Wonder Woman: spoilers on, I have feelings to discuss

This post is a mess. I just sat down and wrote about everything I could think of about this brilliant, brilliant movie. As such, he aware there are a lot of wild, unrestrained spoilers here. There might not be any sort of coherent structure but there are spoilers.

Batman and Wonder Woman: OTP 4EVA

Okay, not really, my OTP in the DC Universe will always be Tim and Steph (its generational) but I love that this whole film is a flashback brought on by Bruce sending Diana a photo her her Steve and the WWI gang. Being Bruce, of course, this sweet gesture is delivered by armoured car in a secure briefcase carried by armed guards because Bruce is the most extra person who ever lived.

I despise the pairing of Diana and Clark with a fiery passion but I have always had something of a soft spot for a bit of Bruce/Diana. I know this is probably not meant to be taken as a romantic gesture because this is Batman on film and he is TRAUMATIZED and CAN NEVER KNOW LOVE and MAAAAARTHA but I can live in hope.

Weeping Manly Tears

I admit it, the No Man's Land section brought a tear to my eye. Every last second of that scene is just liquid empowerment. Its a huge moment not only for Diana but for Steve and the rest of their ragtag little group. Everything from her climbing the trench ladder to demolishing the sniper nest is amazingly directed.

Diana in battle is probably the best thing to point to when someone asks how much having a female director on this film makes a difference. She's always shot in ways that keep her properly centred in the shot and accentuates her actions: the sweep of her sword, the direction of a leap, and so on. There are no scenes shot to give us a good angle on her breasts or her backside. There have been something like five Marvel movies with Black Widow in them and every damn fight scene, I swear...

27 countries

There are certain realities of the First World War that just get... well, whitewashed is a pretty appropriate word. When Steve is explaining the war to the Amazons he makes a specific point of how twenty-seven countries are involved in the conflict. I don't know about you, but wheb I learned about this in school the list was pretty much abbreviated to the UK, Germany, France, Russia and the United States.

There's a scene early in the film with a massive crowd of British soldiers about to take ship for France and in amongst them are Indian soldiers in turbans. There's also a substantial set piece set in the Ottoman theatre, instead of everything being about the Trenches as in just about every other WWI movie I've ever seen.

How cool is Steve Trevor?

The scene where we're introduced to the Lasso Of Truth is a great set piece for establishing Steve Trevor's character. In this version of events, the lasso is something that can be resisted but it causes pain. Steve manages to bite back the truth several times before blurting out that he's a spy. It shows us how strong a personality Steve is and, frankly, why he's worthy of Diana's attention (and, yes, that's the way it works because its her name on the film and he's the love interest).

The conversation about sleeping together on the boat is comedy gold, as well. Too much of Steve and Diana's funny scenes later are cringe comedy where he tries to force her to fit in with a patriarchal world and... I understand why those scenes exist and I like the bit with the glasses but I've never liked the cringe thing.

Oh, and I love the bath scene. I love that for once the guy is naked (and it is no chore looking at Chris Pine shirtless).

I adore Etta Candy

Probably the biggest departure from source material (other than the change of World War) is Etta Candy, here reimagined as an English suffragette with a dry sense of humour. I adore her and I wish there had been more room for her but Lucy Davis squeezes every moment of comedy from her scenes.

Allan Heinberg Returns

Allan Heinberg wrote the screenplay and, for those unaware, Heinberg is a very good screenwriter who sometimes moonlights as a very slow comics writer. He created the Young Avengers for Marvel where he made a twenty-four issue masterplan last six years. He was also writer on the post-Infinite Crisis Wonder Woman which stalled after four issues with a fifth being released something like a year later as an annual. For all that, those five issues were a bold statement of intent for a revitalised new direction... that totally stalled out because a year's worth of guest writers had to leave their options open as to what they were actually following up on.

Still, he had a fine sense of what Wonder Woman was about and I'm glad we finally drew some dividends from that.

BTW, Philippus is in it

I don't think she's named in any dialogue but IMDB tells me that the Amazon played by Ann Ogbomo is Philippus. So, if you were worried Queen Hippolyta might get too lonely with her sister dead and her daughter out in Man's World, well...

Part of me wishes Ares wasn't there

I can't help it. I like David Thewlis and what he does with the role and I acknowledge that there had to be someone about the place at Diana's power level for a final confrontation but...

I prefered the idea that there was no great supernatural conspiracy at work in the end, that the Great War really was just a mess of people being stubborn and shit at each other. That war genuinely was one of the greatest human tragedies in history and part of me feels that that could stand on its own. I'm not sure I'd call it disrepectful, exactly, but there is a part of me that questions the taste.

