Spoilers Wonder Woman - Grading & Discussion

Deeply Hyperbolic

Oh please, you are talking about a guy who is willing to hand himself over to Zod to save Earth and then fights for us despite a chance to bring his species back. Then in BvS he literally sacrificed himself to stop Doomsday.

Add in all the "pseudo" inserts you want.

 

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And I mostly agree with you. But c'mon, enough derailing the WW thread.

 

Fair enough. Wonder Woman rocks and respects its source material and its important role as creating a heroic ideal for children and adults.

 

Wonder Woman Becomes Highest Grossing Superhero Origin Film Ever

Congratulations to the Wonder Woman film and everyone involved with it!

Does WB regret not doing Wonder Woman film sooner? Did it have to take this long for people to finally accept a WW film? Or was it just released at the right time?

Who knows! I'm just glad I have my WW film!

 

Why should WB regret making "Wonder Woman" sooner? That doesn't make any sense to me. It's still not the most profitable DCEU movie. And not everyone regards it as the best in the franchise.

"Creating a heroic ideal"? That sounds so limiting. Not even "Wonder Woman" was like that. Diana Prince aka Wonder Woman was not that ideal in the film. She had her virtues and flaws. Why is that so hard for people to see, let alone accept in all comic book hero movies? Why can't these characters have both virtues and flaws? Fans didn't mind . . . in the past. Yet, for the past year or two, many fans have been demanding for all of these comic book hero characters mainly be "heroic", "ideal" and possess very little or no flaws. What on earth is behind this sudden intolerance for more complicated protagonists?


I really like this movie. But sometimes, I get the feeling that the media and a good number of fans have been subjecting the world to this propaganda campaign over this film.

 

Wonder Woman is definitely the most profitable of the DCEU movies, it had the lowest budget at $149M out of all DCEU films and it is going to make nearly as much as BvS worldwide. All the previous DCEU movies were successful, but WW is the first breakout DCEU has had.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DCEU#Box_office_performance

That's fine if you prefer BvS, but some people just want to see more heroic characters in the DCEU. There is nothing wrong with that. Also people were really excited about Wonder Woman finally getting her own movie.

 

Maybe people are getting tired of all these angsty, touchy-feely, Emo, moody, conflicted "heroes," especially when such aspects are projected onto characters that shouldn't have been that way in the first place.

Sure, it works for some characters. But Superman is supposed to be an idealistic boy scout with a simplistic moral compass.

Kor

 

I was excited about her getting her own movie, as well. And I'm glad that she did.

But I'm getting sick and tired of being told that I should prefer more heroic and ideal protagonists. And I'm getting sick and tired of being told that Wonder Woman is more heroic and ideal than her male counterparts, when it's obvious that she isn't.

And I honestly don't care if the movie becomes the most profitable film in the DCEU. So what? Profit is not a sure sign of a film's quality. Why is it that many people still fail to grasp this? And I'm getting sick and tired of people using every little excuse to shove down my throat that "Wonder Woman" is the best film in the DCEU. There IS NO "best film in the DCEU". This whole thing is about personal preference. Many people keep claiming that they understand this, then they turn around and use box office returns or other reasons to claim that their personal preference for a certain movie is a fact. Over and over again.

Since when? Superman hasn't been like that in years. What is this stupid determination that the Superman character be limited in such a narrative straitjacket? Why are so many fans afraid of allowing Clark Kent aka Superman be a rounded and complex individual, instead of one-note boy scout, for the sake of sentimentality? Once again, I'm receiving hints that pop culture today is slowly devolving into entertainment for 5-9 year-olds.

 

I think you might want to step away from any Wonder Woman topics for a while? Let the fans enjoy the movie, and not be bothered by their comments. People will always have a preference. I'm not mad when people say they like BvS better.

 

Why? Every time I come across a Star Wars Prequel thread, I end up encountering posts and posts of negative comments and complaints about those movies. And now I'm not allowed to express my annoyance about how "Wonder Woman" is being perceived in compare to the other DCEU films?

 

You don't need to be told anything. People are voting with their wallets.

Care to elaborate? Within the Snyder-verse, she is the most idealist. She has sort of taken over the role Superman should be occupying, which is why Patty Jenkins herself said that the Donner Superman films were a big influence. You disagree with this? Then you disagree with the director of the film.

People selectively invoke this point depending on whether they want to bash or defend a film.

Shall we put the films to the Rotten Tomatoes test then?

WW is ranked 92%/90%
Suicide Squad 25%/61%
Batman v Superman is 27% (much lower than the audience rating which still sucks, at 63%)
Man of Steel with a middling 55% / 75%

Now you have Justice League which is being retooled to add more humor despite the fact that it visually looks as dark and dreary as any other Snyderverse film.

