Wonder Woman - Spoilers

The Off-Topic forum for anything non-LDS related, such as sports or politics. Rated PG through PG-13.
Post Reply
_honorentheos
_Emeritus
Posts: 11104
Joined: Thu Feb 04, 2010 5:17 am

Wonder Woman - Spoilers

Post by _honorentheos »

TL;DR - Wonder Woman is a pretty decent addition to the set of good superhero origin stories, and starts off strong. But it fails to live up to it's potential and find a place among the great stories told with superheros as it loses itself in the second act, crashing headlong into clichés and some potentially heavy handed undertones making it a one-woman female 300 set in WWI rather than Sparta. Zach Snyder being involved may be part of that.

*** Warning - Don't Read if You Haven't Watched the Movie. Shades, Looking at You ***

*
*
*
*
*
*

Actually...

I don't think it would be that big of a deal if you read this without seeing the movie but there will be somethings I wanted to discuss that do require one being aware of how the movie ends and there is a plot twist one has to be aware of to be in on the conversation. So, again, Shades. Don't keep reading if you haven't seen the movie.

That should be enough disclaimer and space to make it totally on Shades if he is still reading this at this point but hasn't seen the movie.

We just got back from watching Wonder Woman, which I had heard a lot of good buzz about. And justly so. For what it is, I'd say it was a pretty good superhero movie and worth the $8 a ticket we paid for the late matinee.

To provide some perspective on what I think about the movie, I should first point out that when it comes to superhero movies there are two that occupy a very high tier in my opinion - Logan and The Dark Knight. That latter only up until the Joker dies, excluding the last bit that is all about Harvey Dent. Yes, that is critical to the narrative arc of the trilogy and not bad per se. But what puts Logan and Heath Ledger's Joker's narrative arc in such a rare place for me is both tell great stories, complex stories about people, and the use of super heros and super villians are tools used in that storytelling. On a somewhat lower but still great tier is the first X-Men movie. The storytelling in that movie was such a pleasant surprise, the ability to portray Magneto's distrust in humanity's goodness as valid, and create dramatic conflict that gave meaning to the physical conflict was simply phenomenal. I kinda doubt it could be made today because it came out before superhero movies were the staple of summer blockbusters. I feel like were it to be made today, there would be too much interest in it's financial success for the studio to be willing to not rub out some of the complexity as little as it really is in the grand scheme of story telling. But for a superhero movie, it was pretty damn good.

Wonder Woman did not achieve those tiers for me, but I'd place it among the better origin story movies. Definitely better than anything DC has put out excluding the Nolan Batman movies, all of the Marvel sequel stories, and somewhere around maybe the first Iron Man movie which I can't honestly say I like better because it is better or that it came out before most of the other superhero movies came out and had a Babe Ruth-like advantage over the films that followed. The fact I credit Iron Man's merits to the acting and jokes more than the story says all that I think needs said.

So, what is it about Wonder Woman that I thought worked? And what held it back from achieving greatness, in my opinion?

The first quarter of the movie was bordering on spectacular. The visual world of the island of Themyscira was captivating, the quick look at Amazonian culture promising, and I won't lie - Gal Gadot is simply born to be Wonder Woman. But I also enjoyed the prospect of what was being set up as an interesting hero's journey right out of the gate. Diana, the only child among the Amazons, embodies the perfect hero's journey set-up. She's clearly chosen for a purpose, her "aunt" and the greatest warrior among the Amazons, Antiope, serves as her mentor-guide to discover her hidden and true self, her mother and queen of the Amazons tells her of their cultural myth that included how Ares, convinced of Mankind's corrupting nature, creates war among both humankind and the Gods leading to the creation of the Amazons, the death of the gods, and the last act of sacrifice by Zeus to end the wars. These last acts of Zeus include providing the Amazons with the means to defeat Ares if he survived his wounds, and these are symbolized in special armor and weaponry in classic mythological fashion.

I liked this set-up because the opening monologue by Diana from the present day included a hint that we were being fooled if we bought into the story being a didactic morality play - that at one time she wanted to save the world and all it's beauty, but now she sees the darkness in it as well, and she sees this dualism in humanity. She makes a nod to the idea her past self was naïve about humankind before we are introduced to Themyscira and it's paradise-like nature.

