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.

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.