‘Professor Marston and the Wonder Women’ Shows How Wonder Woman Overpowered Her Creator

Biopic aims for truth behind super heroine: Lie detector inventor stumbled on an icon.

October 22, 2017 10:33 am

The secret origins of Wonder Woman don’t involve Zeus, the lord of the Greek Gods, or being shaped out of magic clay. In reality, she was created by the inventor of the lie detector and inspired by the two women who shared both his life and his bed.

Months after the superheroine made an enormously lucrative cinematic debut in Warner Bros.’s Wonder Woman, a new biopic has emerged with perfect timing to tell that tale — Professor Marston and the Wonder Women.

The film chronicles the real-life story of psychology professor William Moulton Marston (Luke Evans), who had an unconventional home life with his wife Elizabeth (Rebecca Hall) and a younger teaching assistant,  Olive Byrne (Bella Heathcote), who lived with the couple.

Though their polyamorous arrangement was taboo in the 1930s and 40s, much of their philosophies and sexual fixation on bondage were hinted at in the kid-friendly pages of his comic books.

And the film from writer/director Angela Robinson shows how much of that unusual origin story has shaped the character now played by Gal Gadot on the big screen. For example, those bullet-proof bracelets? They’re inspired by silver bracelets that Olive wore.

But the drama also shows that Wonder Woman has come a long way, baby. Gone is her whole weakness to submission, being rendered harmless every time a man tied her up.

Wonder Woman running
Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. and Ratpac-Dune Entertainment LLC

Marston’s real-life grand-daughter, though, said that the film wouldn’t pass the magic truth-telling lasso test.

“There was no contact,” Christie Marston told BigFanBoy.com. “In an interview, Angela Robinson said that she made the choice to not talk to anybody because she wanted to use her own ‘interpretation.’ Both the depiction of the family and Wonder Woman’s origins are made up.”

Watch the trailer below:

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