The last movie you saw Thread

[Inanna]

Gadot?

[Frelga]

The actress who plays WW

[yovargas]

For those who have seen Wonder Woman, this is really neat.

One of Wonder Woman’s best scenes was entirely improvised

[Primula Baggins]

I'm going to see this--either this weekend or next. Tom's eager to see it too--a superhero movie that is neither self-consciously dark nor silly.

[Lalaith]

I just read that she was 5 months pregnant during some of the reshooting scenes. Females are strong as hell!


(Bonus points to anyone who gets that reference. )

[Frelga]

No bonus points for me.

The Black Panther trailer today was amazing. I want to be excited for Wonder Woman, I do. But if I had to choose between these two movies, I'd go for the Black Panther. Although I realized as I was thinking about it that this may be because, to me, a movie with a strong female is not that unusual.

[Túrin Turambar]

Wonder Woman.

I tend to have a critic’s taste in movies, and so it’s rare for me to disagree strongly with the critical consensus on a film, but this was the closest I’ve come to actually walking out of the theatre since The Desolation of Smaug.

(Mild but not serious spoilers)

She is an endearing character, and the first half of the film had quite a few funny and/or poignant moments. But, like Superman, she’s pretty much invulnerable, which to me meant that none of the CGI-fuelled action scenes really had any drama. Even the final cataclysmic battle doesn’t so much as smudge her make-up.

Worse, the film completely failed to clear the basic ‘suspension of disbelief’ hurdle for me. Everyone reacts to the news that Ancient Greek mythology is actually real with “oh, that’s pretty cool” and a woman with superpowers running around the Western Front in an Amazon warrior costume is treated as nothing more than a nice diversion from the drudgery of everyday life. Even Diana herself adapts to a world she must be completely unfamiliar with without much of a hitch, except where either plot necessity or comic relief demands she comes across as oblivious.

To me, Batman, Spider Man and Iron Man work as superheroes because they’re believable – they’re real people with real motivations and real limitations which makes their stories compelling. Where supernatural elements come in to the story (as with Spider Man) they’re introduced gradually so the other characters come to accept them. This is what makes Dracula such a classic – Bram Stoker brings a supernatural monster into 1890s London in such a way that the characters are gradually won over to accept that the Count is a vampire. I never felt that Wonder Woman manages to earn the same level of immersion.

I knew about the film’s historical context going in, but I found the combination of a hokey 1940s comic book character with real tragic events left me slightly uneasy, as I would feel watching something like ‘Aquaman stops the Holocaust’. The film couldn’t seem to decide how serious or irreverent it wanted to be, with jarring contrasts between realistic depictions of crippled soldiers returning from the Western Front against the truly absurd sub-plot of Erich Ludendorff turning into a supervillain.

Aside from these two big problems, there were bunch of small ones. The German characters speaking English with a German accent made me feel like I was watching a 1960s B-grade war film. Even the Avengers had the Russians actually speaking Russian. I don’t mind recurring tropes in fiction, but the band of heroes seemed to need to hit every cliché, and there’s no real clue where these people even come from or why they join up. The dialogue was good in places but terrible in others – I could almost predict exactly what the characters would say based on a hundred films beforehand.

I think it could have worked well as a smaller, more character-driven story with more time to develop the character and place her in our world. And some sort of weakness or limitation to actually create drama. As it stands I kind of feel like I’ve watched some sort of big-budget slapstick comedy through the world of November 1918, without feeling all that much investment or really being entertained.

[Alatar]

Wow. I don't think I agree with a single word in there.

[Dave_LF]

I just read that she was 5 months pregnant during some of the reshooting scenes. Females are strong as hell!
(Bonus points to anyone who gets that reference. )

It's a miracle! Where do I collect, dammit?

[yovargas]

Wow. I don't think I agree with a single word in there.

Everyone reacts to the news that Ancient Greek mythology is actually real with “oh, that’s pretty cool” and a woman with superpowers running around the Western Front in an Amazon warrior costume is treated as nothing more than a nice diversion from the drudgery of everyday life. Even Diana herself adapts to a world she must be completely unfamiliar with without much of a hitch, except where either plot necessity or comic relief demands she comes across as oblivious.

