Wonderblogging: The Movie

Wonder Woman is my favorite comic book superhero (and one of my favorite characters overall), and has been for years—though the New 52 era of DC, the only title of hers I didn’t pick up was Superman/Wonder Woman, because I dislike that ship[1]. Right now is a wonderful time to be a Wonder Woman fan, with not only her 75^th anniversary just last year (which brought with it several self-contained or limited series specials), not just a merging of the New 52 character and storyline into something more like the pre-Flashpoint world (including a revamped origin), but a critically acclaimed and box office hit live action motion picture. I’d wished to start this last year, during the actual anniversary year, certainly before the film’s release… but real life’s not left me time or energy for it.

That said, this is the first of what will hopefully be an ongoing series of posts focused on Wonder Woman and her stories.

Spoiler for the review: I loved the movie, and you should go see it if you like superhero flicks.

Superheroes have been one of my favorite genres for much of my life. I grew up with them through cartoons—primarily Bruce Timm’s DCAU with its Batman, Superman, and Justice League getting most of my attention, and later Teen Titans. Never been that much of a Marvel fan; I remember liking the X-Men TV show as a kid, but since then the only character I ever had much inclination towards was Captain America. I’ve liked most of the MCU movies I’ve seen well enough, but never exactly got attached to them, and often only go to see them if it’s with a group of friends who want to see one; that’s how I ended up seeing Guardians 2 a couple months back despite never seeing Guardians itself.[2] In contrast, for years now I’ve been following a dozen or so DC Comics titles, and been disappointed and frustrated with their film efforts. As of the start of 2017, they hadn’t put out a movie that I full-on liked or really thought was good since 2008’s The Dark Knight. Rises was bloated and nonsensical, and the best I could do with the DCEU movies was make defenses and find pieces that worked: Man of Steel prologue was pretty good, and the action looked great apart from there not being any color; BvS gave us an incomprehensibly, bafflingly atrocious Lex Luthor and completely wasted Doomsday and the Death of Superman arc in terms of use for a self-contained story, but it had problems baked in from its starting point and used those elements to leave things in a better place to move forward, and besides, Batfleck was in general a strong point, and what little of Wonder Woman we saw I liked; Suicide Squad didn’t have a great plot and did terrible things to Amanda Waller but Will Smith and Margo Robbie were good, and I liked Captain Boomerang and Diablo.

So understandably I was ambivalent regarding the prospect of Wonder Woman,  to be released June this year. I’d intensely desired for DC to generate a strong showing; they have great characters to use, compelling stories to tell, and I wanted something from this genre to really get behind featuring the characters that I love and care about, rather than those on the other side of the fence. And more than that—Wonder Woman has been my favorite comic book superhero at least since I became a regular reader. But there’s the track record to consider. Oh, the track record…

There were some promising signs, with strong trailers promising some levity, a different attitude than we saw from the DCEU’s previous principals (she wants to save the world and protect innocent lives, what kind of superhero does that?), and—amazingly—color! But then, similar could be said about Suicide Squad’s trailers.

But the advance reviews were good… and on June 1, I finished up work in time to get a ticket to a 10:30 Thursday preview, walked the half hour from my apartment to the theater…

…and a couple hours later left after seeing one of my favorite movies in a long time. The following Wednesday, I saw it again, and that may not be the last time before its run is up.

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The story is fairly straightforward, which is beneficial in allowing more time and viewer energy for the introduction of the world and the characters populating it—it’s continuing a franchise in only a fairly loose sense compared to BvS, after all. Following some pieces of world backstory folded into Diana’s childhood and training on the Amazonian island of Themyscira, two almost simultaneous events propel the movie forward: Diana repels an attack in her training with a massive concussive blast, leaving the surrounding Amazons dumbstruck and prompting her to run off alone; and her subsequent meeting of Steve Trevor, American spy and pilot being pursued by Imperial German forces. After the ensuing battle and Trevor’s interrogation, in which he details the scope of the Great War and the deadly new poison gas Dr. Poison of the Germans has developed, Diana determines that the Amazons must intervene, or if not them, her—for such a war and such a weapon could only be the result of the return and influence of the god of war, Aries, whom it is the sacred role of the Amazons to counter. Stymied by the resistance of the other Amazons as voiced by Queen Hippolyta, her mother, Diana frees Trevor and takes the Godkiller sword (powerful enough to kill a god!), with the intention of going to the battlefront in order to slay Aries and end the war.

After leaving the island, the two arrive in London, where Trevor attempts to get the government and allied forces behind him to sabotage the production facilities of the new gas before it can be brought to bear. He is likewise rebuffed, and all that’s left for him, and Diana, is to get the band back together and go it alone—him to stop the gas, her to kill the god of war.

