Home Movies

Patty Jenkins Responds To James Cameron Following Claims That Wonder Woman Was “A Step Backwards”

Now that Wonder Woman has been crowned the highest-grossing superhero origin movie of all time, it's fair to say that Diana Prince's solo outing has been unanimously praised since its release two months ago.

Now that Wonder Woman has been crowned the highest-grossing superhero origin movie of all time, it’s fair to say that Diana Prince’s solo outing has been unanimously praised since its release two months ago.

Recommended Videos

Such a remarkable feat meant that a sequel quickly became a no-brainer, and Warner Bros. has since earmarked Diana’s next solo outing for a release in December of 2019 – long after her next big-screen appearance in Justice League. But in the eyes of James Cameron, all of this success can be attributed to Hollywood’s “self-congratulatory back-patting,” after the Avatar creator told The Guardian that Wonder Woman is not so much a symbol of strong, empowered women as it is a “step backwards.”

Here’s that controversial quote in full:

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. 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!

As you can imagine, Cameron’s criticism sparked heated debate online, and eventually caught the attention of Wonder Woman writer-director, Patty Jenkins. Per Twitter, the latter responded to Cameron’s comments as so:

In essence, Jenkins is firmly of the belief that there’s more than one way to convey a strong, nuanced female character on screen, and that The Terminator‘s Sarah Connor isn’t the be-all and end-all when it comes to cinema’s leading ladies.

And for Gal Gadot’s Diana Prince, that adventure continues with the release of Justice League this November, before Wonder Woman 2 hits theaters in December of 2019.