Patty Jenkins hits back at James Cameron – ‘He doesn’t understand Wonder Woman’

Patty Jenkins has responded to criticisms made by James Cameron about her film Wonder Woman, saying that the director has an “inability to understand what [the character] is or stands for”.

 

James Cameron: ‘The downside of being attracted to independent women is that they don’t need you’. Cameron made his comments in an interview published in Guardian, in which he calls Wonder Woman a “step backwards” and says that Hollywood’s “self-congratulatory back-patting” over the superhero movie’s success had been 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,” he said.

 

Gal Gadot talks ‘Wonder Woman,’ says “Whoever is not a feminist is a sexist”

 

The director pointed to the character of Sarah Connor from his own Terminator films as a positive example of a female protagonist.

“Sarah Connor was not a beauty icon. She was strong, she was troubled, she was a terrible mother, and she earned the respect of the audience through pure grit. And to me, [the benefit of characters like Sarah] is so obvious. I mean, half the audience is female,” he added.

 

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Jenkins responded to the comments in a post on 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 film-maker, he is not a woman.”Strong women are great. His praise of my film Monster, and our portrayal od a strong yet damaged won was so appreciated.“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 [the] hit it is, can surely choose and judge their own icons of progress,”

 

Wonder Woman, which stars Gal Gadot as the Amazonian superhero, was released in June and quickly attracted praise for its feminist stance. The film has also proved a global box-office hit, and is currently the second-highest grossing movie of 2017, behind Beauty and the Beast. A sequel to the film is set to be released in 2019, with Jenkins again directing.