So, I'm interested when the story sets up exactly the sort of moral binary position it has already told us isn't where Diana ends up. And it's into this world that an American dressed as a German crashes a WWI German biplane into the ocean off the coast of this island paradise while acting as a spy for the British.

To detour slightly, I was happy that the world chosen was that of WWI, and contrast that with Captain America's WWII narrative setting. If evil ever needs to be personified in a movie, it's done with Nazis. Germany in WWII is clearly something unique in the moral universe, with overt genocide, human experimentation, super weapons, anything and everything to make a person really and truly believe that the world consists of good guys and bad guys. Cap is a hero set in that kind of universe. It's safe to say Captain America is so glaringly intent on portraying the universe in Manichaeism-form putting him in a costume based on the American flag isn't even campy when put in that context. But Germany in WWI is something more complex. Yes, they threw the first real punch when they marched through neutral Belgium to attack France. Yes, they invented the use of chlorine gas as a weapon. But if there was a conflict that deserved to be in a movie that was promising to upend our binary thinking about good and evil, this was it, in my opinion. Germany was a young country born out of victory against France but sandwiched between hostile old nations intent on seeing it strangled in the cradle between Russia and France. When Franz Ferdinand was assassinated and the Rube Goldberg machine of treaties began to move, it's not exactly out of evil that they decided to knock the machine over and throw as quick a punch at France as possible in the hopes of beating them before the Russians could mobilize and attack their eastern front. I'll come back to this set up because frankly I could really see a bureaucrat-Ares intent on setting humankind at one another's throats being the architect of this no-win scenario.

It was in the battle scene on the beach where it first began to look like the promise might be broken, though. Enter the Germans who are chasing Chris Pine's crashed plane because he stole important secret weapon information that could end the war (cough, Hydra anyone?) And the Amazons rush to battle because...? Men arrive on the beach and the obvious thing to do is have a shoot out between super women with arrows and swords versus basically proto-Nazis with rifles and grenades. But most of all, Diana kills someone for the first time...and then goes on killing. It was as natural as breathing for her.

At this point in the movie, I'm hoping that this is still part of the set-up. We're being shown a Diana who bought in quickly to the idea that whoever Chris Pine is, when he says, "I'm one of the good guys and those are the bad guys", this is her naïve nature at play and for her killing bad guys is what she's trained to do. I feel a glimmer of hope this is the case when she is rebuffed by her mother when she says she wants to leave the island to find Ares who is clearly behind this War to End All Wars and kill him with the super cool weapons Zeus left behind exactly to do just that, and her mother suggests to her the story she had been told was just that - a story. That Diana didn't really understand mankind, and they shouldn't take sides at risk of something far greater and worse occurring. Diana basically pulls a standard narrative trope of disobeying the wise elders to go off on her hero quest and her mother just acknowledges she can't stop her.

I would describe the movie to this point as setting up a simple problem that Diana believes in and is telling everyone who will listen - Ares sets men's hearts to anger to cause war which will wipe mankind out. And it provides a simple solution - She needs to use the God Killer sword to kill Ares and end the war. Simple problem, simple solution. End Act I.

Oh, I should also mention the humor to this point is pretty good, making good use out of the typical tropes involving being born yesterday/fish out of water, first with Chris Pine's character among the Amazons and later with Diana among early 20th century Londoners. Speaking of...

The second act of the movie has an interesting take on the hero's quest. Diana is already trained and a super-fucking-awesome wonder of a woman so we aren't taking the usual trip of her meeting a mentor, finding herself, and overcoming whatever challenge is holding her back. Instead, we see her enter England in a era when men ran the show and women were for show. And being a super- fucking- awesome wonder of a woman, the second act is all about Diana showing society what's what. The second act climax is visually some of the best moments of action in the movie as she exits a trench to enter "no MAN's land" (get it?) to take on a German unit of undefined size with nothing but her super- fucking- awesomeness, a shield, bracelets, and super strength so she can clear a battlefield we're told hasn't moved in a year to free a German-held Belgium town that is without food and supplies, and where awful things are happening at the hands of the proto-Nazis. The team now has complete faith in her, and she is even more firmly convinced in the dichotomy at the heart of her purpose. Ares needs to die so everyone can be happy and live without war, and she has the God Killer and is on her way to do just that. Simple problem, simple solution. End Act II.