Easy peasy. Right?

The story progresses well from there, but I’ll confess to some disappointment in the climax, 10-20 minutes towards the end that doesn’t really live up to the rest. Not that it spoiled the movie or anything; failing to reach the same level as the other two hours leaves plenty of room for a satisfactory or better product, and I certainly believe that level was achieved.

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The headline characters, Gal Gadot as Princess Diana and Chris Pine as Steve Trevor handled their roles extremely well. Something to note about Gadot is that she’s playing the role in two stages: the present day segments bookending the movie and Diana during World War I, just before and just after leaving her island home of Themyscira, and they’re different. The former carries herself differently and sounds more controlled and less naïve. Through the core story in the past, she sells the young, fresh idealist unused to the ways and iniquities of man’s world without wallowing in fish out of water—all while maintaining unwavering seriousness regarding her mission to defeat Aries and stop the war. Pine worked well as a foil, consistently showing pragmatism which might seem like it borders on cynicism if it weren’t built up in the context of a giant insoluble clusterfuck of a war in which nobody was really good, and few were far worse than anyone else. And that means, throughout the movie, even in a way to the very end, trying to constrain Diana, to direct her or outright hold her back. Gadot bends, sometimes chafes, and for a while bears this and the burden of not being taken seriously, but this time makes for a build-up so that when she finally breaks out from the limits he tries to place on her, after they get to the front, it’s one of the most powerful, beautiful scenes in the film.

And for all their differences, something both characters share, that both actors deliver, is the sense that they care: about their friends, about the world, and—where other DCEU movies have particularly failed—about the little everyday people around them. Steve’s already seen that you’re limited in who you can save, and pushes to do as much as possible for as many as possible even if it means—as much as it hurts—leaving some in need by the wayside as you pursue the larger goal; that’s something Diana needs to learn along the way.

The villains are a relative weak point. Doctor Poison just isn’t all that developed. But her aesthetics are good, and her general delivery competent. She’s just never a major focus, even if in the middle she has some nice scenes to give some color.
[img] http://static.srcdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/doctor-poison-wonder-woman-film.jpg[/img]

General Ludendorff was full of determination and bluster, and was pretty well established for what he was by pulling some Vader-style HR methods early on. Fine for what he is, but not a ton of depth there. Though he and Poison do get a chance or two to inject some sadistic fun into the proceedings.

The supporting cast is at least a step or two up from that.

The Amazons are shown enough to be varied in style and approach, but Queen Hippolyta gets by far the most screen time. This performance comes off as perhaps a bit stiff in places, driven in part by her dual role as ruler and overprotective mother. But in slower moments alone with Diana as a younger child, including the scene where she narrates the island’s and the gods’ backstory, more warmth shows through.

Etta Candy doesn’t get that much more than what had been shown in the various trailers, which was a bit of a disappointment because she filled her role as comic relief well, and despite not being a powerful one served as something of an ideological ally in the London that was constraining Diana based on her sex. Funny and a little put upon, she could have used more time if the movie had the room.

Lastly come the three guys helping Diana and Steve along their journey. You’ve got Sameer, a quick thinking con man who wants to be an actor and modulates his charm to fit each scene he’s in, while progressing from seeing Diana as primarily a beautiful woman (one of his lines on that subject was one of the biggest laugh-getters of the movie) to believing in her and in her story more and earlier than anyone else. The hard-drinking Scott sniper Charlie has his ups and downs. Where Steve stayed within the realm of realism, he goes further into cynicism while wearing a smile, but with more underneath; it would have been nice if he ever managed to fire his rifle onscreen, though. Like Charlie, the Chief fits somewhat into an established cultural stereotype, in his case as a wise, ponderous Indian displaced from his home and people, but I think that works in this case because of the main contribution he makes, which is not to the plot, but to informing Diana’s character arc and presentation. Which is something that is really a common feature of the three; Sameer is most prominent in terms of definite contributions to the action, but all three could be excised from the plot with minimal difficulty, or largely replaced for those purposes with extras. However, the color they add is valuable in its own right, and they serve as important touchpoints relating to Diana and Steve’s relationship, as well as how she sees man’s world—the interweaving of darkness and light everywhere and at all levels, from the individual to the nation.

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Then there’s presentation. One thing I’m happy to say is that the trailers didn’t lie about the look: there’s more color in the movie than probably all three previous DCEU flicks combined. That’s most prominent on Themyscira (which was generally gorgeous as well, classically inspired white stone on hills and cliffs), but present in other cases as well including Trevor’s flashback to his infiltration of a German weapons compound in Turkey, the gala scene, and to an extent a couple action scenes. That’s not to say that the whole movie was like that, but the relatively drab London and war zone served as an actual contrast rather than fading into an entirely desaturated world.

