MovieChat Forums > Wonder Woman (1975) Discussion > Superheroine + supervillainess shows jus...

Superheroine + supervillainess shows just not plausible


I've been doing politically-incorrect talk with friends over the years about how unfeasible and implausible it is to do superheroine and supervillainess stories, especially as the women are always super-model gorgeous, perfect bodies, and sexy. The problem is that in reality these ultra-women would be subject to constant sexual assault by the super villains, other bad guys, and possibly even by the hero, who could be the 'bad-boy' type from the popular women's bodice-ripper romance paperback novels.

The only way it ever worked for television and the movies is because the super-villains were almost always portrayed as either gay, effete, asexual, or functioning eunuchs. You always see that at some point the superheroine gets captured and restrained by ropes, chains, manacles, or cuffs by the bad guys. And the bad guys are always really bad, bad guys, not simply garden-variety criminals off the street. The same went for the James Bond girls. These attractive, competent, and highly professional agency ladies assisted our man James, but in almost every Bond movie the ladies get captured and restrained. Then 007 has to rescue them. But none of them is ever touched or harmed by the effete snobby, supersmart, superrich ultra-villain. Seriously, dealing with any captured, highly-trained and professional adversary would entail undressing the individual, if for anything, to ferret out hidden weapons, tiny tracking or communication devices, or anything else that could be hidden on or inside the human body. Odd, the captured superheroines are never unmasked by the supervillains. Even Wonder Woman, who didn't wear a mask, often never had her magical lasso confiscated which she always ended up using while escaping.

Even Lynda Carter's iconic Wonder Woman from the mid-70s tv show was often captured by the bad guys and tied up. In one episode, she's even tied almost spread-eagled in some crummy jail cell that looks like it came out of cheap western flick. The villains would simply mock and laugh at Wonder Woman, even the dastardly Nazi bad guys. In the 007 Bond movies, the super villain was more of an ultra villain, a brilliant but diabolical man with below-average physical abilities who usually hired muscle talent to fight 007. The Bond villains would usually spend an inordinate amount of time bragging and lecturing captured Bond beauties. Of course we all understood that the Bond ultra villains were much too suave and sophisticated and educated to lower themselves to anything as crass as rape. I guess being filthy rich and ultra-powerful makes a man impotent as well. Still these shows and movies were all about bringing in the audience and appealing to the minors so, no nasty sex stuff and all. You understand why, of course; can't be showing that kind of nasty on Saturday mornings, prime time weeknights, and at PG-13 action movies. I'm just stating the obvious.

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Nope, not buying it. In reply, I suggest viewing Honey West and The Avengers (British tv series, not the Marvel movie or cartoons). You had female heroines and the occasional female villain and they worked perfectly. It's all in the script, the casting, and using good stunt people (something the Avengers did very well).

"Fortunately, Ah keep mah feathers numbered for just such an emergency!"

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It's all in the script, the casting, and using good stunt people (something the Avengers did very well).


ESPECIALLY this.

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Wonder if OP is in jail by now. With lax sex crime laws, may have made parole by now

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But you're forgetting, many times Wonder Woman just played possum to fool the bad guys, and all the time she freed herself! She never needed anyone to help her, SHE did it all by herself.

Don't say anything bad about Jojo
If she's a disciplinarian, I'm the Queen Of England!- Stella

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I understand what you're sayng and agree to an extent. It's only for the purpose of the show and the target audience of the show that these things don't happen in the show, like unmasking a super-hero or super-heroine whenever he/she is caught. For a show or movie like this to work, there have to be some ground rules that work better in comic books or in print than they do in live-action films.

One of those things is how a popular super-hero, like Superman or Wonder Woman is never recognized despite a very flimsy disguise. In a comic book, I can buy it that people don't recognize Clark Kent because he combs his hair to the other side, slouches when he walks, talks quietly and wears glasses. When it's on film and I see it in full-color, it's harder to pretend that it's possible. The same goes for Wonder Woman, especially in the context of the show, like the episode I watched tonight. A guy doens't recognize Diana Prince as Wonder Woman despite spending several minutes with each of them only a few minutes apart.

Another thing about the comic books that was always weird was how none of the heroes, no matter what their other beliefs may have been, would ever intentionally kill a super villain. it didn't matter if this guy was responsible for the death of millions of people and the intent to kill more at the next opportunity. These super-heroes would still insist that it was wrong to kill this guy. Not only that, but they'd spend entire stories rampaging through cities, destroying things and putting lots of innocent people in harm's way, but they'd still insist that killing was wrong. I always figured that was because it was too difficult to come up with new super villains and it was easier to keep recycling the same ones. If you killed him off in an issue of the comic, you either had to explain why he wasn't really dead or come up with someone to replace him.

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I'm just expressing my opinion.

You may all go to hell, and I will go to Texas.

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One of those things is how a popular super-hero, like Superman or Wonder Woman is never recognized despite a very flimsy disguise. In a comic book, I can buy it that people don't recognize Clark Kent because he combs his hair to the other side, slouches when he walks, talks quietly and wears glasses. When it's on film and I see it in full-color, it's harder to pretend that it's possible. The same goes for Wonder Woman, especially in the context of the show, like the episode I watched tonight. A guy doens't recognize Diana Prince as Wonder Woman despite spending several minutes with each of them only a few minutes apart.


I buy the convention more in the first season than the second, and definitely more than the third. There's a certain sexlessness to Diana's Navy uniform (and if you remember, the early scripts went out of their way to describe Diana as a plain Jane). But by the third season, she'd ditched the glasses and was wearing what passed for high fashion in the 70s (shudder...). You'd have to be practically brain dead not to make the connection.

Another problem is the "coincidences" that Diana and Wonder Woman would happen to be in the same area at the same time so often. It might work long-term in Washington--Diana lives there, and Wonder Woman is apparently based there--but when Diana accompanies Steve on an out-of-town assignment and Wonder Woman just "happens" to show up, that should at least compromise her cover. And when Steve and Diana are in Los Angeles and Drusilla and Wonder Girl both just "happen" to show up, too, that should have been the end of it then and there.

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She did a great job concealing her identity. If it wasn't for the opening credits, and the fact that we see her transform on screen, I would have no idea that Diana was Wonder Woman

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