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Spoilers Wonder Woman - Grading & Discussion

Give it a grade.


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I've liked most of the DC superhero movies I've seen. I've only liked a couple of the Marvel movies. So, by the only scorekeeping that matters to me, DC has the edge. :)
 
I'm burned out on the MCU, but DC has kept my interest by not following Marvel Studios' "template" even in the face of what I feel is totally unwarranted critical backlash and delivering four interconnected films this far that have each improved and built upon the foundations of their predecessors while simultaneously avoiding the trap of feeling formulaic or cookie-cutter.
 
She said she "walked away from mankind", the ending of WW shows she didn't literally walk away, instead she realized that we're capable of great evil, but also great good, and decided to let humanity choose its own fate free from the gods' influence. So by "walk away" she meant she didn't interfere in the affairs of men.

She obviously had some heroic adventures in the intervening years, since she somehow got a new sword that can slice through Doomsday, and she's "killed things from other worlds before" and Ares, even though a god, is from this world.
That makes sense.
I just realized, unless I missed it, we never actually heard Diana be called Wonder Woman. I kept expecting one of Steve's team or one of the people she saved in the village to call her Wonder Woman or at least a wonder or something that could lead to the Wonder Woman name, but we never got it.
 
I was thinking we might get an old timey radio announcer mentioning something like "Who is this mystery wonder-Woman?!" or a German warning the general against "the Wunderfrau," but that would have required the writers inject even a modicum of joy into the script, so I can see why it didn't happen.
 
The BBC didn't transmit their first radio news bulletin until 1922, on a station that, as of May 1922, was only the second in the UK. The first only began transmitting a few months earlier - and the first in America had only debuted two years prior to that. So there was no room for an old timey radio announcer to make a comment like that - now if we get a sequel set during WWII, that's something I'd have liked to see.

That and Lynda Carter playing Hera, or something.
 
If they bring Steve back it has to be contemporary.
Which could be fun, because then Steve would be the fish out of water character in our time, and Diana would have to catch him up to the last 100 years...

And they could bring Etta back as Etta's great-granddaughter. ;)
 
I'd like to see another "period" piece so we can get some more from Etta Candy, she was way underused in the movie (again, granting there's only so much to do with her without resorting to "fat jokes.") But the period stuff looks good and works well.

And in thinking about it, to some degree the movie works nicely, almost, as a WWI film particularly with the stuff in the trench and in No Man's Land, and the "human moment" with Diana in the town they saved followed by the devastation of the town being mustard gassed. Without the comic-book and fictional stuff it has some good WWI elements in it.

I'm sort of glad we didn't get any forced "Wonder Woman" name nods, I think the most I would have "tolerated" was maybe a "Who is this Wonder Woman?" headline in a paper we see someone reading on the side of the street but not every strictly spoken.

I did really love Diana's naiveté in the movie but, along those lines, I sort of have a problem with the ending.

The ending seems to suggest, as Diana insisted, it was Ares' existence/influence that was causing the war which is why Diana was so broken when she thought she killed Ares and the war was still going on. We get the passion speech from Steve, Diana breaks, and then we learn the other dude is Ares. Diana seems to almost fall on his side of things but is re-empowered by Steve sacrificing himself, she chooses to fight for humanity and kills Ares, then the war ends.

It almost seems like the movie wanted to suggest the war actually was happening because of Ares and not because of the BS that was driving the war in the first place as well as what caused the war to really end. I admit not not being very familiar with WWI, but I'm guessing this is more-or-less when it ended and in the movie it happened to coincide with Ares' death. But I think it would have been more interesting had Ares death, indeed, not stopped the war but Deanna felt/realized the war had to "end itself" naturally. That war is, sad as it is, inevitable regardless of the godly goings on around them and, well, we know that in a couple decades another world war starts and, likely, will continue with millions of deaths and some major, catastrophic, events before concluding. (I'm guessing WW2 will mostly carry out in the DCEU the same way it does in ours liken with Marvel (minus the Hydra stuff.)

Maybe after defeating Ares and realizing the war will go on Diana choose to continue to fight as best as she can on whatever fronts she can and to be something of an inspiration for the "good" side to win against the evil that still exists. War isn't the cause of one man, or god's, actions but the actions, motivations, and emotions of man.
 
An argument for not dissing Man of Steel or Batman Vs. Superman while praising Wonder Woman (especially since the same person that wrote both movies wrote for this one too): What Wonder Woman Reviews Get Wrong About The DCEU

EDIT: And yes, I enjoyed the film immensely, especially when I saw it in IMAX 3D; it deserves (IMHO) a Best Picture Oscar, with Gadot and Pine deserving of Best Actress and Best Actor noms.
 
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The ending seems to suggest, as Diana insisted, it was Ares' existence/influence that was causing the war

That's not what the ending suggested, if you mean the soldiers dropping their guns on the airfield, I didn't see that as coming out of Ares' influence or whatever, but more from witnessing gods smack each other about and realizing they're damn lucky to be alive after that.


Troi? Wrong universe.
There's a Donna Troy here though. ;)
 
If they bring Steve back it has to be contemporary.
Which could be fun, because then Steve would be the fish out of water character in our time, and Diana would have to catch him up to the last 100 years...

And they could bring Etta back as Etta's great-granddaughter. ;)
Yeah, I think him being dead actually makes it easier to bring him back if they want to, they can just resurrect him in pretty much any time period. We also didn't actually see him die, so if they set the second one fairly close to this one, they could always just have him having secretly escaped, but had to stay away from Diana for some reason.

For me the perfect plot for a contemporary sequel would be to have Circe resurrect Steve as part of a plot against Diana.
 
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I thought Wonder Woman did a surprisingly nuanced take on the idea of the destructive force of war (as part of Man's World). At first I was apprehensive because it seemed like it would portray the Entente as pure heroes. Thankfully, it doesn't seem to do that (given the role of Ares in the film). And my hesitation of portraying Ludendorff as a seemingly cartoon villain went out the window when I found out his post-war career (including creating the "stabbed in the back" theory). Seriously, fuck that guy. He got the treatment he deserved.

It's easy to walk in expecting this to be a feminist movie (shades of Peggy Carter, Season One). I would say this movie is far more about humanity than anything else. The idea that humans are responsible for destruction, but are also capable of saving it through love is a critical message that's also core to the character. Of all the DCEU movies (and possibly all the DC movies since the 90s), I think this movie managed to reach the core of the character the best. Definitely an enjoyable, if not flawless, film.
 
The BBC didn't transmit their first radio news bulletin until 1922, on a station that, as of May 1922, was only the second in the UK. The first only began transmitting a few months earlier - and the first in America had only debuted two years prior to that. So there was no room for an old timey radio announcer to make a comment like that - now if we get a sequel set during WWII, that's something I'd have liked to see.

That and Lynda Carter playing Hera, or something.
Huh. Thanks for that. Clearly I need to read more about the WWI era.
 
I haven't watched it yet, but if anyone is interested in learning more about WWI and has Amazon Prime, they just added a 13 part documentary series, The First World War, that seems have to a pretty good reputation.
 
Just saw it and really liked it. I give it an A. I did not see Batman vs. Superman though so I missed out on some of the back story. Saw a cool trailer for Justic League. :)
 
Yikes, he does not sound like he was a pleasant person.
He's not. That being said, it's hard to find heroes in World War I. I didn't want to villainize him too much, but he really did suck.
 
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