKinnon Premise: A young woman raised in a secret society of Amazons embarks on a grand adventure alongside a displaced soldier. Airdate: January 1, 2014WONDER WOMAN [PDF] Wonder Woman is a #TheNewYear project and the launch of Compass' DC universe, so please read, review and enjoy! Feel free to discuss the script in this thread, whether a more formal review, some jotted-down reactions, discussion amongst readers, or even just kudos to the author. Please be kind and constructive.
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Post by Alex McKinnon on Jan 1, 2014 22:06:28 GMT
Hey everybody. I'm the writer of this particular labor of love, and I thought I'd just pass along some context for how this script came about. Some years back, before the Avengers catapulted him into the stratosphere, Joss Whedon was attached to write and direct a Wonder Woman feature film. At the time, he seemed like a slam dunk choice. This was the man who gave us Buffy The Vampire Slayer, after all. I always thought, for reasons dictated by the market just as much as the source material, that Wonder Woman would be a brutally difficult adaptation. The obstacles seemed endless: audience prejudices, iconography subject to decades of ridicule, radically feminist subtext, constant bondage imagery, and on and on. "How could somebody possibly pull this off?" I kept asking myself. I figured if anyone was capable, it was Joss.
Well, he wasn't. Or at least Warner Bros didn't think so. Joss's attachment to the project faded, but the question lingered in my mind. "How?" Finding an answer became a game to me, an exercise in hubris I spent hours on. So here it is, or as close as I could get. I look forward to chatting about it. Tearing it down. Building it back up. Explaining my noble intentions, and unearthing some failings.
Give it a look. I'll thank you for it.
Alex.
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Post by Kyle West on Jan 1, 2014 22:36:30 GMT
Great to get some notes from you Alex, before i read it. Excited to digest this, and I'm sure there will be a few people here quite interested in reading a DC-verse screenplay
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Post by Dan Taylor on Jan 4, 2014 19:24:05 GMT
WOW! I loved this. But I'll save my review for now.
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Post by Dan Taylor on Jan 5, 2014 16:51:49 GMT
From the chatbox: Srini Madhavan: I'm about 75 pages in and it's a whole lot of fun, major props to Alex McKinnon for writing such an entertaining film. Shows that a good WW film is long overdue and nowhere near impossible. Dan Taylor: I never knew Wonderwoman was so interesting, I really enjoyed it! Kyle West: It's nigh on impossible for me to read a script in one sitting these days. About a third of the way through though, and am enjoying it. Dan Taylor: I was reading it at work yesterday and I completely zoned out at one point, I was totally sucked into it - first time that's happened to me since DSR really! Great job Alex McKinnon.
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Post by Kyle West on Jan 9, 2014 0:54:40 GMT
There's an extensive audio review of this in the latest episode of Compass Echoes
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Post by Dex Macleod on Jan 9, 2014 7:16:36 GMT
It's taken me awhile but I'm just about finished with this. Should be a review up tomorrow.
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Post by Dex Macleod on Jan 11, 2014 18:53:43 GMT
As an avid fan of DC Comics I’ve never really been able to get into Wonder Woman. I’ve tried multiple stories from multiple eras by multiple writers and I just can’t ever seem to get drawn in enough to stick around. This script held my attention from the get go.
The first 15 pages or so are solid gold. It gets Wonder Woman’s basic origin story out of the way relatively quickly but also does a great job of setting her up as a character.
My only little complaint about the “pre-man’s world” stuff is that Diana suddenly stops becoming “Young Diana”. I assume she was supposed to age during the montage but it’s never actually stated if that’s the case and then later when Steve shows up it finally describes her as being in her twenties. Just a little issue that took me out of the story for a moment.
I love the take on the traditional Amazonian bracelets being the remains of their former chains. Not only is it just cool but it also gives the Amazons a constant reminder of why they hate men. Nice touch.
Apart from Diana, most of the characters are a little bland and lacking introductions. A lot of them felt like they were only going to be used for that one scene they were introduced in but all of a sudden they were main characters. There were also times when things with Ares got confusing. At first I thought Diana turned on the Americans because she was possessed but then I realized that after her eyes turned black, Ares went back into Heracles almost immediately. Also there’s the time where he’s possessed Darnell in the dungeon, Wonder Woman escapes, and literally seconds later Darnell is in the Control Station warning Steve. Just a bit confusing.
All in all I would have liked to get to know the supporting cast a little better but there’s a great story here and Diana turned out to be a very fun character to spend some time with.
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Post by Alex McKinnon on Jan 15, 2014 19:32:14 GMT
Nice to hear some notes from everybody. Sounds like lots of people responded to the Diana characterization, which I'm happy about. Obviously, that was my biggest goal, so I'm glad that was a success. My assumption has always been that making her feel like a real, autonomous, living person rather than an outmoded caricature would be a tall order. Wonder Woman has a weird ratio of fame to appreciation relative to other superheroes. I think everybody knows Wonder Woman, and that a lot of people think they know enough to know they're not interested. So I'm glad I managed to make her engaging. It also sounds like people wanted a little more development of the margins. Always a difficult task to balance pace, page count, and detail. I try to be brutally efficient, but emotions need space. Is it fair to say people thought some side characters were under served? Any ones in particular people wanted more out of, or thought were too thinly drawn? Part of the trouble with some X-men movies, for example, was an excess of characters. Was there anybody who made you wonder why they were there? Anybody feel extraneous? It was really fun to hear the review on the Echoes podcast. Selfishly, I wish you guys had gotten into some spoiler-y stuff. Action sequences were a point of emphasis for me, because I think so few are well done from a story perspective. So often, they're spectacle devoid of function. I always try to have action sequences drive story, reflect emotional states, and more than anything, complicate interpersonal relationships. They can do heavy dramatic lifting. As for the mention of the abruptness of the ending, it did have a very specific dramatic intent that maybe didn't play. I think the comment was prefaced as a pet peeve, so I'll partly just chalk it up to a difference of opinion. That suddenness was pretty deliberately calculated, because there's a sort of harshness to the final images that I wanted to linger. Any more denouement or unraveling of the story would only serve to soften the edges of that juxtaposition of success/failure, I think. It's supposed to go down a little bitter, or at least melancholy. But if people aren't reacting to that ending like I hoped, I'd love to hear more. If that tone's not coming across, let me know. Always good to hear when little things I took for granted weren't communicated clearly, btw. Like that Young Diana/Diana distinction. Sometimes that little stuff slips by. Also, I can't take credit for the bracelets as shackles bit. It's one of those details in the mythology that comes and goes. Personally, I've always loved it. Bondage and its escape are, to me, an essential metaphor for any feminist story, particularly Wonder Woman, but I get the impression it makes some other creators a little uneasy because of how loaded it is. That was great, everybody. Thanks a lot.
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