Where Wonder Woman doesn’t shine is in its action scenes and effects. I didn’t personally find anything awful about them, but I did not find them as visually accomplished or exciting as, for example, I remember those of Man of Steel being. Some of that’s the difference in the conflict: this is, mainly, a conflict between someone only gradually coming into her powers and facing off against ordinary humans; Man of Steel was all superpowered aliens. But I don’t think that’s the whole story, as the same holds even when Diana is facing Aries in his godly form at the end.

But that never mattered too much to me, because the action tended to resonate more strongly on an emotional level than I’ve really seen before in the DCEU—at least in a positive way, as opposed to, say, the titular fight in BvS which had me thinking and feeling that is was stupid and pointless and strongly wishing for it to be over. (And then it is over, with the resolution based on something which I’m, sadly, not confident is the dumbest thing in the film.) There’s the previously mentioned moment of Diana finally, fully breaking from the confines Steve, and through him the world of limitations and pragmatism without gods or heroes[3], which brought together two long-developing character arcs, some great scoring, and powerful contrast between Diana herself and the battlefield around her. And it’s not just about her, but her friends and the lives they touch as well. But besides that you have cases like the early battle between the Amazons and the invading Germans, which was grounded in the relationships Diana had with them and set the tone for much of the rest of the act, or part of a subsequent scene in which Steve called back to a tactic he saw during that battle, showing both Diana’s continued reliance on others for support even as she’s far surpassed them in power and an example of how Steve has learned from his time with her and her people.

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So, broad topics aside, let’s get to some more specific things, which will be more spoiler heavy and perhaps focus a bit more on negatives and definitely on departures from what I’m used to. Also even more disconnected.

I’m not a fan of Diana as the daughter of Zeus. I’ve preferred versions of her origin that did have her formed from clay, and if receiving powers beyond those of normal Amazons from a godly source, that it be a collection of Olympians (including the goddesses!) rather than just Zeus. I think it fits her theming much better. I’ll hopefully get to some of this in more detail later, with a post on the origin I’ve read that I liked most to date, George Pérez’s reboot following Crisis on Infinite Earths.

Related to that, I don’t like the concept that the gods are all dead (except Aries). Hopefully this will get walked back, on the basis that the backstory given was, as Hippolyta said, “Just a story” and proven to be an inaccurate guide in other details. The Amazons’ relationship with the gods is a source of good stories and depth to the society, and I would have liked some more of that worked in, even if it was just an oracle or some priests at some point, or references to relevant gods while on the island.

The Aries concept used in the movie, that he didn’t, as the backstory suggested, directly corrupt the hearts of men to seek war and conflict, but instead inspired them with means to carry war out and make it more destructive (and work undercover to subtly sabotage peace efforts in the long run) is different from what I’ve normally seen, but I think it works pretty well. It led to a niggling of misgiving after the climax at first, where the Germans around stopped fighting after he was dead, defeated by Diana, and the giant plane filled with gas sent at London destroyed by Steve in a sacrificial move. It kind of looked like it could be attributed to Aries’s influence being removed (but need not be), but on further reflection it’s probably clear enough. No, the real problem with Aries is his design. He’s an upper class British twit.

Er, wait, not one of those guys. This guy.

And that actually works for most of the movie, when he’s undercover or first revealing himself. Evil where you wouldn’t look to find it is a compelling and indeed realistic idea! But keeping it thus even after fully assuming his godly powers for battle, so that you see that face under this mask, or with this kind of costume and body without the helmet on…

…or worse, in a flashback to ancient times—thousands of years before upper class British twits were even invented!—when Zeus cast him down still having the same face, hairstyle, and moustache, and we have something of a problem.

I really like the change from WWII to WWI. It gives more distance from the superficially somewhat-similar Captain America and meshes better with the themes they were going for—darkness and conflict being part of the human condition, all humans, but also goodness and light—what with WWI being a giant mess without many obvious good or bad guys. Compare that to WWII, where yeah, Stalin’s comparable to Hitler and both the British Empire and America have their stains, but on the other side you do have the Nazis and the brazen violent expansion of the Japanese Empire. It just doesn’t fit as well as having a small but powerful element seeking to continue a generally awful war perpetrated by morally comparable sides, which are about to effect a cease-fire.

The movie wasn’t filled with gut-busters or anything, but it had a sense of humor throughout much of its run time. Jokes about Steve’s penis size (implicitly), the (non-) necessity of men to women’s sexual pleasure, secretaries’ duties as slaves’ (and Etta’s reaction to it), and Sameer’s ambivalent response to seeing Diana beat up a guy in a bar seemed to get the biggest audience reactions. Less outright funny, but appreciated for its contribution to characterization, was a quip Steve made in defense of his team after she questioned their character (paraphrased from memory):

Diana: A liar, a murderer, and now a smuggler?! Lovely.

