They had to do it, Wonder Woman is a symbol proving in an hypothetical way what one of the strongest and insulting currents today claims, that men are useless, or better said, a strong woman doesn’t need a man. I would have preferred a story less feminist, but this wasn’t the only weak point in yet another DC Comics super production.
Gal Gadot in Wonder Woman
[source for all pics: imdb.com]
Origins
Look what I found on the subject: Wonder Woman has been invented as a comics character by William Moulton Marston, in 1941, a guy with deeply feminist sympathies. Recently, Jill Lepore published a very entertaining book: “The Secret History of Wonder Woman“, where we find that Marston had a lot of help from his wife, Elizabeth Holloway as well as from his former student Olive Byrne, with whom he and Holloway lived in a permanent ménage à trois that produced four children — two from each woman. Olive Byrne was the niece of Margaret Sanger (the contraception pioneer). Sanger’s influence is perhaps the most important of the connections between Wonder Woman, the early-20th-century women’s movement, and Marston’s fascinating life and odd psyche, in which the liberation of women somehow got all mixed up with bondage and spanking. Marston, a Boston family heir, was a genius, a charlatan and a kinkster.
Connie Nielsen in Wonder Woman
He was a lab assistant at Harvard, to German psychologist Hugo Münsterberg, a guy who opposed votes for women and thought educating them was a waste of time. During fastening students to blood-pressure machines in Münsterberg’s lab, Marston by chance, invented the lie detector – a forerunner of Wonder Woman’s golden lasso, which compels those it straps to speak the truth. [cf. Katha Pollitt, The Atlantic, November 2014 Issue]
Wonder Woman – Plot
Diana Prince, a mysterious and very attractive lady, receives a package through Bruce Wayne’s special service. It was a picture with her as a superhero in the middle of a bunch of guys.
After that we are presented to a new mythology. Diana is a girl on an island inhabited only by kinky women who are training for war every minute of the day. Her mother, Hyppolita, is the queen of these Amazons, female creatures speaking hundred of languages, allegedly created by Zeus to protect mankind.
Ewen Bremner, Saïd Taghmaoui, Chris Pine, Gal Gadot, and Eugene Brave Rock in Wonder Woman
Diana is (absolutely unjustified) restricted from training, but she did it in secret with her aunt, Antiope. Eventually Hyppolita catches them and demands her sister to train Diana until she’ll surpass her and will be stronger than any of them. They doesn’t say a thing until deep in the movie, but we’re not dumb and we guess at least that there’s something special with the girl Diana, who is not only perfectly trained to be a killing machine, but she’s also breathtakingly beautiful. Unless her female companions, she seems to be on the pacifist side.
In the meantime, the first World War was happening outside Amazon’s realm. A plane crashes in front of the island, and in a fantastic manner, rocket like and underwater, Diana saves Steve Trevor, which we’ll find out that he’s an American involved with the British in this war. If not caught, yet again, by her mother, Diana almost elopes with him, in a boat. Unfortunately, the queen didn’t tell Diana the truth about her “special” origin. Anyway, same as in Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein, where the characters went from United States to Transylvania by train in a night or so, Diana with the multi talented Trevor, sail in one night from the island to London. From now on, if you want to be bored by nonsense, because a lot more characters will show up, one more boring than another, you can watch the movie on your own. If not, you have nothing to lose, it doesn’t make sense and it has nothing to do with the Justice League sequels. You learn here, in the very beginning that Wonder Woman is somehow naive and can efficiently kick, because she really has superpowers. Oh, and she’s also immortal, but you maybe already have guessed that.
Cast
Gal Gadot is Diana, nicknamed Diana Prince, the Amazon Princess of Themyscira. She is very beautiful, but in real life you like her until she open her mouth: “When I auditioned for Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016), I didn’t know it was for Wonder Woman. The director, Zack Snyder, asked me to do a camera test. That was torture. They were looking at six or seven girls, and we were all in separate trailers and were told to stay inside until they called us. Waiting is my enemy Number One, and I was losing my mind. So, I decided to put on Beyoncé Knowles. Who runs the world? Girls! I just started to dance, and I let my anxiety go. Thank you, Beyoncé!”
Chris Pine is Steve Trevor, a pilot. Connie Nielsen is Hippolyta, the fierce Amazons Queen. I sincerely regret I haven’t yet reviewed Gladiator here, because I really liked her as Lucilla. I also noticed that maybe she was dubbed there, because in Wonder Woman she seems to have a very different voice.
Robin Wright in Wonder Woman
Robin Wright is Antiope, a vicious Amazon General and fighting coach, Hippolyta’s sister and Diana’s aunt. Danny Huston is Ludendorff, a German officer, General, Colonel, doesn’t matter. David Thewlis is Sir Patrick, a rebel Member of Parliament. Saïd Taghmaoui is Sameer, some trickster, Trevor’s mercenary friend. I like him a lot from other movies, which is the case with Bremner, too. Not here, though, not at all. Ewen Bremner is Charlie, a drunkard, not even funny, who denies Diana’s story even after he is confronted with her powers. Eugene Brave Rock is The Chief, a Red Skin, of course, yet another friend of Trevor, and a smuggler of essential goods. Lucy Davis is Etta, Trevor’s comical secretary. Elena Anaya is Dr. Maru, a sadistic chemist, she creates poisonous gas and she’s nicknamed “Dr. Poison”.
Trailer
Spectacular, but the screenplay is weak and bland. Wonder Woman is less entertaining than a lot of other action heroes movies. Much less entertaining than Zack Snyder/Christopher Nolan’s previous Superman sequels. Some says that this is a movie with subversive feminism, but not about empowerment so much as a checklist of all the cliches by which women are “disempowered”.
It’s a 7.8 out of 10 imdb rating, I gave it a 6, I still wonder why…
The trend I’m referring about is the continuous state of inexactity. Why to change mythology’s established “facts” when you can invent something else, as useless as the changes, something like the Game of Thrones, or Vampire Academy? Why mix the Greek deity names with Romans, change the symbols but using the names, to confuse the youth more than already is?
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