I've been negligent in not mentioning two key characters on the German side to this point, but their takes on real characters from history in a way are meaningful. Doctor Poison, or Isabel Maru, isn't that far off from the brilliant real German scientist who gave us both nitrogen fertilizer that perhaps prevented countless deaths from starvation over time but also invented the use of chlorine gas as a weapon - Fritz Haber. And the character of Erich Ludendorff is somewhat based on a real German General, known as one of the great tactical leaders of infantry in history when squad and platoon movements in industrial warfare were unknown, and in contrast to the character in the movie, he was in favor of the armistice to end the war.

What makes this meaningful? The film maker's choice in character creation compared to the real people both reflect on what I think made the movie less successful in the end, and this is critical to unwinding the third act.

As we move to the third act, Diana has determined that Ludendorff is actually Ares because he is constantly pushing Doctor Poison to invent even more lethal forms of poison gas and is constantly arguing against peace. Doctor Poison has invented a special gas that Ludendorff inhales that gives him super strength, setting him up as the clear antagonist against whom Diana will enact the simple solution but making sure we know it won't be too easy. The team of misfits that are operating behind enemy lines (classic Captain America setup, again) makes their way to the gala where Ludendorff presides having gassed a room full of German military high command intent on ending the war. As Diana and Chris Pine's character both make separate entrances into the event, rather easily too, we're given our second glimpse into Diana's worldview cracking.

The first came when the native American smuggler tells Diana that his people have lost everything because they lost a war with Chris Pine's people - the supposed good guys.

This second and more meaningful crack comes as she is stopped from killing Ludendorff at the gala by Chris Pine only to have the German's launch gas via artillery shells into the same Belgium village they had liberated at the end of Act II. Walking unharmed through the gas to see dead women, children and old men and women lying in the streets, Diana is confronted with a certain realization that her acts were futile in themselves. She comes out of the gas to confront Chris Pine's character and blame him for stopping her from carrying out the simple solution to the simple problem. The futility of her act of salvation of the town was only futile, in her mind, because Ares wasn't killed in time to prevent him from undoing the good she'd done. And since the American spy was to blame for this, clearly he is one of the corrupted by Ares just like all of mankind is corrupted by Ares.

Here the internal conflict in Diana between her simple solution, simple problem is given a slight shake to suggest perhaps she was wrong to see the world in such Manichean terms when it comes to the people involved. But she is still firm in her belief that the Manichean war between good and evil holds when it comes to the conflict between the gods as she holds the weapons of Zeus that can end this war when she kills Ares. So, she confronts Luddendorff, kills Luddendorff with the God Killer sword...and the Germans keep on loading killer gas bombs onto the mega bomber ("the future" as Chris Pine's character knowingly tells us) headed for London. The war didn't end, the simple solution turned out to not be enough to solve the problem of war...and she basically throws up her hands as the misfit team takes on the proto-Nazis on their own to try and stop the mass killing of Londoners that would occur if they don't keep the plane from taking off.

At this point in the movie I've already picked a couple of alternatives for who is the real Ares, but none of them worked well. So I was pleasantly surprised when the real Ares turns up and is a British bureaucratic actively involved in the armistice development who explicitly states he knew there was no way the terms of the armistice could be kept. This was subtly well played, in my opinion, as we all know that the terms of surrender at the end of WWI not only gave rise to fascism and WWII, but also allows the fulfillment of the Sykes-Picot agreement that is to this very day a major factor in 21st century war and conflict. Kinda brilliant. And they get points for not ramming that down our throats, too. The best part of Act III, by far.

With the appearance of the real Ares, we see Diana confront her worldview as he tells her that she now knows the truth, and he is not the god of war but the god of the truth. Her attempt to kill him with the God Killer sword is crushed into ash as it's blade crumbles in front of him, and he reveals that she was Zeus' true god killer as she is the daughter of Zeus left behind because only a god can kill another god. Ares shows her that mankind is a corrupt force, war comes out of their hearts not from Ares, and to have the paradise back that was the earth before Zeus created humankind she and he must team up and remove the corruption that is humanity. And that's about as complex as this gets. She refuses the offer, instead seeing in humanity goodness as well as evil, feels love for Chris Pine who sacrifices himself to blow up the airplane with the gas so it can't kill anyone else, feels compassion for the Doctor Poison who Ares throws in front of her to justly kill for her crimes against everything good, and finds in this love and compassion the power to take down Ares and kill him with lightning bolts he first shoots at her in true god killer fashion. Like father like daughter.

