Why a Female Director Can Give Us the ‘Batgirl’ We Deserve

The announcement that Joss Whedon is stepping down as writer and director of the “Batgirl” film that’s currently in pre-production at Warner Bros.

arrives as good news, even if you’re not one of those people (like me) who thinks that Whedon, as a creator of comic-book cinema, has shown more energy than poetry (especially in the egregiously chaotic “Avengers: Age of Ultron”).Whedon admitted yesterday that he’d “failed” to come up with a story that could make a “Batgirl” movie work.

But given how rarely most people in the film business admit to failure, could it be that his heart just wasn’t in it? Whedon first staked his claim, in “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” by shepherding a key pop-culture heroine.

But it now seems likely that he felt the pressure, in the post-#MeToo world, of being a male director struggling to contort himself into the mindset of one of the most legendary

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