Wonder Woman is a Masterpiece!

[IMPress Polly]

AeonPax wrote:
I really enjoyed it as did those I saw it with. Jenkins did an excellent job directing this female action flick and I love Gal Gadot, and her WW costume.

So did I! I thought the direction and writing were very heartfelt and authentic in nature, and Gal Gadot's expressive face is just perfect for capturing the character's sense of righteous indignation! And screw those who dislike her WW costume! That's the coolest, most fun superhero costume I've ever seen before! YaY for corset armor!

The younger crowd there, mainly females, went nuts at times. I see movies for escapism and this movie satisfied that. I've seen three times already.

I noticed that too! Opening day here was a vaguely similar experience to attending Geek Girl Con! There were grown women showing up in WW costumes, and the audience, led by the younger women, would sometimes cheer and clap at various scenes. (I might have joined in too. ) I've been to the opening weekends of a lot of superhero movies before, but never have I seen quite that amount of excitement surrounding one. It was a ton of fun. This movie clearly meant something to many people, and especially to many women. Those seeing it for the first time on video will miss out on a major part of the experience. The audience made the WW movie experience for me to a substantial degree! They were sometimes more entertaining than the film itself.

I think you're also spot-on on pinpointing the younger women as the most enthusiastic. The opening weekend Cinema Score polling found that audiences overall gave Wonder Woman an A, with one exception: women between the ages of 18 and 24 gave it a rare A+ instead. I think it was just that kind of summer for films. Girls Trip, for example (which is basically the logical inverse of the Fifty Shades movies), currently stands at a multiple of close to 4, making it possibly the most-liked movie of the summer by that standard of measure aside from Wonder Woman.

(If you're not familiar with box office lingo, a "multiple" refers to a film's total box office intake over the course of its theatrical run relative to its opening weekend performance in ticket sales. For example, if a film closes at a multiple of 2, that means it doubled its opening weekend box office performance over the course of its threatrical run, while if it closes at a multiple of 3, that means it earned triple its opening weekend sales over the course of its theatrical run, etc. Generally, studios are happy if a movie earns a multiple of 3 these days, as that tends to indicate that people who saw the movie liked it. Batman v. Superman and Suicide Squad sold a lot of tickets, but they had low multiples barely exceeding 2, which indicates that their ticket sales were front-loaded and therefore based more on pre-release marketing hype than on actual like of the films by those who saw them. Wonder Woman, by contrast, currently stands at a multiple of roughly 4, which means that it has genuinely earned its box office success. A multiple of 4 is unusually high, especially for the superhero genre, which suggests that audiences liked it more than a little. Girls Trip was a smaller movie that launched to just $31 million (though that was more than the expected $20 million) and now is situated at a $114 million domestic total: the same as Fifty Shades Darker, which represents a multiple approaching 4, and that's very rare (and certainly far higher than that of Fifty Shades Darker.) Almost everything else this summer flopped relative to its budget.)

I think Wonder Woman is my favorite new film since Carol (currently my absolute favorite movie) came out.

Nonetheless, in critical review, there were flaws (none affected my enjoyment)
`

a) In the Wonder Woman mythos, she started appearing in comics during the 1940, fighting Nazi's, not WWI.

b) The idea of an American Indian in the movie (The Chief) seemed anachronistic and out of place in a WWI setting

c) The Steve Trevor love interest was forced and an unnecessary part of the subplot.

d) At one point it appeared like WW was shot in the gut but the film glossed by that.

To me, as someone who has never opened a single Wonder Woman comic before, pure loyalty to the comic books didn't really matter to me. I thought World War 1 was a clever and distinctive backdrop that helped further differentiate Diana Prince's first movie adventure from that of Captain America.

As to the rest of these critiques, I just simply don't agree. Well okay, the romance subplot wasn't truly necessary, but I thought it was cute and fun, so there!

In my opinion, the movie's biggest flaw was just using too much CGI in the final fight. I mean that's something most superhero movies do throughout, and it gets tiresome to me. It kinda gives things an unnecessarily cartoonish feel, I think, which is particularly unfortunate when the scene in question is supposed to be the most poignant and impactful one in the whole film, narratively. I found it really refreshing that they relied primarily on stunts for the action parts in the first two-thirds of the movie, and I think a lot of other people did too. I just wish they had made the whole movie that way.

It's also possible to make the argument that there exists a contradictory logic to the film using stylized violence to protest war. At least I've seen some people make that argument anyway. The contention is that the filmmakers and fans want to have our cake and eat it too. Well that's true to a certain degree! This is, after all, a blatant female power fantasy! (From a typical TV commercial: "Goddess. Warrior. Legend." ) There may be a logical contradiction there, but it's not an impossible one to navigate, I don't think. The way to successfully have your cake and eat it too is to compromise and eat half the cake. That's what I think the Wonder Woman movie does by having our protagonist use a defense-based fighting style. There's a different feel to stylized defense-based fighting than there is to stylized offense-based fighting. I think it strikes the right balance, conveying Diana as more essentially assertive than aggressive as a character, even in battle, and that helps keep you psychologically connected to the purity of her motives.

