49 replies to this topic

[Captain Jack]

Cool discussion topic!

My first thought was Ms. Marvel/Carol Denvers:

http://en.wikipedia....wiki/Ms._Marvel

But, she seems more like Marvel's version of Supergirl to me.

And then there's Marvel's Valkyrie:

http://en.wikipedia...._(Marvel_Comics)

In terms of being a mythological character and her powers, she seems like a good fit.

[Cybersnark]

BklnScott, on 02 March 2013 - 05:19 PM, said:

I feel like for any version of WW, the creators have got to make a choice of how close they want to associate themselves with Greek mythology.  Are these sci-fi "amazons" with Purple Rays and Invisible Jets and some nebulous suggestion that they descend from Greek antiquity, as they are often portrayed, or are they THE Amazons of Greek mytho-history, made immortal and secreted away to a hidden island paradise where they have kept an ancient culture alive for the past 2,500 years?  

True, but I see no reason they can't be both; I have trouble imagining a culture remaining completely stagnant for 2500 years, even with immortals. If anything, I'd be more surprised to find that Themiscyrans haven't started developing and refining the tech and knowledge they had access to. Hell, imagine if any of them had an innate inventive bent. Their own Tesla, or Einstein?

(I like to think that, while Hippolyta and Diana were debating what to do about Steve Trevor, some tech-starved Amazon nerd was happily dissecting his plane and completely geeking out.)

Edited by Cybersnark, 03 March 2013 - 09:21 AM.

[DWF]

BklnScott, on 01 March 2013 - 06:57 PM, said:

Bobby, on 01 March 2013 - 05:27 PM, said:

I could see a Carol Danvers movie working, aliens show up to the planet and since she's in the Air Force Intelligence division she gets sent out to investigate.  Gets exposed to the Psyche Magnatron and get's her powers.  She can even take the name Captain Marvel in honor of the alien hero.  Her origin story still holds up better than most.

I could see them doing Mar-Vell if Guardians is a hit... but they could never call him that.  I always thought if Danvers showed up, it would be as an Air Force officer in an Iron Man movie...  Rhodey's new boss or whatever... who at some point gets exposed to - well, whatever it was, I can never keep it straight with her.  But that would be a good, organic way in for her - through the Iron Man pictures' Air Force element.

Carol Danvers started out as a SHIELD agent so if it makes it to series there's a possibility she appear on the TV series.

[BklnScott]

Cybersnark, on 03 March 2013 - 09:20 AM, said:

BklnScott, on 02 March 2013 - 05:19 PM, said:

I feel like for any version of WW, the creators have got to make a choice of how close they want to associate themselves with Greek mythology.  Are these sci-fi "amazons" with Purple Rays and Invisible Jets and some nebulous suggestion that they descend from Greek antiquity, as they are often portrayed, or are they THE Amazons of Greek mytho-history, made immortal and secreted away to a hidden island paradise where they have kept an ancient culture alive for the past 2,500 years?  

True, but I see no reason they can't be both; I have trouble imagining a culture remaining completely stagnant for 2500 years, even with immortals. If anything, I'd be more surprised to find that Themiscyrans haven't started developing and refining the tech and knowledge they had access to. Hell, imagine if any of them had an innate inventive bent. Their own Tesla, or Einstein?

(I like to think that, while Hippolyta and Diana were debating what to do about Steve Trevor, some tech-starved Amazon nerd was happily dissecting his plane and completely geeking out.)

I always have trouble buying swords & sandals mashed up with Flash Gordon style death rays.  

I would say the key genre element the audience must be persuaded to embrace or none of it will work is that the Greek Gods are real - and that there is a small population of 2,500 year old classical Greek women who still worship them.  Then to reveal on top of that that these chicks in their togas also have supercomputers and sci-fi jet technology?  Why would they ever have developed any of that stuff, especially the aerotech?  And if they did, would they still be in togas?  Wouldn't they have come up with a more durable cotton-poly blend by now?  

Edited by BklnScott, 04 March 2013 - 04:05 PM.

[Christopher]

Why can't they be in cotton-poly blend togas? That's a matter of fashion, not technology.

[BklnScott]

That was a joke, but the point is: a society that has developed such advanced technology would no longer bear much resemblance to what it had been 2,500 years prior.

[DWF]

I wasn't aware that Amazons had supercomputers.

[BklnScott]

They can manufacture invisible jets and put a force field around the island et al but they don't have supercomputers?  