If you follow the trendlines, DCEU grimdark seems to be on the way out. It makes sense for Batman to be grimdark, but never made sense to slap onto Superman and most others.

Then stop getting so 'sick and tired' and just accept with the fact that you're part of a small and dwindling faction of Snyderverse fans.

The one-note aspect is the dreary grimdark aspect of the Snyderverse which doesn't allow any levity, any (frankly) love to enter the picture. I mean come on...even Amy Adams who is so adorable and positive she can clean an apartment with vermin couldn't shine any light on Man of Steel. Zack Snyder projects a depressing nihilistic view of the world and calls it "mature". This is simply the flipside of viewing the world as nothing but milk and honey. It's monochromatic.

 

This is all riveting stuff that nobody has thought of or expressed before and no discussions like these have ever been had anywhere...

 

Good point. Spot on reaction gif. As for that film that it was more Bronte than Austen. Can't say I liked it.

 

Why would they regret it? WB launched their film universe with their biggest flagship character. That's not a surprising strategy.

"Accept?" You say this as if there was some public resistance to the character. There was not. WB had to get its film act together beyond one off productions (Superman Returns) infantile, TV-esque hack work (Green Lantern) or successful, but isolated series (Nolan's Bat-films), in order to finally adapt the top characters as one series. It was not about anyone not accepting a Wonder Woman film, as fans had wanted to see the character get the big budget, big screen treatment for years, longing for the character to be treated with respect, rather than continue to be haunted by the spectre of the largely terrible Carter TV series.

The right time was after the character made a splash in Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice. The framework of the film allowed the character to shine

Again, you're not being honest. One, WW's production budget was $149M, which does not include the marketing budget (and for films of this nature, they are large), so one cannot only focus on that production budget alone as if it were made for pennies. Two, the box office numbers are what studios are considering, and right now, Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice pushed in toward the $900M mark. If WW happens to match or pass that--great, it will be another successful DC movie to make single-minded MCU fans eat crow, since they predicted (before the release of Man of Steel) that DC was never going to have a successful film universe.For the first time, there's a true mirror of the comic companies' worlds on screen at the same time, so for me (who was there to see years of hit and miss and/or different comapined adapting the characters, hence no film universe), this is great.

Every success is a win/win--its part of a series, not the Wonder Woman Film Universe, which some seem to try to wish into existence. That's not what WB or (I will assume) the movie going audience desires.

 

I liked it.

This is no longer a thread about what a Superman movie should be like, this is now a thread about what a Jane Austen movie should be like.

 

It was the best of both worlds! (Though I love Fukunaga's Jane Eyre just as much.)

 

Yep. Bring on the zombies.

 

There are two basic types of superheroes: Archetypical superheroes, and morally complicated superheroes who are essentially reworkings of the first made with greater complexity.

Superman and Captain America are examples of the former. The fundamental basis of their characters is that they really are living embodiments of Truth, Justice, and the American Way. They are characters who would in real life be too good to be true -- they are not psychologically realistic characters and are not meant to be.

They are, it must be emphasized, characters who are made primarily for children and secondarily for adults; they represent primal children's fantasies of morally uncompromised power. This is the key to understanding these types of characters: they are fantasies of unlimited or nearly-unlimited Might for Right.

There are other types of superheroes for whom complexity is a good thing, creatively. Batman, Wolverine, Spider-Man, Iron Man, the Hulk, etc. -- these are characters for whom being flawed but decent is a good creative choice. These characters aren't archetypes of morality; they are intended to be more complex re-workings of archetypes. Spider-Man owes a lot to Superman, but Superman would never work if his driving motivation were guilt for having let someone he loved die unintentionally.

These types of characters are still power fantasies, but they're for adolescents and adults primarily and secondarily for children.

Wonder Woman is part of the former, not the latter. She represents an archetype of just power, and that speaks deeply to women in a way that men have always been spoken to via moral power fantasy figures like Superman.

Except, of course, that Superman in the Snyderverse has been transformed from the former type of character into the latter; he is no longer the embodiment of morally upright simplicity, the living incarnation of Truth, Justice, and the American Way; he's a guy who resents being asked to be "a god" and really just wants to hang out with his girlfriend and doesn't bother trying to save every single person he can when someone bombs the U.S. Capitol or destroys Metropolis, and who thinks he doesn't really owe the world anything because that's what his parents taught him, even though he feels guilty a lot. He's mopey and listless, reactive rather than proactive. An individualist instead of a communalist. He's not the sort of guy who would offer random people a hug.