The simple problem = Ares corrupts mankind into enacting war becomes a slightly more complex problem. War comes from the human heart, and just like trying to save the Belgium town there's a certain futility in attempting to end war completely unless one is willing to kill all the people to do so. The simple solution = Diana has to use the god killer sword to kill Ares and end war becomes a different simple solution. Diana, the true god killer, has to find the good in humanity in order to unleash her full power to kill Ares and, uh, I guess end the war to end all wars? Because once Ares dies, the Germans and the misfit team start hugging...though in true proto-Nazi fashion the Germans left alive are all proto-Hitler Youth who didn't really want to fight anyway when one judges their ages. And then it's armistice day and everyone is hugging in the streets of London. Yay.

In short, it failed to live up to the potential promise of being a story about the complexity of the human heart, conflict at both the individual and international scale, and why the dualism of good and evil are false constructs that make the world out to be easy to understand at the expense of really understanding people. It took an easy path to a cheap version made for summer movie audiences and found it's place among the many well done but otherwise unspectacular superhero movies because of it. In the end, the movie was mainly about a super damned kickass wonder of a woman after all rather than a kick ass story in which a super damned kickass wonder of a woman plays a main character.

I'd also point out that the humor moving through the second act into the third gave way to clichés that I failed to laugh at, though there were some that got a laugh from some people who attended when we did. I'm sure it tested well.

Now I promised to point out why the choice in character change from Huber to Manu and Erich Ludendorff the brilliant German Commander to maniacal warmonger bothered me. First, when Doctor Poison, changed from history into a female for the movie, is placed in front of Diana by Ares Diana finds compassion for her as her disfigured face is revealed I went from being amused at Act II's message about historic misogyny to, "Oh “F” no. You can't even kill the only woman bad guy in this damned movie?" It made the whole movie seem a little bit sexist in retrospect rather than just using patriarchal British society at the time of WWI as a foil to how badass Diana was. Suddenly, I couldn't stop hearing "mankind, mankind, mankind" when thinking back on the movie and wondering, "Is that meant to refer to humankind...or male humans? Because it now seems to implying it means humans with penises." And the change to Ludendorff became a symbol for the missed opportunity for creating complexity out of the antagonists rather than simple evil proto-Nazis. And that's what the movie version of Luddendorff was, a proto-Nazi. He wanted super weapons for no other reason than he was evil and wanted to see people die horrible deaths for the glory of Germany.
The world is always full of the sound of waves..but who knows the heart of the sea, a hundred feet down? Who knows it's depth?
~ Eiji Yoshikawa
_Some Schmo
_Emeritus
Posts: 15602
Joined: Tue Mar 27, 2007 2:59 pm

Re: Wonder Woman - Spoilers

Post by _Some Schmo »

honorentheos wrote:TL;DR - Wonder Woman is a pretty decent addition to the set of good superhero origin stories, and starts off strong. But it fails to live up to it's potential and find a place among the great stories told with superheros as it loses itself in the second act, crashing headlong into clichés and some potentially heavy handed undertones making it a one-woman female 300 set in WWI rather than Sparta. Zach Snyder being involved may be part of that.

*** Warning - Don't Read if You Haven't Watched the Movie. Shades, Looking at You ***

I plan to see this at some point, so I'll comment then. I am curious about your review - but I am heeding your spoiler warning.
God belief is for people who don't want to live life on the universe's terms.
_honorentheos
_Emeritus
Posts: 11104
Joined: Thu Feb 04, 2010 5:17 am

Re: Wonder Woman - Spoilers

Post by _honorentheos »

Some Schmo wrote:I plan to see this at some point, so I'll comment then. I am curious about your review - but I am heeding your spoiler warning.

I wrote my thoughts down to try and capture how I felt about it right after seeing it and without reading other reviews with spoilers. I had heard a lot of positive about it, and coming back from seeing it left me thinking it was more of a 7/10 movie than a 9/10 or 10/10. Which isn't bad and for what it is, it's pretty good. And damn if Gal Gadot isn't...yeah. As one of the women I work with said when we were dancing around it while talking about the movie, "You can say it. She's a babe."

