James Cameron Calls 'Wonder Woman' a 'Step Backwards'

In an interview with The Guardian, James Cameron called Wonder Woman a “step backwards” and said that “all of the self-congratulatory back-patting Hollywood’s been doing over Wonder Woman has been so misguided.”

According to Entertainment Weekly, Cameron thinks that the movie, created by Patty Jenkins, is just “male Hollywood doing the same old thing.” He also called the Wonder Woman character an “objectified icon.”

Cameron has put women at the forefront of some of his action films, including Linda Hamilton as Sarah Connor in Terminator and Terminator 2, and Sigourney Weaver as Ripley in Alien. He thinks the character of Sarah Connor is more authentic than Wonder Woman.

“Sarah Connor was not a beauty icon,” he said, according to EW. “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!”

Wonder Woman’s Jenkins responded to Cameron’s remarks, saying that his inability to understand “what Wonder Woman is, or stands for, to women all over the world is unsurprising as, though he is a great filmmaker, he is not a woman.”

She also said that we haven’t come very far if “women have to always be hard, tough and troubled to be strong, and we aren’t free to be multidimensional or celebrate an icon of women everywhere because she is attractive and loving.”

She penned the note on Twitter. In it, she also says that there is “no right and wrong kind of powerful woman.” She brought up the blockbuster’s massive box office success, which was driven by a female audience, as proof that the movie’s star was embraced by women of all ages.