Beyond the implausibility - why would they develop these things when there was no need for them?  They're a small, non-procreating population living in utopian circumstances - in an origin story where Paradise Island already has modern technology of any sort you undercut the effectiveness of the fish out of water story.   Someone like Diana should have no concept of the internal combustion engine let alone the microchip when she first comes to Man's World, a world that is fueled by those things.  That's half the fun right there.

Edited by BklnScott, 04 March 2013 - 08:39 PM.

[DWF]

BklnScott, on 04 March 2013 - 08:38 PM, said:

They can manufacture invisible jets and put a force field around the island et al but they don't have supercomputers?  

Beyond the implausibility - why would they develop these things when there was no need for them?  They're a small, non-procreating population living in utopian circumstances - in an origin story where Paradise Island already has modern technology of any sort you undercut the effectiveness of the fish out of water story.   Someone like Diana should have no concept of the internal combustion engine let alone the microchip when she first comes to Man's World, a world that is fueled by those things.  That's half the fun right there.

So no there's no proof that they have supercomputers and I think the invisible plane isn't or wasn't jet it merely glided on the air. And Wonder Woman doesn't use it anymore unless that's changed as well, she can fly now on her own.

[RJDiogenes]

I don't see why a technological civilization wouldn't wear togas. It's their traditional dress. And there's no reason why they can't have supercomputers, either.  They're not stupid.

[Virgil Vox]

I'm not sure if I prefer an Amazonion society that has stayed the same for thousands of years or has access to advanced technology like invisible jets. Which is a cool concept but doesn't really work in a comic because artists always end up drawing the outline. Which makes sense because otherwise it's just a blank panel. Both have their merits. I like the idea of the Amazons basically off own their own inventing all this cool technology because, well, why not? They're immortal and cut off from the rest of the world. What else are they going to do? But seeing Diana be a fish out of water in Man's World would make for some fun moments in a movie or TV show. But she can still be a fish out of water because Amazon technology would be different from our modern day technology. Plus, she'd be surrounded by men and children which would be a huge shock just by itself.

Quote

My first thought was Ms. Marvel/Carol Denvers:

http://en.wikipedia....wiki/Ms._Marvel

But, she seems more like Marvel's version of Supergirl to me.

Maybe at first, but over the years she has grown into her own character and can operate without any ties to the male Captain Marvel. She has also had major roles in a lot of the Big Events at Marvel over the years. During the House of M storyline she was shown as the best superhero, basically the House of M's Superman like hero.

[Christopher]

Virgil Vox, on 05 March 2013 - 08:17 PM, said:

I'm not sure if I prefer an Amazonion society that has stayed the same for thousands of years or has access to advanced technology like invisible jets.

Well, who's to say they have stayed the same? Even assuming they're immortal, that they're still the same individuals who founded the society, they would've developed new customs and approaches in their different living conditions. Anyway, who knows what the original Amazon culture was really like? What is there to compare it too?

Having classical fashions or architecture doesn't mean a society hasn't changed since classical times. Look at how many modern European and American buildings are designed to look like Roman buildings -- or like a modern interpretation of Roman buildings, bare marble without the bright paints and gilding the real ones used to have. That doesn't mean the society is unchanged since Rome; it means that a more modern society chose to revive classical styles out of reverence for that past culture.

[DWF]

Virgil Vox, on 05 March 2013 - 08:17 PM, said:

I'm not sure if I prefer an Amazonion society that has stayed the same for thousands of years or has access to advanced technology like invisible jets.

the invisible plane isn't a jet or at least it wasn't originally it was a mere glider now it's lifeform that can change it's shape and it was a gift to her.

[Cybersnark]

"Why does a painter paint? Why does a boxer box?" --Dr Noonian Soong

It wouldn't be too hard to justify some sci-fi elements in a filmic reboot --it's possible to link the (ostensibly supernatural) Olympians to New Genesis (home of Sufficiently Advanced Technology), and Marvel's cinematic universe demonstrates that audiences are okay with highly-advanced aliens (hell, Asgard basically is New Genesis, thanks to Kirby's distinctive designs).

And I can easily imagine Athena taking an interest in the Amazons and giving them a few technical notes. In some versions Hippolyta has her scrying mirror that she can use to monitor Man's World --and has even intervened to keep her island safe (used to explain/retcon the WWII and Golden Age Wonder Woman --it was Hippolyta herself in the costume).

