To Be or Not To Biel

There are several reasons why the new "Justice League" movie should fail. It's being directed by George Miller, whose last good movie that wasn't about computer generated animals was made before his target demographic was born. It's being co-written by Kieran and Michele Mulroney, a married couple with zip on their IMDB resume besides the fact that Kieran is brother to Dermot, somewhat famous for "My Best Friend's Wedding" and curiously oft-employed. The whole notion of bringing together several major superheroes in one movie sounds like a bad idea - the quality of comic book movies almost always correlates to the number of costumes jockeying for your attention (witness the declining quality of the Batman series through the addition of sidekicks and the pile-up of villains - and the return to greatness when "Begins" swept the deck clean).

Telling a good superteam story is hard even in comic books - juggling the biggest personalities in the history of the medium, arranging a threat so world-beating as to require everyone pitching in. You need to balance quality interaction (because people like seeing how Batman and Superman hang out) with quality interstellar action (because people like seeing what it l0oks like when Superman, Aquaman, Wonder Woman, and Green Lantern collectively fuck some serious justice up). You've got to figure out a way to make Green Lantern's power ring, Wonder Woman's golden lasso, and Aquaman being Aquaman look cool.

So there are many things that could sink Justice League. But Jessica Biel isn't one of them.
The news is everywhere: Jessica's looking to play Wonder Woman, probably the most famous comic book character to never have a halfway decent movie made out of her. Part of the problem is that, more than most superheroes, Wonder Woman looks ridiculous in real life - you can shroud Batman in shadows and you can give the X-Men leather uniforms, but Wonder Woman's got a one-piece bikini and red booties - not the most threatening look in the world.

Still, call me crazy, I think Jessica can pull it off. Unlike some of the candidates who were being thrown around during the Joss Whedon era, like Rachel Bilson or Charisma Carpenter, Jessica's got some muscle: if she didn't have such a pretty face, you could believe her as a cop. Fortunately, the point of Wonder Woman is that she's hot AND superstrong. Male fantasy? Sure, but there's a decent amount of rich, albeit mixed, mythology to draw in with the character - she's from an island of women, she gets her powers from the Greek gods, she's a diplomat who seeks peace through violence. There's been a slow Renaissance building in how Wonder Woman is portrayed in comic books. In the last few years, the decades-old "World's Finest" Batman-Superman duo has slowly developed into a trio - Matt Wagner's "Trinity" portrays the three icons as a delicately shifting love-hate continuum - Batman doesn't trust super powers, Wonder Woman doesn't trust men, Superman trusts everybody too much. "Infinite Crisis" was one of those gigantic crossovers you can only understand if you spent your entire childhood reading and memorizing comic books (ie, you know what I'm talking about when I talk about Superboy-Prime killing Pantha while battling the Teen Titans ). Still, the writer, Geoff Johns, produced one of the best portrayals of our favorite Amazon ever - proud, desperate, angry at the world for not understanding her and at herself for not understanding the world.

Wonder Women are everywhere now - you've got Nikki/Jessica on "Heroes," Six on "Battlestar Galactica," the new "Bionic Woman." Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez turned "Grindhouse" into the most violent chick flick ever - except maybe Tarantino's own "Kill Bill," which would have been a shallow exercise in samurai-western post-camp without Uma Thurman playing a deadpan assassin shading into a lover and a mother even as she seeks bloody revenge. Or there's also "The Descent," Neil Marshall's orgy of blood with an all-female cast of daredevil adventurers.

Jessica Biel will be perfect, so long as Miller and the Mulroneys follow a few important rules, as demonstrated by the movies above:

1) Don't try to make her an everygirl. Wonder Woman is a goddess who wears less clothes than a fifth grader and could crush a man with her whatevers. Look to Rodriguez' Cherry Darling in "Grindhouse" - Rose McGowan doesn't emote very much, just plays the role deadpan straight, which holds the movie's focus while there's madcap gore happening all around and upon her. Wonder Woman doesn't need to be a particularly three-dimensional character - a good thing, because Biel is not a particularly three-dimensional actress.

2) Resist the temptation to set her up to fall in love with anyone on the team. She's the only girl in a boy's club. She's a tomboy, really. Don't saddle her with all of the lame speeches - let's not have another Kirsten Dunst-Katie Holmes-Eva Mendes, here.

3) Make her angry. Wonder Woman has always been a difficult character because there's no easy explanation for why she does what she does. Batman lost his parents, Superman lost his planet, Green Lantern works for an intergalactic police force. Wonder Woman comes from paradise to teach people on earth how to get along. This doesn't ever work.

4) If she doesn't have a bigger role than Aquaman, the movie's off.