That having been said, it was a good idea to set the story just before Armistice Day. What Diana is foiling is explicitly the last ditch attempt of a German general to keep the war going when the end was all but a done deal. That means that Diana isn't ending the war all by herself which I think genuinely would have been disrespectful.

*****

Now, I don't doubt I'll have more to say about this movie in time, at the very least I'm likely to see it again with some friends some time next week, but that seems a decent amount to be getting on with. 

Thoughts on Wonder Woman (NON-SPOILER VERSION)

This was a good movie, maybe even a legitimately great one but I'm writing this about three hours after leaving the cinema so I'll let the euphoria fade before making that judgement.

On Sunday I wrote about how I thought Wonder Woman's success vindicated the DCEU approach. The drive towards more auteur-driven superhero movies and a greater variety of creative visions really pays off here. Well, it pays off for me, at any rate, I know there are plenty of people who felt it paid off in Suicide Squad or BvS or Man of Steel and ain't no problem with that. With an approach like this, mileage varies a lot.

Hell, even DC's habit (much older than the DCEU) of reinventing the wheel at the drop of a hat works here. Shoving Diana into the action of the First World War rather than the Second was a fantastic idea. There's so much more drama to be made out of having her interact with the “bad” world war, the one that was just a bunch of alliances and pacts getting in each other's way until the worst conflict in human history happened. Surprisingly, there's a lot more attention paid here to the period detail than many serious films about the period: one of the film's major set pieces takes place in the German occupied Ottoman Empire; Indian soldiers in turbans appear several times; even the most sympathetic characters (besides Diana, that is) are moved to callousness by the hopelessness of the conflict; and, some actual thought goes into placing the story at a point in the war where we don't see Wonder Woman rather insensitively winning a war that in reality cost millions of lives whilst still giving her a good reason to be involved (more on that tomorrow).

As to Wonder Woman herself, Gal Gadot is great in the role even though it took a while for her line delivery to really click with me. I've not seen her in anything before (I decided to skip BvS somewhere between learning about the peach tea and “Martha!” scenes) but once you're used to the voice it really works. Chris Pine is perfectly cast as Steve Trevor and its clear Pine has a good sense of what Trevor is there for, never getting in the way of Gadot's performance.

Lucy Davis' Etta Candy is, sadly, not as prominent a role as the trailers might have led people to believe but that's more than made up for a brilliant trio of companions Diana and Steve pick up along the way played by Said Taghmaoui, Ewen Bremner and Eugene Brave Rock as Sameer, Charlie and The Chief and, yes, there is a perfectly good reason for a Native American to be hanging around that even provides a great moment for Diana's education in how Man's World works.

Patty Jenkins' directing is top notch, by the way. Every fight scene is fantastic, busy with action on multiple levels and sheer power granted to Diana in those scenes is, whilst ultimately nothing special in the genre as a whole, something we're just not used to seeing a female superhero doing. Jenkins has an enviable sense of space with Paradise Island being all open spaces and clear skies whilst the London sections are full of crowded spaces indoors and out.

Most of all, though, at no point does the action stop to stare at Gal Gadot's body. Now, it would be a braver man than me who could claim that the camera doesn't linger on her, she's a stunning woman and the star of the movie, but what the camera conspicuously does not do is linger on her breasts or backside, nor is she ever blocked into a shot in such a way to emphasis body at the cost of moving her face out of shot. There have been something like five MCU movies with Black Widow in them and ever damn fight scene, I swear...

So, yes, this is a really good movie. I'm not sure I'm sold enough on the character to see Justice League just on the strength of her being in it but I'm more than on board for any sequels or spin-offs to this movie DC might want to greenlight in the future. 

How Wonder Woman totally vindicates Batman v. Superman

With Wonder Woman getting good reviews all over the place (except from Fox News who seem offended that the title character isn't American because reasons) and Batman v. Superman getting a post-mortem bashing in the process, I just wanted to throw out a ray of hope for people who liked BvS:

Wonder Woman's success totally vindicates the creative vision of BvS.

Seriously. I'm not kidding. I'm not being mean. This isn't going to end with me praising BvS with faint damnation. It also, to be frank, doesn't end with me changing my own poor opinion of BvS but I seriously believe this whole situation works out for everyone in a way a lot of people aren't considering.

First of all, if you liked BvS (and Man Of Steel and Suicide Squad) then nothing can change that, that's how you feel. Furthermore, those films did well so you can rest assured that you are a commercially viable audience and DC isn't going to stop making films like that any time soon. The creative visions of Zack Snyder and David Ayer will continue to be present in their films.

And there it is!

See, since DC got into the shared cinematic universe game one of the big distinctions they tried to make between their operation and Marvel's was that they wanted to give their directors more creative control. Now, I don't hold that all Marvel films are directed exactly the same or have a totally unified aesthetic but there is an obvious effort to present a similar tone and production design so that when characters from different ends of the MCU meet it doesn't look weird.

