James Cameron, take a step backwards.
On Thursday, the Guardian published an interview with the Titanic and Avatar director, who said, “All of the self-congratulatory back-patting Hollywood’s been doing over Wonder Woman has been so misguided. She’s an objectified icon, and it’s just male Hollywood doing the same old thing! I’m not saying I didn’t like the movie but, to me, it’s a step backwards.” Cameron isn’t totally wrong — especially the part about the back-patting; Hollywood shouldn’t be proud of itself for Wonder Woman‘s success when it took this long to make a female-led superhero movie — but his comments were, well, misguided.
Or in the words of Wonder Woman (and highly-paid Wonder Woman 2!) director Patty Jenkins in a note posted to Twitter, “James Cameron’s inability to understand what Wonder Woman is, or stands for, to women all over the world is unsurprising as, though he is a great filmmaker, he is not a woman.”
She continued, “Strong women are great. His praise of my film Monster, and our portrayal of a strong yet damaged woman was so appreciated. But if women have to always be hard, tough, and troubled to be strong, and we aren’t free to be multidimensional or celebrate an icon of women everywhere because she is attractive and loving, then we haven’t come very far have we. I believe women can and should be EVERYTHING just like male lead characters should be. There is no right and wrong kind of powerful woman. And the massive female audience who made the film a hit it is, can surely choose to judge their own icons of progress.”
Okay, sure, but where were the sexy blue space-cats?
— Patty Jenkins (@PattyJenks) August 25, 2017
(Via Twitter)