Steve: Oh, so you don’t want to work with me anymore?

Diana: I wasn’t talking about you.

Steve: Weren’t you? I’m a spy, killed men on the beach, and smuggled Poison’s notebook to London. Liar, murderer, smuggler.

Perhaps also low-key humorous was when Diana got an ice cream from a street vendor and said to him, “It's wonderful. You should be very proud.” This is somewhere that transcription simply doesn’t do justice to what was onscreen (and, I’m sure, what I was myself projecting onto it): where the line could easily be taken as sarcastic or a backhanded compliment, Gadot delivers complete sincerity and genuine enthusiasm. Diana believes that yes, even this little thing is worthy of pride; you don’t need to be a great warrior or world leader or famous artist to justify that; carrying out a trade, having a part of bringing something good of any scale into the world is enough, and each person has their own excellence.

We see similar cases a couple other times. Earlier, when she lit up and exclaimed at first seeing a baby. The second came later, after liberating a town in the middle large action scene, when she heard Charlie singing (not exactly beautifully) and was told it was the first time his friends had heard him sing in years. The next day, when there was the prospect of the group breaking up because the time they’d been hired for had passed, Charlie expressed that, “Maybe you’re better off without me, yeah?” Diana responded with, “No, Charlie. Who will sing for us?”

These little moments bear some relation to one criticism I’ve encountered a couple times regarding the climax, and the role the power of love has in it. The first is that it puts too much weight on Steve Trevor. And yes, that’s where the most explicit connection is, with a flashback to a conversation a couple minutes before—then silent, now with dialogue, either remembered or projected onto it. But I think that interpretation is ignoring other loves, and other forms of love, which at least to me also informed the scene. The conversation itself didn’t exclusively feature the romantic love between the leads, for one; the content also made motions towards love of the world as a whole and justice, doing the right thing, explicitly via the charge that while he would save the day, she should save the world, and implicitly through Steve passing along his watch, which was associated with a familial connection (that’s another thing in itself) who had said that if you see something wrong in the world, you can either do nothing, or you can do something. And just before the flashback, we saw the remaining members of the team, Sameer and Charlie and the Chief, huddling together for safety after their resources for defense had basically been depleted (and in any case, doesn’t mean much when a god and goddess/demigod are having a superhero fight right next to you), emphasizing that between friends and comrades-in-arms. And then you have those pieces above, and all the rest of the movie. So no, don’t really buy the idea it’s overly focused on Steve.

A related complaint was the focus on love as an important motivator for Diana, in a movie where she kills a bunch of German soldiers (whom she thought to be under the influence of Aries). This is something I don’t so much disagree with as I just don’t see a real problem. Wonder Woman has always been more open to killing people than Superman or Batman—warrior princess and all that. But it’s also that though there may be a tension there, it goes both ways: an unwillingness to kill may result in greater loss, or losses of those perhaps more deserving to live, your noncombatants and refugees etc. Short of actively killing people who clearly aren’t an immediate threat to anyone, I just don’t have a problem there. Broader motivations and inclinations can, with her, take a backseat to necessity. But when necessity has passed, I’ll expect her to be the one most focused on mercy and trying to fix the problems that led to someone’s misdeeds that they might do better, be better, and perhaps become a friend or ally. Wonder Woman is, among other things, all about love and compassion, but those are mainly for after the battle.

So that about wraps up my feelings on Wonder Woman. It was excellent, probably one of the best movies I’ve seen in years, and certainly the one that’s left me happiest. If you haven’t seen it, despite its flaws, I highly recommend it.

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[1]Since retconned away with Rebirth. Win for the good guys! :V

I like her and Steve Trevor, and if you’re going to have her romantically involved with a superhero, I’ve preferred Batman for that ever since at least the 2004 Justice League Unlimited episode “This Little Piggy.” As a side note, the Superman/Wonder Woman shipping was one of the few things I disliked in the excellent Elseworlds story Kingdom Come, which was one of the first comics I read, probably back around 2008.

[2]It was all right, even given that. Quite a few jokes hit, including the early taste of the empath’s powers, Taserface, and Groot with the toe sticking out as memorable. But I didn’t have a preexisting connection with the characters, so a few threads didn’t have much impact for me, and the movie split focus too much for me to care about either of the major plot threads.

[3]Jason, Theseus and Herakles, Hector and Achilles and Odysseus and Aeneas, are of course the idea here, not the heroes of real life, your firefighters, rescue workers, doctors…