As the superhero world in the movies gets larger and larger, many comic book fans and moviegoers are already starting to suffer from origin story fatigue. Spider-Man, Batman and Superman have all been rebooted several times now for the big screen, with each new series introducing a different version of the iconic character. And while many of the recent films in the Marvel and DC Extended Universe are actually bringing old favorites to life for the very first time, there's still a certain "get powers, fight bad guys" to it all.
However, DC Films' Charles Roven is hoping viewers take away a lot more than that from his movies. There's no disagreeing that Warner Bros.' next superhero film Wonder Woman is an origin story; as the recent trailer showed, it follows Princess Diana leaving her home on the island of Themyscira for the first time to fight in World War I a century before her team up last year in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. Still, the producer wants to make sure the movie goes beyond the usual tropes.
In a new interview about the DC Universe, Roven explains to ComicBook.com that to bring the DCEU version of Diana to the big screen they decided to combine a few different sources:
"For Wonder Woman, what was really intriguing to us was the mythology of her past and attempting to blend both the canon from the past with the New 52 and really come up with a compelling story for Diana and her hero's journey."
There's been some question of which parts of Wonder Woman mythology that the new movies will be taking from, something recent footage further called into question, and these comments appear to shed some light on this; Patty Jenkins is lifting liberally from a variety of the character's print iterations, including the recent New 52 version. This has been the case with various pockets of the DCEU, and being maintained for such an iconic character makes it seem like the trend for the series going forward.
Just as Superman and Batman each have their own less-than-idyllic pasts that made them who they are, Wonder Woman will also learn a lot about herself and grow over the course of her movie. Highlighting these themes as well as the narrative, Roven summed up her story further, saying "It's a journey of discovery that's way more profound than just learning that she's got physical abilities that others don't have. It's about helping mankind and being a symbol of all the things you could accomplish without war."
Starting with Wonder Woman, the DCEU has set up a new kind of origin story, one that they're also transitioning into Aquaman, Cyborg and The Flash, etc. The plan is to not only question how they became who they are but also more importantly why, lifting from DC's storied print catalog to do so.
Source: ComicBook.com
