Wonder Woman: Patty Jenkins addresses James Cameron feud, insists she's "not upset"

‘Wonder Woman’ director Patty Jenkins has again spoken out on her minor war of words with James Cameron over this year’s Warner Bros/DC hit.

Speaking in a profile piece for Variety, Jenkins says of the ‘Avatar’ director’s remarks, “I actually was not upset at all. Everybody is entitled to their own opinion. But if you’re going to debate something in a public way, I have to reply that I think it’s incorrect.”

Asked whether Cameron had ever been in touch directly to apologise, Jenkins replied, “No.”

The feud began back in August, when – in the light of the huge critical and commercial success of ‘Wonder Woman,’ which was widely hailed as a major leap forward for the representation of women in blockbuster cinema – Cameron disagreed, calling Jenkins’ film “a step backwards.”

Cameron dismissed Gal Gadot’s heroine as “an objectified icon,” remarking that his own iconic heroine – Linda Hamilton’s Sarah Connor in the ‘Terminator’ movies – 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.”

Jenkins (along with a great many more disgruntled Twitter users) soon posted an unhappy retort: “if women always have to 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, then we haven’t come very far have we?”

Nevertheless, Cameron persisted: he reiterated his position in a September interview, complaining, “she was Miss Israel, and she was wearing a kind of bustier costume that was very form-fitting. She’s absolutely drop-dead gorgeous. To me, that’s not breaking ground.”

One of the many prominent figures to publicly blast Cameron’s remarks are original TV ‘Wonder Woman’ actress Lynda Carter, who bluntly told the filmmaker, “STOP dissing WW: You poor soul. Perhaps you do not understand the character. I most certainly do… the movie was spot-on, Gal Gadot was great.”

Patty Jenkins is currently at the early stages on the ‘Wonder Woman’ sequel, for which she has negotiated a deal that will see her become the highest paid female director to date, with a fee somewhere between $7-9 million.

‘Wonder Woman 2’ is due December 2019 – but before that, we can see Gadot play the role a third time (or fourth, if we count her recent ‘Saturday Night Live’ appearance) in ‘Justice League,’ in cinemas 17 November.

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