Now that Wonder Woman's coming out for home video, it seems like a good time to talk about the movie, and my problems with it.
With that introduction, let me first say that i very much enjoyed the movie. It's far and away the best DCEU offering to date. I'm not saying it's a bad movie - it's quite enjoyable. And you probably already know all the reasons it's a good movie. I'm assuming you've seen it by the time you read this, because i'm not concerned with spoilers here. (Though they're actually pretty minimal.)
My first problems with the movie turn out to not be Hollywood problems, but actually recent changes from the comic book itself. And this one's just a minor annoyance.
Making Diana a "god"? She wasn't uniquely special enough before? You have to give her new labels that don't really mean much of anything other than how small is the writer's perceptions of what constitutes a god. That's a common trend in modern comics. Go back to guys like Steve Englehart, and you'll see him trying to lift the readers up to see big concepts. These days, they try to make big concepts small and drag them down to us.
The second is a bigger issue, but no surprise when i learned it was instituted by the current DC comics crew - they changed things so now Diana's powers are derived from a Man. Originally, she was empowered by Hera, Aphrodite, and the other goddesses. Nope. That's no good. We need Zeus so a man gives her power.
This is tragically typical of the sort of thinking i see from them the duds at DC these days.
So, on to the problems that can be pinned on the movie itself...
The first is simply the colour pallette. This was likely imposed by the WB/DC powers as part of the dark Elseworlds they're basing their movie universe upon. It's funny that with all the worship of the first Christopher Reeves Superman movie, they totally miss the genius use of colours. Throughout the film, we never see primary red, blue or yellow until Superman's costume appears on screen. The subtle impact of that is a profound unconcious reaction making him even more larger than life and iconic.
But, that only works for Heroes seeking to inspire, to be symbols of hope or justice. The people currently in charge are not fond of the hero concept. And so we wind up with a Diana who wears brighter red in her civilian outfits than her battle armor. The modern DC superhero costumes have colours only grudgingly, out of obligation. They'd rather have black military garb, it seems.
The next one is a bigger problem, and one that is way too common is superhero adaptations.
Wonder Woman is one of the most powerful individuals in the DC universe. She can slug it out with Superman, throw tanks, fly, etc., She's backed by the power of the gods, and can call upon an array of magickal artifacts for greater power when needed. She's Awesome!
But Hollywood writers typically either think that our heroes are weak, or the writers themselves are too weak in imagination/talent to find a victory for the hero in the story they've written. So they create a new power specifically to resolve the confrontation. This is a big, and common, problem with movie adaptations. Even that revered Superman movie gave him the power to alter time for their climax. Readers know that's beyond him - he's not a god. He's tried repeatedly to alter the past, but Time & Reality are not his to play with. (Unless, y'know, he got his mitts on the Infinity Gauntlet or something)
Seriously - these are characters who generate complaints because they're too powerful to write good stories about, and yet they keep having to make up new powers for them? And not just "Oops, we ran out of money - give him repair-the-Great-Wall-of-China-vision".
At best, it's lazy writing. At worst, it's contempt for the character.
Just Stop It!
The last one is the biggest, and is highly indicative of how far our society has fallen in this century.
The transformation of Wonder Woman's lasso into a torture device. It no longer magically compels one to speak the truth, it now painfully forces the truth from the victim, torturing them until they speak.
Just like Nazi & Soviet "heroes" would have done.
With that introduction, let me first say that i very much enjoyed the movie. It's far and away the best DCEU offering to date. I'm not saying it's a bad movie - it's quite enjoyable. And you probably already know all the reasons it's a good movie. I'm assuming you've seen it by the time you read this, because i'm not concerned with spoilers here. (Though they're actually pretty minimal.)
My first problems with the movie turn out to not be Hollywood problems, but actually recent changes from the comic book itself. And this one's just a minor annoyance.
Making Diana a "god"? She wasn't uniquely special enough before? You have to give her new labels that don't really mean much of anything other than how small is the writer's perceptions of what constitutes a god. That's a common trend in modern comics. Go back to guys like Steve Englehart, and you'll see him trying to lift the readers up to see big concepts. These days, they try to make big concepts small and drag them down to us.
The second is a bigger issue, but no surprise when i learned it was instituted by the current DC comics crew - they changed things so now Diana's powers are derived from a Man. Originally, she was empowered by Hera, Aphrodite, and the other goddesses. Nope. That's no good. We need Zeus so a man gives her power.
This is tragically typical of the sort of thinking i see from them the duds at DC these days.
So, on to the problems that can be pinned on the movie itself...