[Devil'sAdvocate]

I guess the fact that Wonder Woman was produced by the same company that made films full of misogyinst humor such as "The Hangover" doesn't matter to the OP:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...er_Bros._films

Kind of reminds me of that James Cameron "Avatar" film, which had an environmentalist message - a lot of liberals seemed to like it, but also seemed to not know or care that it was made by News Corporation, the same company that owns Fox News. *facepalm*

This is why expecting any major "media" franchise to genuinely care about some trendy "cause" like feminism is dumb, the primary motive behind the films is just profit, not "social justice" or any trendy cause like that, and if it's more profitable in 5 years, the same companies will put out a film with a "pro-Trump" message.

Thinking that you're "supporting a cause" just by buying an $8 dollar ticket to a mediocre movie is just feel-good 'slacktivism' at its dumbest.

[IMPress Polly]

Devil's Advocate wrote:
I guess the fact that Wonder Woman was produced by the same company that made films full of misogyinst humor such as "The Hangover" doesn't matter to the OP:

I don't forgive The Hangover, but its existence doesn't preclude the fact that Wonder Woman is an awesome movie!

Anyway, I notice that you have developed a bizarre obsession with patrolling all my threads, or at least the ones dealing with gender politics anyway. Do you treat other PF members the same way or is this specifically an obsession with me personally? I'm curious because it's starting to feel juuuuust a tad bit creepy.

[Cletus]

I don't forgive The Hangover, but its existence doesn't preclude the fact that Wonder Woman is an awesome movie!

Anyway, I notice that you have developed a bizarre obsession with patrolling all my threads, or at least the ones dealing with gender politics anyway. Do you treat other PF members the same way or is this specifically an obsession with me personally? I'm curious because it's starting to feel juuuuust a tad bit creepy.

If you don't want people to respond to your threads, don't post. The idea of another poster being obsessed with you is just plain silly. You are not really very interesting.

[Captain Obvious]

If you don't want people to respond to your threads, don't post. The idea of another poster being obsessed with you is just plain silly. You are not really very interesting.

This newbie is a creeper though, I have little doubt the forum ladies have the skin crawls right now.

[Devil'sAdvocate]

If you don't want people to respond to your threads, don't post. The idea of another poster being obsessed with you is just plain silly. You are not really very interesting.

If I was creeping on her, my interest stopped the second I viewed her profile and saw that selfie.

I'm drawn toward topics on "gender politics" as of late because of all the hysteria the subject has generated on social media in recent months. And folks hysterical about "gender politics" usually give ridiculous responses that I find funny.

[Devil'sAdvocate]

This newbie is a creeper though, I have little doubt the forum ladies have the skin crawls right now.

That's what your wife said.

[Captain Obvious]

lawl

[Devil'sAdvocate]

Back to the topic, if the OP likes the film on its own right, cool.

I didn't read the whole essay, but the jist of it was that she viewed it as some kind of advancement of feminism and was encouraging people to see it for that reason. In fact I put her on ignore myself to save her the trouble.

But fact is it was produced by Warner Bros, the same company which produced films like "the Hangover" which was a comedy full of misogynist humor, which is why assuming the producers of films like this "really care about feminism" and aren't just jumping on the latest "social justice" bandwagon hoping to turn a profit is pretty naive to me.

[Ethereal]

Finally got around to watching Wonder Woman (rented it on Red Box). Was the typical, formulaic superhero movie where everything in it - the characters, the dialog, the plot - exist only to provide an excuse for mindless action sequences. Any moral complexity or nuance that could be examined is literally kicked through walls and slammed into the ground like so many faceless Germans who are killed or maimed as the admittedly naive protagonist smashes her way across Europe. To the extent this underlying complexity is subject to examination, it is ultimately superficial, fleeting, and cheap. The ensemble cast are given similarly short shrift as their background stories are explained in the most perfunctory and cursory fashion, giving precious little insight into their present psychological states and underlying motivations. That said, the movie was not all bad. Like all big budget superhero movies, its strength lies in its visual splendor and scope. Gal Gadot is a competent actress who manages to portray the heroine effectively. And it does not hurt that she is physical perfection made manifest. However, these scant positives are not enough to redeem what is ultimately a hollow action movie whose hamfisted attempts to impart lessons of morality are overwhelmed by an interminable and obsessive fixation on explosions, implosions, and other forms of physical destruction.

2.5 stars out of 4.