Why Director Angela Robinson Is One To Watch

It's been a banner year for Wonder Woman: the Amazonian turned 75 years old, became an honorary United Nations Ambassador, and has a solo origin film on the way. Now, her legend is growing, thanks to an upcoming biopic about her creator, William Moulton Marston. Even though the news was first announced in October, there's one fact that has not been spoken about enough and I think it needs to be discussed. What makes this this film, Professor Marston & the Wonder Women, even more exciting is the woman — yes, woman — behind it: Angela Robinson. Robinson is Professor Marston 's director and writer, putting her in a unique creative position rarely seen in film.

Robinson's revious directing credits include The L Word , True Blood, and Herbie: Fully Loaded, so she's no newcomer to the game. What makes her especially noteworthy is that Robinson is a queer black woman directing a biopic about a man, his wife, and their shared lover. That man created one of the most unabashedly feminist superheroes of our time. To have such a special and important subject lensed by Robinson implies that there will not only be a strong and sympathetic portrayal of the women in this story, but that Robinson's own words and perceptions of Marston's life will be imbued with a distinct, lived experience relative to the nature of the story. In short: Robinson's personal voice will profoundly color Professor Marston, and that, my friends, is a valuable asset in a biopic.

I am certainly not intending to hone in on Robinson, just because she embodies so many intersections of gender, sexuality, race, and experience. While those are positive and important factors, what should matter at the core of this news is that Robinson, as director and writer of this biopic, has been given a larger voice in this project than is typically seen in Hollywood. Even Patty Jenkins, Wonder Woman 's director, was following a script written by two men. That's not a knock on Jenkins; it's simply a comparison to the great creative breadth Robinson has been given on Professor Marston.

I've been excited about Professor Marston from the get-go, not only because it adds great dimension to the culture of Wonder Woman, but it will be allowing an original feminist discourse to emerge in the intersection of film, comic book culture, and history. Robinson's involvement, though, has doubled my curiosity for the project and left me feeling like this could be the one film to truly get excited over in 2017.