But I would be very interested in other people's opinions about it who have seen it. To me it suffers from a similar problem that the Batman v. Superman movie suffered from. It wanted to say something important but fumbled the opportunity to do so. It didn't do so as badly as Batman v. Superman's attempt, rather it did so in a very trite summer movie kind of way. So maybe I'm the only one in the entire world who was thinking that and everyone else thought they totally nailed it.
The world is always full of the sound of waves..but who knows the heart of the sea, a hundred feet down? Who knows it's depth?
~ Eiji Yoshikawa
_MeDotOrg
_Emeritus
Posts: 4761
Joined: Sun Jun 17, 2012 11:29 pm

Re: Wonder Woman - Spoilers

Post by _MeDotOrg »

I'm not a father, but I've been a surrogate father for my best friend's daughters since they were 5 minutes old. (They're 23 now.) So Sunday was father's day breakfast, followed by a movie. What movie did we see? Wonder woman, of course!

My previous experience with Wonder Woman was Lynda Carter. As a genre, most superhero movies I can take or leave. They're usually bland bits of eye candy designed with world release revenue in mind. And while I did enjoy this movie more than most superhero movies, there is still a lot mindless eye candy. I enjoyed the fish-out-of-water experience becoming a meditation on human nature.

But even given that God-on-earth as a fish-out-of-water premise, I still think you could make a better, more original and innovative hero if you were not strangled by the DC comics expectations. We praise these movies for having some interesting things, but it feels like you're ordering a bacon chili cheeseburger and calling it health food because there's a tomato on top.

As I said, not a bad superhero movie. If this were the first superhero movie in 2 years I might be a lot more forgiving of it. It just seems like summer movies have become one gigantic continuum of Marvel, DC, large robots, smart apes, teenage dystopia novels, sword & sorcery and magic. All, big, safe bets for global marketing. I'm sick of the unoriginal movies launched by studios increasingly run by accountants and not creative artists.

Ironically, the fountain of creativity is seen on the internet and cable. It is still there, but it never gets a role in major theatrical summer movies anymore.
"The great problem of any civilization is how to rejuvenate itself without rebarbarization."
- Will Durant
"We've kept more promises than we've even made"
- Donald Trump
"Of what meaning is the world without mind? The question cannot exist."
- Edwin Land
_Some Schmo
_Emeritus
Posts: 15602
Joined: Tue Mar 27, 2007 2:59 pm

Re: Wonder Woman - Spoilers

Post by _Some Schmo »

I finally went and saw this movie. I've only ever been familiar with Wonder Woman from the Justice League cartoon I watched as a kid. I remember she had an invisible plane and a lasso, and I had a vague idea about her being an Amazon, but that was about it. She was one of six or seven super heroes in that show, and I believe Superman got most of the air time.

Anyway, my daughter had already seen the movie and loved it, and she has pretty good taste usually, so I was hoping to enjoy it. I was happy to tell her I found it very entertaining to watch. It exceeded my expectations.

I've never seen Gal Gadot in anything else so I wasn't familiar with her. I do think she's awesome for the role. I think what made a cliché story line into a entertaining movie was her.
God belief is for people who don't want to live life on the universe's terms.
_Doctor CamNC4Me
_Emeritus
Posts: 21663
Joined: Mon Jun 15, 2009 11:02 am

Re: Wonder Woman - Spoilers

Post by _Doctor CamNC4Me »

This movie is total bull crap. True Amazons had one boob. They would cut the other one off. Can't be messin' wit dey archery, yo.

I'll definitely maybe watch it when it comes out on Netflix. I still haven't mustered up the desire to watch Ben Affleck versus Henry Superman, The Soup and Sandwich Squad., and X-Persons Age of Aquarius. I think I'm kind of burned out on the Superhero genre. Well. Until The Incredibles.

https://youtu.be/aBaYVo89mmY

- Doc
In the face of madness, rationality has no power - Xiao Wang, US historiographer, 2287 AD.

