No Invisible Airplane for Joss

The wonderful folks over at Whedonesque got the scoop today straight from the horse's mouth: Joss Whedon will NOT be doing "Wonder Woman."

After much speculation on who would be donning the star spangled tights, he decided (or Silver Pictures decided, or both) he just couldn't work the script to everyone's satisfaction.

Personally? I'm a little relived, honestly. I was never a big fan of Wonder Woman as a character (and was much more a Marvel guy than a DC guy, with the exception of Batman). Earlier this week, there were rumors about the studio purchasing a separate treatment of WW, and I started thinking about how hard it would be to ground this character in any type of reality. Once you get past the iconic costume (which translates to the screen rather poorly, as far as reality goes, like X-Men), most of her powers are kind of silly. Superstrength? Okay, that's fine. But deflecting bullets with magic bracelets? A golden lasso that forces people to tell the truth? And don't even get me started on the invisible jet (how do you know where to refuel it? How do you do maintenance on it? How do you know where to enter it? Why can you see WW inside it, and doesn't that look stupid in and of itself?). As a fan of Joss's writing, I would have been curious in seeing his take on it. I would have been interested in the casting (Morena, Charisma or Cobie are my choices). But I don't think I could have gotten past the inherent campiness in the concept, and it probably would have been a big bust commercially.

While I loved Serenity and his other big screen efforts, I hope he decides to return to TV in some form. (HBO? Showtime? FX?) The expansive nature of television, I think, is much better suited to his storytelling, dialogue and character developing gifts.

So, farewell Diana Prince. I hardly knew ya.