Consider, the whole reason we remember the Greeks is that they weren't primitives. Right off the bat, Themiscyra could've had access to advanced mathematics, skilled metalsmiths with a working knowledge of alloys, artists with a detailed eye for natural forms (who could likely figure out the basics of aerodynamics), farmers who knew about animal husbandry and agriculture (and thus had the means to understand and study genetics), a concept of alchemy (which could expand and subdivide into something resembling the "modern" sciences, including chemistry, germ theory, and medecine), and maybe even chemists and mechanics able to understand the concept of fuel and mechanical rocketry. Once they stopped having to fight for their lives, they couldn't have helped but to start studying the world around them --it's human nature.

(It's called Paradise Island --I can't imagine a paradise without invention and creativity.)

Even if they didn't have the ability to build advanced technology (without the industrial infrastructure), they would very likely be able to theorize about it and figure out what they were looking at the moment Trevor's jet fell into their laps, and maybe even get it flying again.

[Virgil Vox]

Quote

the invisible plane isn't a jet or at least it wasn't originally it was a mere glider now it's lifeform that can change it's shape and it was a gift to her.

The only exposure I've had to it was the relaunch after Infinite Crisis where it looked more like a jet and was made by Wayne Enterprises and given to Diana. He also gave invisible helicopters and tanks to the Department of Metahuman Affairs.

Quote

Well, who's to say they have stayed the same? Even assuming they're immortal, that they're still the same individuals who founded the society, they would've developed new customs and approaches in their different living conditions. Anyway, who knows what the original Amazon culture was really like? What is there to compare it too?

True, but based on some of their portrayals in the comics they have mainly stayed the same. Still following the same rituals and customs, though changing some up like when Diana started to date Nemesis. Diana's courtship ritual was designed with it being between two females.

[BklnScott]

Christopher, on 05 March 2013 - 08:56 PM, said:

Virgil Vox, on 05 March 2013 - 08:17 PM, said:

I'm not sure if I prefer an Amazonion society that has stayed the same for thousands of years or has access to advanced technology like invisible jets.

Well, who's to say they have stayed the same? Even assuming they're immortal, that they're still the same individuals who founded the society, they would've developed new customs and approaches in their different living conditions. Anyway, who knows what the original Amazon culture was really like? What is there to compare it too?

Not to put too fine a point on it but: Herodotus, Aeschylus, Shakespeare...?  The point IMO is not to compare fiction to reality but modern fiction (WW) to mytho-historical fiction (classical Greek literature, myth, Elizabethan drama).  WW's amazons have to be squared with the myth of Amazons that exists in Western Civilization - otherwise why bother to assert the connection in the first place?  

As far as the question of why wouldn't they develop advanced technology: I agree that they're smart, and that they should not be depicted as being primitives, but why would a small, isolated population living in utopian circumstances NEED to develop modern technology?  They're doing better than fine already.  Need is what drives innovation, no?  And often - the existence of enemies, of which the Amazons, having been delivered from their enemies, had none.

Anyways, that's just my two cents.  I'm not saying there can be no other opinions on the matter.

[Christopher]

Cybersnark, on 05 March 2013 - 10:48 PM, said:

Consider, the whole reason we remember the Greeks is that they weren't primitives. Right off the bat, Themiscyra could've had access to advanced mathematics, skilled metalsmiths with a working knowledge of alloys, artists with a detailed eye for natural forms (who could likely figure out the basics of aerodynamics), farmers who knew about animal husbandry and agriculture (and thus had the means to understand and study genetics), a concept of alchemy (which could expand and subdivide into something resembling the "modern" sciences, including chemistry, germ theory, and medecine), and maybe even chemists and mechanics able to understand the concept of fuel and mechanical rocketry. Once they stopped having to fight for their lives, they couldn't have helped but to start studying the world around them --it's human nature.

Point of order -- the Amazons of myth were not Greeks. They were the mortal enemies of the Greeks. The whole point of the Amazon myth in Greek culture was as a symbol of gender values the exact opposite of Greece's own, a grotesque cautionary tale of what they believed women should not be.

Granted, the Amazons of the comics were not the Amazons of myth. But I believe that in the original version, they had in fact been enslaved by the Greeks and had escaped. And in the post-Crisis version, they consisted of a multicultural mix of female outcasts from a variety of cultures. Sure, they're guided by the same gods that the Greeks worshipped, but that doesn't make them actually Greek themselves.