Every record...falsified, every book rewritten...every statue...has been renamed or torn down, every date...altered...the process is continuing...minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Ideology is always right.
_Kevin Graham
_Emeritus
Posts: 13037
Joined: Fri Oct 27, 2006 6:44 pm

Re: Wonder Woman - Spoilers

Post by _Kevin Graham »

Doctor CamNC4Me wrote:This movie is total bull ____. True Amazons had one boob. They would cut the other one off. Can't be messin' wit dey archery, yo.

I'll definitely maybe watch it when it comes out on Netflix. I still haven't mustered up the desire to watch Ben Affleck versus Henry Superman, The Soup and Sandwich Squad., and X-Persons Age of Aquarius. I think I'm kind of burned out on the Superhero genre. Well. Until The Incredibles.

https://youtu.be/aBaYVo89mmY

- Doc


Ya, that last Spiderman probably did it for me for a while anyway. It really sucked. I liked Wonder Woman, however. DC movies typically suck but this one was aight.
_Doctor CamNC4Me
_Emeritus
Posts: 21663
Joined: Mon Jun 15, 2009 11:02 am

Re: Wonder Woman - Spoilers

Post by _Doctor CamNC4Me »

Kevin Graham wrote:Ya, that last Spiderman probably did it for me for a while anyway. It really sucked. I liked Wonder Woman, however. DC movies typically suck but this one was aight.


Oh, yeah. I forgot about Spiderman. Spiderboy? Spiderteen? Tony Stark's Spiderkid? I dunno. That's definitely a Netflix for me.

Oddly enough I'm interested in Valerian and Memberberries by Steven Spielberg coming out shortly. Truth be told I probably won't see either one at the theater. Why? Because I can rent or watch them from home. I literally have a 70" curved screen tv, a Bose system, a couch, and I don't have to deal with crowds and $50 popcorn n' cokes.

I think I'm becoming a recluse...

- Doc
In the face of madness, rationality has no power - Xiao Wang, US historiographer, 2287 AD.

Every record...falsified, every book rewritten...every statue...has been renamed or torn down, every date...altered...the process is continuing...minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Ideology is always right.
_cinepro
_Emeritus
Posts: 4502
Joined: Sat Oct 27, 2007 10:15 pm

Re: Wonder Woman - Spoilers

Post by _cinepro »

honorentheos wrote:But most of all, Diana kills someone for the first time...and then goes on killing. It was as natural as breathing for her.


It's been a while since I saw it, but it was my recollection that she really didn't kill that many people. Other than that first kill and the last one, all of her fights end with attackers bruised and neutralized, but not dead by her hand. I guess the sniper too?

But in any case, she's no John Wick.


Here's the director's take on it:

Why Wonder Woman Kills

And this review looks at how the themes of "Wonder Woman" relate to modern day impulses to intervene in conflicts and try to avert violence and war:

Is Wonder Woman War Propoganda?

The moment in the movie when Diana’s heart bleeds most profusely is when she fails to prevent a German gas attack that completely massacres the village she had just liberated. The sight of the victims is tactfully obscured by gas clouds, but Diana’s anguish is nonetheless evocative of the all-too-understandable distress felt by Americans (including, momentously, Trump himself) upon seeing images of Syrian gas victims show up in their Facebook feeds.

These heartstrings are played with relish by a warmongering media that neglects to inform the public of Washington’s own role in bringing about these atrocities, or about the innocent suffering and death that would result from increased intervention: especially all the non-Sunni Muslims who would likely be beheaded and otherwise ethnically cleansed if the radical-Islamist-dominated, US-supported rebels were to overrun the entire country.
_honorentheos
_Emeritus
Posts: 11104
Joined: Thu Feb 04, 2010 5:17 am

Re: Wonder Woman - Spoilers

Post by _honorentheos »

cinepro wrote:
honorentheos wrote:But most of all, Diana kills someone for the first time...and then goes on killing. It was as natural as breathing for her.


It's been a while since I saw it, but it was my recollection that she really didn't kill that many people. Other than that first kill and the last one, all of her fights end with attackers bruised and neutralized, but not dead by her hand. I guess the sniper too?

Rather than quantity what I found jarring from her character was how completely irrelevant her first act of killing in combat was to her. The Amazons were all immortal veterans of war and had killed and seen their friends killed. Diana was the only one on the beach who had not been in actual combat. It's just a movie, and I guess to me that moment when she took up a bow and started shooting Germans suggested I shouldn't expect too much beyond action from the movie. I think this proved to be the case.