Considering that this is basically factually true, I'm not sure whether it's possible to disagree with it, Al. At best, you can say that it didn't bother you any but Túrin is correct that this is how it played out. It did bug me a bit, though not enough to take me out of it (for the most part). It did feel like lazy script writing though.

[Alatar]

What I mean is its a bit like complaining about there being too much singing in a musical. Its the style of movie it is, like Richard Donner's Superman. Its like saying a black comedy was a bit dark... its technically true, but you're missing the point.

[yovargas]

What's the point of the humans not being particularly surprised or shocked at discovering a super-human woman with incredible powers?
I would've thought the humans expressing a lot of (ahem) wonder would've been both much more fitting, and much more believable.

[Alatar]

<Shrug> I don't know how to explain it any clearer. What makes blue look blue. It's self explanatory to me.

[yovargas]

Are you saying that you think the mild reaction by humans at WW's amazing powers was intentional on the film maker's part?

[Beutlin]

(...) against the truly absurd sub-plot of Erich Ludendorff turning into a supervillain.

Wait, what? The stupidity of this genre is truly dumbfounding. That said, in my book nothing beats the crass exploitation of the Shoa in the X-Men films.

[Alatar]

Are you saying that you think the mild reaction by humans at WW's amazing powers was intentional on the film maker's part?

Yes

[Túrin Turambar]

(...) against the truly absurd sub-plot of Erich Ludendorff turning into a supervillain.

Wait, what? The stupidity of this genre is truly dumbfounding. That said, in my book nothing beats the crass exploitation of the Shoa in the X-Men films.

Interestingly, I actually thought the way X-Men films handled the Holocaust was an example of the right way to incorporate a real tragedy into a superhero story. Magneto is caught up in the Holocaust as a teenager and is powerless to do anything about it, and so in my view it doesn’t come across as any less big, less real or less horrifying as a result.

Are you saying that you think the mild reaction by humans at WW's amazing powers was intentional on the film maker's part?

Yes

Well, we can have the “it’s a feature” vs “it’s a bug” discussion for a lot of films in a lot of genres. I just think a lot of other superhero films handle this aspect of worldbuilding a lot better than Wonder Woman does (Spiderman and X-Men come to mind, or Pixar's Incredibles, for that matter).

[Beutlin]

Interestingly, I actually thought the way X-Men films handled the Holocaust was an example of the right way to incorporate a real tragedy into a superhero story. Magneto is caught up in the Holocaust as a teenager and is powerless to do anything about it, and so in my view it doesn’t come across as any less big, less real or less horrifying as a result.

Respectfully disagree, Túrin. In my opinion, it is utterly ridiculous to directly incorporate the Holocaust or any other mass genocide into a commercial superhero movie primarily aimed at adolescent boys. By exploiting Auschwitz as a backstory for a character called Magneto (who has the powers of a magnet), the tragedy of the Shoa transforms into a cool introduction scene for a superhero (or as the scene is introduced on YouTube: a “cool opening scene”). And while I normally disagree with Mr. Podhoretz, I can only concur with his assessment of a later edition of the X-Men series:

http://www.weeklystandard.com/movie-hor ... cle/574070

[yovargas]

And while I normally disagree with Mr. Podhoretz, I can only concur with his assessment of a later edition of the X-Men series:

http://www.weeklystandard.com/movie-hor ... cle/574070

While I understand this line of thinking, I disagree with him at a very, very fundamental level. It reminds me of people who roll their eyes at people who think that LOTR can explore meaningful, important ideas. Plenty of people dismiss it as "just" fantasy, much like he is dismissing these as "just" superhero movies.

[Lalaith]

I just read that she was 5 months pregnant during some of the reshooting scenes. Females are strong as hell!
(Bonus points to anyone who gets that reference. )

It's a miracle! Where do I collect, dammit?

Dammit!