Sketchy Evidence For Rumored Wonder Woman Appearance In MAN OF STEEL

For some time now, Warner brothers has been under fire from comic book fans for not seeming to have in place a plan for their comic book film adaptations much in the way that Marvel Comics have had with their films that lead into this summer’s blockbuster The Avengers. Granted, they were hampered by a few things including the fact that Bryan Singer’s Superman Returns was more of a tribute to Richard Donner’s Superman: The Movie than a franchise relaunch, director Christopher Nolan emphatically stating that his Batman films existed on their own and not in any shared universe and that Green Lantern was unfortunately just a bit of a dud.

Despite rumors that Warners currently in-development Justice League film will serve as a springboard from which a number of solo superhero franchises could be launched, all eyes are currently on director Zack Snyder’s upcoming Superman film Man Of Steel as a possible place where a shared DC Cinematic Universe could be launched. And those eyes may be seeing what they want to see instead of what is actually there.

Case in point, Cosmic Book News is speculating that Wonder Woman will be making a cameo appearance in Man Of Steel.

Here’s their line of logic –

Guess what’s rumored for the new Superman movie, Man of Steel?

A Wonder Woman appearance.

Guess who is a couple in the DC Comics?

Superman and Wonder Woman.

Guess who was spotted together at the recent McLaren Automotive unveiling?

Henry Cavill with fitness model/mma star/actress/americangladiator Gina Carano.

Guess who’s the “favorite” to play Wonder Woman.

Yup.

We know Henry Cavill broke up with his fiancee.

Wonder where Cavill and Carano met?

Yup.

Lots of assumptions in the above and I am not sure that I agree with the conclusions that they do. True, the pair could have met when she filmed a cameo for the movie. But it doesn’t mean that she is playing Wonder Woman. And if she is really playing Wonder Woman, the two could have met at a screen test for Justice League, if Cavill is being carried over for that film, it doesn’t necessarily follow that she’ll cameo in Man Of Steel.

The fact is, their attempt to be coy with “Wonder where Cavill and Carano met?” is just some shitty reporting and feels more Hedda Hopper-ish gossip columnist than anything else. Sometimes two people hanging out a car show is just two people hanging out at a car show.

To my mind, Snyder’s film has enough that it must accomplish in terms of re-establishing the Superman franchise to be bothered with throwing in a major character cameo like Wonder Woman. Now it wouldn’t be distracting for them to throw out a reference to Gotham City or Bruce Wayne’s Wayne Corp. or Green Lantern’s Ferris Aviation in passing. But taking any appreciable amount of time to have her character pop up seems like a bad idea to me.

Granted, the first Iron Man film took time to introduce the concept of the spy organization SHIELD, but that felt very natural to the plot so that by the time Samuel L Jackson’s Nick Fury makes his cameo in the film’s button scene, it made sense in the movie. I strongly suspected that this might have been something that DC and Warners were thinking about when they included in Green Lantern the character of Amanda Walker, a character not noted for appearing the Green Lantern comics but who has been head of the secret government black-ops group the Suicide Squad. Having her character pop up in a number of films would have been a way to accomplish that. However, I just don’t see a way that would be similarly organic in which one could introduce Wonder Woman in Man Of Steel without raising questions as to why she wasn’t getting involved in the adventure.

I have no doubt that at some point we will finally see Superman and Wonder Woman on screen together, joined by several other of their Justice League members. It’s just not going to be next summer when Man Of Steel hits theaters.