But around the same time that I savored this happy turn, I read some less happy news: Wonder Woman was finally en route to the silver screen — but not, alas, in a vehicle of her own. She’s slated to be an appendix to Superman and Batman in a sequel to “Man of Steel.” For all I know she’ll be zipping out to Starbucks for their lattes or the dry cleaner’s to fetch their capes. Meantime, producers scrape the bottom of the superhero barrel for male demigods to put in the foreground and the title. Just last week Variety disclosed that Paul Rudd was in talks to play “Ant-Man.” Yes, “Ant-Man.” “The Green Hornet,” “Spider-Man” — maybe Wonder Woman isn’t insect enough for the major leagues. Maybe she needs to make like a mantis.
For decades now a Wonder Woman movie has been chattered about, longed for, plotted, scuttled. The director and writer Joss Whedon took a failed stab at one after he did “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” on TV and before he included Scarlett Johansson in “The Avengers.” At this point it’s not so much an unrealized project as an ongoing taunt: a metaphor for the stubborn gender gap in the sorts of action-oriented blockbusters that rule the box office; proof that the more things change, the more they remain the same, at least in Hollywood, whose superficially progressive politics mask overwhelmingly conservative business instincts.
It doesn’t lead. It trails. Mary Barra reaches the apex of General Motors. Hillary Clinton dominates discussion of the 2016 presidential race. Diana Nyad crosses the shark-infested channel between Cuba and Key West. Wonder Woman’s golden lasso gathers dust as she waits for a movie to call her own.
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