Premiered at the Toronto Film Festival September 9,2017
Blaine: 2017 was Wonder Woman’s year. First, fans got to see the iconic superhero in her first stand alone movie and then there was the story of how William Moulton Marston came up with the idea of her.
Plot(Spoiler Alert)
A Harvard psychologist, Dr. William Moulton Marston, is working on inventing the lie detector wth his wife, Elizabeth, and their assistant, Olive Byrne, who is also a student of William’s. Olive falls in love with both William and Elizabeth and they fall in love her as well. The three of them develop a life together and raise a family. One day, William comes up with an idea for a comic book superhero based on stuff he has seen. He calls her Wonder Woman.
Blaine: This was a challenging movie to make for writer and director Angela Robinson. She spent four years doing all the research on the romantic relationship between William Moulton Marston, his wife Elizabeth and their mistress Olive Byrne and how Marston created Wonder Woman. She wrote the script and it took her another four years to convince a studio to finance the film. It’s a very interesting story because there’s so much I didn’t know about Wonder Woman. Like the fact that her looks were based on a burlesque outfit. And that William Moulton Marston also created the lie detector which became the inspiration for the lasso of truth Wonder Woman uses to get truth out of whoever. Wonder Woman’s invisible flying vehicle was inspired by a little glass plane Dr. Marston loved to play with. I don’t think Marston could have done it without the two women he loved the most in the world, his wife, Elizabeth and their secret lover, Olive Byrne. You could say they were his influence. The three of them loved each other equally.
“Professor Marston & The Wonder Women” focusses more on the romantic relationship between these three people and how they accomplished so much from the lie detector to Wonder Woman. Of course Wonder Woman wasn’t as popular as she is today. People back then thought Wonder Woman was a sexist comic book because of the way she dressed, tied people up with her lasso and a few other things. Marston, Elizabeth and Olive also had to keep their romantic relationship a secret because people would think of them as weirdos.
Luke Evans didn’t know the story behind Wonder Woman until he read Angela’s script and he thought it was an incredible story between these three people who had fought for what they believe in and accomplished incredible things. It was a real eye opener for Luke Evans. Luke was curious to learn more about these people so he did more research and he found a lot of useful information about them. Luke wanted to be apart of the project so it could make people who love Wonder Woman think it was very unexpected finding out how she was created. Marston had a lot of respect for women and that’s what I like about him the most.
Rebecca Hall already heard about this story when she read about it in "The New Yorker". It became a book called “A Secret History of Wonder Woman” after that and Rebecca read that too. Rebecca thought a story like this would make a great film. Rebecca didn’t know that much about Wonder Woman except William Marston the creator was an inspiration for men to respect women Authority. Rebecca tried to option the book into a movie herself, but it didn’t work out. Then she heard someone had been trying to make it into a film for eight years. So she met with Angela Robinson and they both agreed that it was a very fascinating story that should be made into a film and that’s how Rebecca got involved with the project.
Bella Heathcote thought the script that Angela had written was well done and she really got into the love story between William Marston, Elizabeth and Olive. Bella wanted things to work out for them as she was reading through the script and after she was done reading it she knew she had to be apart of a project like this. Bella Heathcote felt comfortable having an experienced and calm director like Angela Robinson directing her in the film like this especially during the scenes that were sexual.
The accent was very important for Luke Evans. Luke went through a few different versions of the accent for his character. Marston was from Boston. Luke found some footage from that time period and studied the way people talked back then. Rebecca Hall worked on her character’s accent as well. Elizabeth Marston was born on the Isle of Man, a small island in between England and Ireland, and then she moved to Boston when she was five and never lost her Isle of Man accent. The accent sounds Northern English mixed with Katharine Hepburn according to Rebecca Hall. Rebecca found a Facebook group online and they had Isle of Man accents. She wrote to them asking if they could send her a video of them speaking in order to get the accent. They never knew what it was for, but they sent it anyway.
It was very interesting for Angela Robinson to find out that William Moulton Marston put his personal life into the Wonder Woman comics while she was doing her research. Angela knew for sure that this was a story she had to tell through a movie. She didn’t have any conversations with the Marston children when she was doing her research because she decided to do it on her own. It was easy for the actors to connect with each other while filming because it was in the script and it was well written so it was easy for the actors to bring it to life. It only took 25 days to shoot “Professor Marston and the Wonder Women”. Marston, Elizabeth and Olivia were really close in real life and sometimes I'll ask myself what would have happened if fate didn’t bring these people together? All three of them had a lot in common. Angela Robinson had every reason to get a story like this out there for the world to see. It’s one of the most fascinating movies I’ve ever seen and a story like this is mind blowing. I’m glad Angela never gave up on this project, otherwise how would we know the truth on Wonder Woman’s background.
My rating on “Professor Marston & The Wonder Women” is five out of five stars.
The real William Moulton Marston, Elizabeth Marston and Olive Byrne