The first is simply the colour pallette. This was likely imposed by the WB/DC powers as part of the dark Elseworlds they're basing their movie universe upon. It's funny that with all the worship of the first Christopher Reeves Superman movie, they totally miss the genius use of colours. Throughout the film, we never see primary red, blue or yellow until Superman's costume appears on screen. The subtle impact of that is a profound unconcious reaction making him even more larger than life and iconic.
But, that only works for Heroes seeking to inspire, to be symbols of hope or justice. The people currently in charge are not fond of the hero concept. And so we wind up with a Diana who wears brighter red in her civilian outfits than her battle armor. The modern DC superhero costumes have colours only grudgingly, out of obligation. They'd rather have black military garb, it seems.
The next one is a bigger problem, and one that is way too common is superhero adaptations.
Wonder Woman is one of the most powerful individuals in the DC universe. She can slug it out with Superman, throw tanks, fly, etc., She's backed by the power of the gods, and can call upon an array of magickal artifacts for greater power when needed. She's Awesome!
But Hollywood writers typically either think that our heroes are weak, or the writers themselves are too weak in imagination/talent to find a victory for the hero in the story they've written. So they create a new power specifically to resolve the confrontation. This is a big, and common, problem with movie adaptations. Even that revered Superman movie gave him the power to alter time for their climax. Readers know that's beyond him - he's not a god. He's tried repeatedly to alter the past, but Time & Reality are not his to play with. (Unless, y'know, he got his mitts on the Infinity Gauntlet or something)
Seriously - these are characters who generate complaints because they're too powerful to write good stories about, and yet they keep having to make up new powers for them? And not just "Oops, we ran out of money - give him repair-the-Great-Wall-of-China-vision".
At best, it's lazy writing. At worst, it's contempt for the character.
Just Stop It!
The last one is the biggest, and is highly indicative of how far our society has fallen in this century.
The transformation of Wonder Woman's lasso into a torture device. It no longer magically compels one to speak the truth, it now painfully forces the truth from the victim, torturing them until they speak.
Just like Nazi & Soviet "heroes" would have done.
Technically, the Magic Lasso originally had the power to compel anyone bound with it to obey any command, not just speak the truth--that was the main use of the lasso until Lynda Carter got a hold of it, undoubtedly because the original "loving submission" aspect was too kinky for Prime Time TV.
ReplyDelete-Mindbender
That's not really a surprise given Marston's personal preferences and early WW bondage themes, is it?
ReplyDeleteBut no matter how much power the lasso contained in earlier times, it never tortured compliance from the subject. Back in the days of the USA, that would have been considered evil.
Actually, the torture aspect from the movie was the unexpected consequence of George Perez' good intentions. Back in the Golden Age, the Lasso was made of Aphrodite's "magnetic gold" (as were the Venus Girdles used to reform criminals on the Amazons' Reformation Island), which subjected those bound with it to the powers of Loving Submission. When Perez updated Diana post-COIE, he decided to bring more goddesses into the business of empowering WW, and so decided that the Lasso was now charged with the power of Hestia so that it could "burn away deceptions" (altho relatively painlessly in the comics)--exactly WHY the goddess of the Hearth would have any particular interest in Truth or Lies is beyond me, but whatever. Curiously, not only was the movie WW now the creation of a male god (as per the New 52 version), but Hestia was the ONLY goddess mentioned on screen, still in connection to the power of the Lasso, even tho it still doesn't make a lick of sense for her to burn away falsehoods, painfully or not.
ReplyDelete-Mindbender
As the Dark Twin, i cannot help but contemplate those tales of loving submission on Reformation Island with those girdle-(at least)-bound ... submissives? Surely there's a better word. I'll check with the marketing people later - they'll have something.
ReplyDelete...
They say that Legal said to use 'submitters'.
This is why i don't to go to Legal for answers.
Maybe Hestia sounded kinda like Hephaestus and hearth... forge... it's just a matter of scale, right? (Yeah - really stretching here) They really needed to embrace the whole Light Of Truth concept (cf. Eye Of Agamotto) rather than the Fire Of Truth when it comes to burning away deception.
Sadly, neither the shift to torture nor the absence of the goddesses comes as any real surprise from the current crew at DC. I rather think that the director was working from information packets prepared for her and had no knowledge of Diana's previous source of empowerment.
I'm leaving the lasso torture scene on her hands, though.
(Remember back when we were born - when the US used to execute practitioners of Water Boarding for torturing our soldiers? Have we at least apologized to their families now that we've decided that those guys had it right after all?)