11/17/2008

Beyonce As Wonder Woman?

There's been recent talk, "buzz", whatever you wanna call it, about a "Wonder Woman" movie starring Beyonce Knowles. Probably because I'm not a big, dumb racist, but my first concern had nothing to do with the color of Knowles' skin but that she's sort of specialized in this really awesome, quasi-robotic, stoic pop star thing and because of that, she seemed less than ideal to carry a superhero(ine) movie. While her performances in movies haven't been terrible, she certainly coasts along, doing what she needs to do to seem convincing and nothing more, which works, but isn't anything spectacular.

And then I realized that Hollywood--and indie-wood too, but they don't make superhero movies--won't cast a good or interesting actor as Wonder Woman anyway and Knowles is way more fascinating than pretty much any other choice I could think of. This is further proven by the counter-rumors/reactions about some broad named Megan Gale playing Wonder Woman and about the only thing Gale has going for her is she looks a lot like Linda Carter who played Wonder Woman in the 70s. This is the bane of Hollywood casting, the tendency to find a person who first and foremost looks like the character/icon/famous person and worry about talent or context or anything else, second. Everybody sorta accepted it because it worked so well, but one of the many brilliant aspects of Iron Man was the rather daring choice of Robert Downey Jr. Not because of his drug problems or this or that but because while he was a white dude with facial hair, he didn't fit the super-hero role which of course, is what Tony Stark and Iron Man are all about.

Beyonce would make a pretty cool Wonder Woman. Physically, she's appropriate as she's obviously beautiful and charismatic, but also because her body's thicker and bigger and more in-line with how most women are drawn in comics and especially appropriate because of Wonder Woman's Amazonian roots. Sub-point real quick: Beyonce is short though--her physicality and charisma trick people--but she's only 5 foot inches. There's also a strange outsider-ness to Wonder Woman that I think Beyonce could tap into and the movie would have to focus a lot on the Diana Prince side of things, which Beyonce could do really well. Again, like Iron Man or even, the non-action, downtime in the Hellboy movies, what would make a "Wonder Woman" movie would be a focus on the non-superhero side of things. Some kind of weird 70s soap-opera meets Sex & the City pseudo jet-setting would be really kind of awesome.




Basically, the movie should look and feel like this and she should occasionally go fight crime or be worried about an impending super-villain crisis or some shit...

While it would be even less popular of a choice--and show why it's more tradition than race that worries comics fan--my vote's for talent-less, celebutante, Kim Kardashian. Like Beyonce, her body type and physicality match comic book proportions and she just kind of looks awesome as Wonder Woman in these from-the-gossip-pages halloween photos.

6 comments:

Karen Peltier said...

dude, have you seen the video for put a ring on it? INFINITY GAUNTLET.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mVEGfH4s5g

Anonymous said...

The video doesn't seem to be working, but I'm going to assume its the vid for "Say My Name".

brandon said...

karen-
Yeah, I have an article on it at House Next Door on Wednesday!

aj-
it's the video for 'Girl'' works fine on my computer.

Jesse Reese said...

Who knew the 6th gem of the infinity gauntlet was a wedding ring?

Woah on the single ladies article that'll be awesome.

Vee (Scratch) said...

Kim Kardashian as Wonder Woman . Beyonce as WW.

I think that's all I have to say.

Anonymous said...

I can't believe that DC would pick KK for WW given that her home made porno is still out there in the wild.

Anyway, the only version of the character I want to see is the Mike Sekowsky one in the white outfit. "And who will play I-Ching" is then the most vital question.