But in any case, she's no John Wick.

John Wick is a good time. I had once read a critique of the old sword fighting genre of films like the Three Musketeers movie adaptations or most pirate movies as really revolving around the environment, and how the movie chooses to insert sword fights into these changing environments. In bars, flour mills, castles, on boats, on bridges, suspended from ropes - the creative use of environment to make the sword fighting interesting makes or breaks the movie. John Wick, the first one anyway, did an amazing job taking gun fighting through environment after environment with the creative aesthetic of a good swashbuckling movie. The second movie worked best when it introduced new environments for the Wick-style of gunfight. It felt tired when it repeated an environment from the first movie. The underworld built up in it was pretty cool in both movies, but like Star Wars I think it works better when much of it is only hinted at rather than explained. I'm really, really hoping they step back from the direct of expanding the viewers knowledge to the point we end up with midiclorians. Too many assassins and too much control by the underworld hurt the 2nd movie, in my opinion. It works best when it's about the raw, swift, frequent, and precise ability of Wick to move relentlessly through obstacles to achieve a goal. The only part of the movie that really "clunked" for me was the time he needed help from William Defoe. Anyway, that was a tangent but I do love John Wick. The only movie I've watched more than once this last year, actually.


Here's the director's take on it:

Why Wonder Woman Kills

And this review looks at how the themes of "Wonder Woman" relate to modern day impulses to intervene in conflicts and try to avert violence and war:

Is Wonder Woman War Propoganda?

The moment in the movie when Diana’s heart bleeds most profusely is when she fails to prevent a German gas attack that completely massacres the village she had just liberated. The sight of the victims is tactfully obscured by gas clouds, but Diana’s anguish is nonetheless evocative of the all-too-understandable distress felt by Americans (including, momentously, Trump himself) upon seeing images of Syrian gas victims show up in their Facebook feeds.

These heartstrings are played with relish by a warmongering media that neglects to inform the public of Washington’s own role in bringing about these atrocities, or about the innocent suffering and death that would result from increased intervention: especially all the non-Sunni Muslims who would likely be beheaded and otherwise ethnically cleansed if the radical-Islamist-dominated, US-supported rebels were to overrun the entire country.

Interesting couple of links. The director...I don't know. The idea of Wonder Woman killing as a last resort, almost out of a maternal instinct to put down a wounded animal is silly. Sorry, I thought she was reaching. The second link hits what I got out of the movie - Wonder Woman being "not so much a princess of peace as she is a valkyrie for “humanitarian” war".

Here is my issue with the movie along these themes. It TOLD us what we should be looking for out of the gate, that humanity is a duality of good and bad, light and darkness. And that Diana evolved from wanting to save the world to understanding the world contains evil as well as good so her old binary way of seeing things had to change.

Like I said in my first post, she starts the movie with a simple problem/simple answer approach: Ares is causing war, and she needed to get to him with the God Killer in order to end war. The second link you share is interesting in how it suggests this simple mindset is very present in the real world. People may think guns cause killing, so all we need to do is get rid of guns and the world will be at peace. Nuclear weapons threaten the world, so all we need to do in order to move into a technological utopia is get rid of them and the world will become peaceful. Speech we find hurtful is hateful, so all we need to do is end hateful, hurtful speech and the world will become perfect. Etc., etc., etc. It's an interesting point.

Where my problem with the movie and with the second link persists is that the eventual evolution out of the binary on Diana's part is still overly simple in it's portrayal. Once she realizes that humanity and war are inherently part of each other, and Ares isn't really causing war but exploiting human nature to try and get humanity to destroy itself, her hero's journey takes her to a point where she is able to see the good in people again and this gives her the strength to beat Ares and effective end the war...like her simple problem, simple solution turned out the be slightly off but not that off. Beating Ares with the God Killer (her own divine nature rather than a sword) does actually lead to the end of the war. Instead of grappling with the complexity of human nature and conflict, she basically found a different binary that became her new solution to the problem.

Anyway, it was a decent action flick, and Gal Godot is a star capable of carrying a movie for sure.
The world is always full of the sound of waves..but who knows the heart of the sea, a hundred feet down? Who knows it's depth?
~ Eiji Yoshikawa
Post Reply