BklnScott, on 05 March 2013 - 11:47 PM, said:

As far as the question of why wouldn't they develop advanced technology: I agree that they're smart, and that they should not be depicted as being primitives, but why would a small, isolated population living in utopian circumstances NEED to develop modern technology?  They're doing better than fine already.  Need is what drives innovation, no?  And often - the existence of enemies, of which the Amazons, having been delivered from their enemies, had none.

Utopian circumstances don't necessarily last, though. An island has finite resources that can be exhausted -- look at Rapa Nui (Easter Island) and the collapse of the civilization that built the famous statues there. It takes innovation and careful management for a human civilization to live in balance with its environment; it doesn't just automatically happen by the generosity of nature. I just read a book I emphatically recommend, 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus by Charles C. Mann. One of the most fascinating things I learned from it was that it's now believed that the Amazon rainforest as it exists in modern times was largely or perhaps mostly the creation of the indigenous population that lived there -- that the reason so many Amazonian trees and plants are so useful to humans is because they were bred to be, that the Amazonian peoples practiced their own unique form of agriculture, or rather agro-forestry, cultivating trees and other rainforest plants that could provide food and resources since the rainy climate would've washed away the soil if they'd cleared the trees for normal agriculture. So what we've assumed to be the last untouched wilderness on Earth may actually be the end result of centuries of human environmental engineering -- an advanced technology in its own way even if it didn't involve stone and metal.

Of course the situation as depicted on Themyscira is different, but the point is that the idea of non-technological humans living in harmony with unaltered nature is a myth, that any large, organized human population is going to need to apply invention and technology of some sort to manage its environment if it expects to survive there for any length of time without exhausting its resources. So the idea that the Amazons of Themyscira could live in a perfect, unchanging, nontechnological utopia is a fantasy. Okay, granted, Wonder Woman itself is a fantasy, but the point is that by the parameters of your particular argument here, they would have a need to drive innovation.

[BklnScott]

That's amazing re: the rainforest - I'll have to check that out.  Thanks.

The real Themyscira is supposed to have been in Asia Minor, so yes, they're not Greeks - but when we talk about classical Hellenic civilization, they're included just as other non-Greek players in the neighborhood are.  Clearly, these Amazons worshipped the gods of Olympus in any case.  

A clarification on technology - I am referring to the SF style super advanced technology that has sometimes been associated with the Amazons from the earliest days of WW.  The Flash Gordon type rays, etc.  I can see of course why any culture would need to develop technology to survive, to exploit and live in balance with their environment.  Clearly, they were able to build a city, and cultivate the land, manufacture clothes, and they even had rudimentary weapons (as in the Perez incarnation - where they were the guardians of an underground prison containing the occupants of Pandora's Box)... but they were weapons that would not have been out of place 2,500 years prior.

Space age aerotech, though...?  I feel like including that sort of thing would pull a movie audience right out of the fiction and take away from the point of the Amazons in the first place.

Edited by BklnScott, 06 March 2013 - 12:25 PM.

[Christopher]

I'm just saying that even in a utopia, there could be an incentive to innovate.

Anyway, I don't agree that audiences would be so unable to accept a blend of classical/Hellenic culture and high technology. After all, isn't the that the foundation of the way Atlantis has been portrayed in pop culture for decades? As an antique, Hellenistic society that nonetheless had technology far more advanced than anything in its own day or even the present? Audiences have been able to accept movies and TV shows about Atlantis for generations, so I don't see how a similarly portrayed Themyscira would be so unacceptable. Particularly since Atlantis does exist in the DCU.

[G-man]

And don't forget, Archimedes was credited with creating the first death ray to use against the Romans ...  albeit, the usual depiction is using brightly polished surfaces to reflect and focus sunlight.

As for the Amazons and Paradise Island, I think part of the problem would be keeping the island undiscovered.  

When Wonder Woman was conceived, the world still had some unexplored corners that a person could find themselves castaway, with semi-autonomous kingdoms.  But what with trade, exploration, colonization, commercial exploitation, and global war, the concept that a habitable island state populated with beautiful women could remain free and independent of colonial powers and corporate interests becomes increasingly problematical.

So the amazons must have the means not only to be wholly self-sufficient, but to preserve their liberty, probably through some mechanism whereby the island can remain hidden from the world yet preserve its resources.

/s/

Gloriosus
the G-man Himself