Between films like Wonder Woman and Black Panther becoming massive cultural successes, audiences are praising the film for their depictions of female and black heroes. When one Twitter user wondered why no one praised Halle Berry‘s Catwoman film, one of the film’s writers, John Rogers, noted that it was because it was a “sh-t movie.”
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The original tweet pondered, “Michelle Obama says it’s about time black kids have a superhero that reflects who they are. Why didn’t we hear this when Halle Berry as Catwoman was released years ago?” Rogers didn’t hold back, proclaiming, “As one of the credited writers of Catwoman, I believe I have the authority to say: because it was a sh-t movie dumped by the studio at the end of a style cycle, and had zero cultural relevance either in front of or behind the camera. This is a bad take. Feel shame.”
To clarify just how disappointed he was in the final product, he added, “Also full disclosure: I’ve never watched the movie all the way through in one sitting. I skipped premiere night to shoot @jenni_baird audition footage for Global Frequency. And they’d fired me anyway for, y’know, snark.”
If the writer whose name is still attached to the film is willing to own up to the underwhelming final product, it’s hard to ignore the merits of his claims.
Between 2000’s X-Men and 2002’s Spider-Man, superheroes seemed like a surefire success. Unfortunately, DC Comics was still trying to recover from the campy tone of Batman & Robin and hadn’t delivered audiences the grounded and gritty Batman Begins, with Catwoman suffering major setbacks in development.
Catwoman has an abysmal 9% positive score on review aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes, making it the second-worst DC Comics related score of all time, ahead of only the 1984 Supergirl, which has a 7% score.
Interestingly, Michelle Pfeiffer’s portrayal of Catwoman in 1992’s Batman Returns is one of the most famous on-screen supervillains in DC Comics history, with the actress having been willing to star in a film of her own.
“Are you kidding me? In a heartbeat,” Pfeiffer said when asked by the New York Times if she would have done a Catwoman movie. “I loved that part. I felt like I was just getting comfortable and getting used to the claws and the mask, just figuring out how to move in all of that. There was a little bit of talk about that, then that kind of faded away.”
Anne Hathway most recently played the character in The Dark Knight Rises, with no iteration of the character planned for the foreseeable future.
Do you think the writer’s comments were harsh? Let us know what you think of the movie in the comments below!
[H/T Twitter, jonrog1]