So Wonder Woman has stepped into that role for the Snyderverse. Jenkins, as others have noted, looked to the 1978 Richard Donner Superman for inspiration and influence, to create Wonder Woman as a character who is much more of a heroic ideal than Superman had become.

(Side-note: I think a relatively small detail is pretty revelatory about Snyder's relationship with the character of Superman. He keeps having characters refer to him as "the Superman," as though it were a title rather than a name. Except the phrase "the Superman" is usually associated with Friedrich Nietzsche, the Übermensch, Hitlerian fantasies of racial power and racial purity, with the idea of Might Makes Right. It is a really disturbing phrase that has very different connotations than "Superman" as a name.)

Or, y'know, they just really liked seeing a DC superhero as a heroic ideal for the first time since Christopher Reeve, and really liked seeing that archetype embodied by a woman for the first time on the big screen in... well, ever. (And during an era in U.S. culture where misogyny is ascendant.)

This. And so is Wonder Woman!

I don't think you should prefer heroic and idealized protagonists. But I think our culture needs them, and that having them builds a solid foundation for newer, more complicated characters to be built upon them. And I think that some particular superheroes -- Superman, Wonder Woman, Captain America, Captain Marvel all come to mind -- ought to be these kinds of morally simplistic archetypes rather than morally complex characters.

She gets told she can't save everyone; she says, "Fuck that," and saves everyone, because she is the sort of person who wants to go out and hug the world and kiss babies. Show me a scene where Snyder!Superman is compelled to save everyone out of pure altruism and love of humanity rather than just out of guilt or shame or feeling obligated. Snyder!Superman doesn't feel like the kind of guy to me who would take on a corrupt slum lord, or hug someone about to commit suicide. He doesn't feel like the kind of person who sees the good in everyone, who cares about everyone. Jenkins!Wonder Woman does.

You are the one who brought it up.

No. No, there's definitely a best film in the DCEU and Wonder Woman is it. Even just from a technical story construction perspective: It has a clear three-act structure with an introduction, rising action, a climax, and a resolution. It wasn't hacked to death in the editing room like Suicide Squad; it didn't have the third act of an entirely different movie glued onto its back end after its third act had reached its natural catharsis like Batman v. Superman; and it didn't essentially allow a supporting character (Jor-El) to usurp its alleged protagonist as narrative focus like Man of Steel. Though in fairness, Man of Steel is much more narratively coherent than either BvS or SuS.

No, Wonder Woman is an objectively superior film, same way, say, Atonement is an objectively superior film to The Room.

Because that "narrative straightjacket" is the foundation of the character and is what sets him apart from every superhero to follow.

This isn't "fear." It's that I think our culture needs morally righteous archetypes to inspire us and to help us learn and grow, just like we need rounded and complex characters. We need both. Superman was designed as the former, and it's what makes him unique and interesting; turn him into a morally compromised character and all you have is a generic conflicted dude who can fly and punch. What sets that version of Superman apart from the hundreds of morally compromised guys with superpowers that have followed? How is that version of Superman meaningfully different from, say, Doctor Manhattan?

No, but Superman is most definitely for 5-to-9-year-olds. And that's a good thing! Our culture needs heroes for children too. We adults have plenty of morally complex superheroes. We have our Wolverines and our Batmen and our Spider-Men and our Iron Men and our Luke Cages and Jessica Joneses and Daredevils and whatnot. We have Logan and The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen. Like the kids have their inspirational hero figures like Captain America and Superman and Wonder Woman. Stop trying to take everything away from the kids! Let Superman be Superman; stop trying to turn him into a character for adults.

ETA:

To make a comparison -- I can't help but think that trying to turn Superman into a complex, morally compromised character for adults is a little bit like trying to turn The Lord of the Rings into Game of Thrones.

 

^^
I guess you missed the Jane Austen memo...

You are more than welcome to your cynical outlook, but I don't get why every time someone mentions they like Man of Steel and they see Superman as a positive, heroic, inspirational character you're trying to convince them that they're wrong.
It's not gonna work, it hasn't been working for the past four years, and why the hell should it work?

I think society needs a story about an immigrant and an outsider who overcomes doubt and prejudice to become a hero to the world, and I don't think that such a story should gloss over the problems and difficulties that many people face, and pretend the world is a hunky dory place where everything comes easy if you just smile and be a swell guy. It may not be for small children, but there's a crapton of adults today who haven't learned that lesson...

 

It's true that WW follows a more conventional three-act play type of narrative, and is therefore easy to follow for those accustomed or acculturated to that conventionalism.

But I wish more stories would challenge that normative artificial narrative structure. Writers and directors should think outside the box and try to make something more organic instead of always imposing the same structure on everything. Life is not a neat three-act play.

Kor