David S. Goyer: Head of DC Comics Movies, Disrespectiful and Unimaginative and Sexist.

David S. Goyer

This is the reason we’re not getting any good DC movies any time soon.

We’ve covered [David S. Goyer’s attitudes towards his work with DC before](https://awesomefriday.ca/2014/04/david-s-goyer-on-adapting-dc-properties-for-tv-and-movies-we-have-no-idea-what-we-are-doing/), basically when questioned about how the DC universe is coming together he said it was all still “too early” despite already having a movie out of the gate. Stupid.

The other day Goyer participated in a panel for a podcast called Scriptnotes and revealed why he’s pretty much exactly the wrong person to be in charge of adapting … well _anything_ to the screen. As if we didn’t have enough reason already.

The subject of She-Hulk arose and this happened:

> **Goyer:** I have a theory about She-Hulk. Which was created by a man, right? And at the time in particular I think 95% of comic book readers were men and certainly almost all of the comic book writers were men. So the Hulk was this classic male power fantasy. It’s like, most of the people reading comic books were these people like me who were just these little kids getting the shit kicked out of them every day… And so then they created She-Huk, right? Who was still smart… I think She-Hulk is the chick that you could fuck if you were Hulk, you know what I’m saying? … She-Hulk was the extension of the male power fantasy. So it’s like if I’m going to be this geek who becomes the Hulk then let’s create a giant green porn star that only the Hulk could fuck.

I can’t even….. there’s just so much wrong here. From the fact that She-Hulk wasn’t created as a sexual partner for Hulk (they’re cousins for a start, and she was created to stop the 70s TV show producers from creating her first basically) to the fact that this is just so blatantly sexist and reductive.

He’s also leaving out that Jennifer Walters is a great character. The blood transfusion from her consign Bruce makes her She-Hulk but she is always hulked out and retains her personality. She also is a lawyer, and has had a bunch of boyfriends and is generally one of the best female characters Marvel has ever done.

Now think about that attitude and remember that this guy is in charge of bringing Wonder Woman to the big screen for the first time. It’s legitimately troubling that tis attitude might transfer to her and Superman.

So that’s terrible. And then a less important but still worrisome thing happened when he was asked how he, the guy in charge of adapting DC Comics right now, would adapt Martian Manhunter.

He first asked “How many people in the audience have heard of Martian Manhunter?” After hearing some light applause and cheers he then asked “How many people that raised their hands have ever been laid?”

Yeah, he literally just insulted his core audience by assuming an out of date stereotype. Seriously, does he not get that nerds are inheriting the earth right now? That people who love comics and superheroes and good movies come from all walks of life? Is the DC Comics “guru” really stuck in the terrible dude-bro “nerds suck” past? Seems that way.

Then he expanded on his views of the character:

> He can’t be fucking called the Martian Manhunter because that’s goofy. He can be called Manhunter… The whole deal with Martian Manhunter is he’s an alien living amongst us… So he comes down to Earth and decides, unlike Superman who already exists in the world now, that he’s just going to be a homicide detective… So instead of using super-powers and mind-reading and like, oh, I could figure out if the President’s lying or whatever, he just decides to disguise himself as a human homicide detective. Dare to dream!

> […]

> “I would set it up like The Day After Tomorrow. We discover one of those Earth-like planets… So maybe like… we get the DNA code from that planet and then grow him in a petri dish here… He’s like in Area 51 or something and we’re just basically… doing biopsies on him. Then he gets out and he’s really angry and he fucks She-Hulk.”

Martian Manhunter is the last of a race of martians who comes to earth and in his human identity he becomes a homicide detective and solves crimes, while in his martian identity be becomes a costumed superhero.

How is that, the story of a man who wants to do some kind of good even in his spare, civilian time, not a great character to work with? How is that less interesting, to _anyone_, than the standard “humans miss treat alien visitor” story he’s proposing here?

And then, just to keep it classy, he circles back to his She-HUlk opinion.

Look I don’t really have much to add to the conversation here. Goyer is a boring, unimaginative writer who, as it turns out, is also a dick to his core audience, doesn’t seem to know anything about the properties he’s meant to adapt, and is sexist. You’d think that any one of these things would be enough to get his ass fired but no word on that just yet. Maybe DC doesn’t care or maybe his contract is ironclad; Either way we’re in for a long few years if he sticks around.

At least his screenplay for Superman vs. Batman is being re-written by the guy who wrote Argo.

(source: [The Mary Sue](http://www.themarysue.com/david-goyer-calls-she-hulk-sex-fantasy/), [Badass Digest](http://badassdigest.com/2014/05/21/david-goyer-says-weirdly-sexist-stuff-about-she-hulk-hates-martian-manhunte))

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