How Much of ‘Professor Marston and The Wonder Women’ Actually Happened?

It would seem a lot more of the Professor Marston story is fabricated than we knew.

It would seem a lot more of the Professor Marston story is fabricated than we knew.

Regardless of its poor box office showing, Professor Marston is a really fascinating look into the creation of the Wonder Woman comic. It is a story filled with BDSM, polyamorous relationships, and the difficulty conforming to social norms. Given it was based on a true story, the audience is led to believe a lot of events on screen actually happened. Except that the family of Professor Marston has said much of the story is straight out lies.

According to an interview with BigFanBoy, Christie Marston, a granddaughter of William Moulton Marston and the daughter of one of his sons, says there are plenty of issues with Professor Marston and the Wonder Women. She claims that  “both the depiction of the family and Wonder Woman’s origins are made up.” This means there was no polyamorous relationship, that instead each of the women was in love with Professor Marston, but not necessarily each other. There was an issue of continuity within the movie that rubbed Christie the wrong way. The burning of the Wonder Woman comic books occurred after Professor Marston’s death, not while he was still alive.

There is no question that director Angela Robinson took some liberties in the story of the Marstons. She never directly contacted the Marston family or asked for their approval of material in the film. The story is not based on any particular book or account of their life, but a basic summation of everything that was made available. In fact one of the very first questions she received during an NYCC panel promoting the film she was asked about the relationship between the two women. She responded with “That’s a difficult question because I did talk to a source who said that that was her interpretation. I think that there’s a lot of facts that are indisputable about the Marstons, and I feel like there’s a lot of room for interpretation.” Robinson also reiterated that it was her choice not to talk to any of the Marstons regarding the film because she wanted to showcase her interpretation of the story.

Given how many people turned up for Professor Marston and the Wonder Women, this kind of press against it can only help. It seems few people really knew the movie existed and if they did they just were nonpulsed into actually seeing it. Which is a total shame because regardless of how much of it is real, there’s a really entertaining and intriguing story within Professor Marston. Audiences could care less.

Max Covill: News Writer/Columnist for Film School Rejects. It’s the Pictures Co-host. Bylines Playboy, ZAM, Paste Magazine and more.