Patty Jenkins' Wonder Woman has a very different feel to the other three existing DCEU movies but Suicide Squad also has a different feel to the two Snyder-led efforts, just not as pronounced. It was, perhaps, a mistake to lead with two films by the same director and then follow up with a third from a new director whose style was not quite as distinct from Snyder's as it could have been but this does all show that DC is willing to pursue very different creative visions even with characters who are going to meet up.

Long story short: everybody wins. If you liked the Snyder (and closely allied Ayer) approach, that isn't going away even if Warner takes the success of Wonder Woman to heart. Justice League and Gotham City Sirens will continue that approach because that's what their directors were employed to create: Zack Snyder's Justice League and David Ayer's Gotham City Sirens. Then down the line we get Joss Whedon's Batgirl and Matt Reeves' The Batman.

Now, the down side of this is that unlike Marvel the audience of any one film in the franchise will not go into any of the others with the reassurance they're going to like what they watch. For my part, though, I'm more than willing to take that risk for a more varied approach to these properties. 

A women only Wonder Woman screening and the men who just want to be there

As you can imagine, the usual brigade of dickhead men are angry about the idea that one cinema in the US is having a couple of Wonder Woman screenings for women only. So far I have seen some of them claim that this is as bad as racial segregation and one particular idiot go to far, far too much trouble to get himself a ticket to a screening where everyone else in the room will resent his presence which I'm willing to bet will not be a novel experience for the man.

Now, once again I just have to say: this is why I hate the whole Men's Rights Activist brigade because this is the shit they loudly waste their time on.

Its not even a preview. Its two screenings a couple of days after the film comes out, for goodness sake. Its literally just a couple of screenings they're being asked politely not to attend. In a rational, adult world, this is a minor inconvenience. Its a major feature film, there will be a dozen or more other screenings every day of opening week in any cinema you can find.

You know what? There are serious social issues affecting men that I would like to see addressed in my lifetime. Things like our sky high suicide rate; the massive under-diagnosis of violent personality disorders; the fact that emotional distance is considered a normal component of fatherhood; the chronic under-funding of prostate cancer research even though its the second most common cancer in men; the massive stigma surrounding physical contact between men; the way that media portrays “a useless idiot, but at least he's not abusive” as some sort of ideal relationship goal; the fact that domestic and sexual violence against men gets swept under the rug because of a belief we, as the “stronger” sex, should not be affected by it.

And I think anyone who calls themselves an activist on behalf of men's issues should probably be more concerned about issues that literally kill us or fill our lives with loneliness and misery that then likely kills us anyway than having a by now days long tantrum about there being two screenings in one cinema that most of them live nowhere near that they can't attend.

And they wonder why there are women who would like to see a movie without them. 

Wonder Woman's astonishing movie villain revealed!

(Fair warning, this post discusses the recent announcement-ish of the villain for the Wonder Woman movie.

If you want to remain entirely unspoiled, turn away now.)

Its bloody Ares.

Let's be clear: as unimpressed as I am by the very obvious, very dull choice of villain I am still interested in this movie. There are plenty of good ideas: putting Wonder Woman in the ultimate “man's folly” of the First World War; having a Suffragette Etta Candy; filming in something approaching colour... these are all things that interest me. However...

Setting aside the questionable taste of having a comicbook God Of War turn up in very real human tragedy of the Trenches (and likely being somehow responsible), isn't it just a bit obvious? A bit generic?

I mean, I get that there isn't a deep bench here. Wonder Woman's rogues gallery is a mess... as is her supporting cast... and her status quo... look, every creative team for 75+ years has felt the need to reinvent the wheel to the extent that the big Rebirth hook for her title is Greg Rucka hyperventilating into a paper bag trying to rationalise it all. And honestly? That gave me hope for this film.

You see, there's no Wonder Woman equivalent of The Dark Knight Returns or The Death Of Superman. No story that DC fandom has obsessively made the basis for the character.

Wonder Woman, funnily enough considering her real world origins, is not tied down to any one dominant interpretation and that was born out when they decided to shift her origins back a World War and play with the idea of her meeting the Suffragettes.

And then they decide Ares will be the villain. The God Of War versus the warrior princess...

… yeah. It is a pretty standard go to for the genre. Again, I get that there isn't a deep bench here. Doctor Psycho and Egg-Fu are all kinds of problematic; guys like Angle Man and the Cavalier are a bit low rent; and, otherwise, its mainly just more classical gods.

But still, isn't Cheetah meant to be the iconic villain these days? Circe's there if you want a supernatural threat; Veronica Cale offers a lot of interesting angles; and, Giganta offers interesting visuals.

But, no, Ares.

Ugh...