Wonder Woman (2017)

WARNING: SPOILERS


Wonder Woman is a fun superhero film that actually has some depth to it, and could very well be the saving grace for the critically panned DC cinematic universe. It'd be hard to blame anyone for worrying about it going in, given that Man of Steel, Batman v. Superman, and Suicide Squad were (at best) a mixed bag and (at worst) a hot mess. Wonder Woman arrives at the perfect time, not just in the general social context of 2017 (a world that has seen reproductive rights for women under assault, women athletes fighting for fair pay, GamerGaters waging harassment campaigns against women critics, and a President who has bragged and joked about assaulting and accosting young women). It comes at a perfect time in the DCCU as well. Snyder and Ayer attempted to make something different than their Marvel Studios competition, but those are directors that tend to be driven by testosterone and an obsession over the ideal male form.

Indeed, Wonder Woman winds up standing out from most superhero flicks. It offers a much needed respite from muscular dudes punching each other and dictating what is "right." She actually winds up fulfilling the role that Superman is supposed to play in being positive, loving, compassionate, and embodying all that is good and pure.The action in the film is good, which is an important aspect to a genre film, but it is the deeper themes that make it pop. As a character isolated from the world, there is an innocence to Diana that has been absent from the genre since Sam Raimi's Spider-man. Her innocence and ignorance to the outside world is the lens through which we, as the audience, get to see ourselves. Through the superhero genre, the film is surprisingly introspective.

With a villain like Ares, there was much room to tackle substantial themes about the nature of mankind or war. That he drives the film and serves as the primary foil, yet isn't actually forcing anyone to do anything, is what makes that story compelling and meaningful. As he tells Diana, he simply puts an idea into people's minds, and they do the rest. He isn't forcing anyone to create weapons of mass destruction or to go to war, yet they do. At the center of this conflict is the notion of whether people are inherently good or inherently bad. Diana was raised to believe that men were good, but that Ares corrupted their souls. She must confront the fact that her worldview - previously black and white (good/evil) - is actually more complex than that. Steve Trevor himself is a good person who, throughout the entire film, lies, kills, steals, and smuggles. He allows a situation to unfold which destroys a nearby town because he looks at the bigger picture. He sacrifices the town, in his mind, for the sake of the world. This enrages Diana, but in the end, he commits the ultimate act of selflessness, sacrificing himself to destroy the gas bombs, for the same reason.

Ares isn't just speaking to Diana when he informs her that he hasn't forced anyone to do anything. This is a line that should cut the audience as well. In these superhero films, the idea of "good" and "evil" are pretty cut and dry.  The "evil" perpetrated by villains might be large in scope, but is small in focus. There is always the central point. Take down the bad guy; you save the world. Centering the film in World War I is thematically smart here. It doesn't just provide a slightly different visual reference than Captain America: First Avenger (let's be honest, the look of WWI here and WWII there isn't that different); it allows that greater point that we as the audience know this isn't the end of war, and that Ares isn't the cause of it. When Steve Trevor describes gas weapons as "more terrible than anything you can ever imagine," we in the audience can immediately think, "Oh, no, it can get much, much worse!" We are aware of fire bombs, nuclear missiles, hydrogen bombs, and all manner of more deadly weapons of mass destruction. We also recognize the naivety of the characters who refer to WWI as the "war to end all wars." And in the end, when Ares is stopped and the war winds down, we know there is another war on the horizon. More to the point, if WWI ultimately ended because Wonder Woman brought down Ares, it would be reasonably safe to assume WWII ultimately began completely, earnestly because of mankind.

All of that speaks to the nature of man and war. Ares may have put ideas for weapons in the minds of people like Dr. Poison or General Ludendorf, but he didn't force them to do anything. The engaged in war on their own. Granted, this theme gets a bit undercut when Diana decides to show mercy to Dr. Poison. This was a great moment, highlighting the strength of Wonder Woman's character (empathy and compassion), but it does suggest that perhaps yes, she was a good person before she was corrupted. They don't go into her backstory, which is actually a brilliant decision. Horribly scarred, we are left to guess why she works for Ludendorf or even feels some allegiance to him. Perhaps the best scene of her story is when the undercover Captain Trevor compliments her and tells her that she is worth so much more. Wearing a mask to cover her scars, she conveys shockingly much through her eyes. One gets the impression that she is scarred because she has been mistreated by the German military, or has been a victim of this war. For a moment, it appears as though she is touched to feel genuinely appreciated - that is, until Diana walks in and Trevor's attention is drawn away to the beautiful Amazon. That moment, too, suggests much for the character. It is not hard to imagine that she is immediately made to feel inferior: a scarred, damaged woman, ignored when a gorgeous, slender, perfect woman appears. This is a person who presumably has every reason to be bitter at the world around her (arguably, the world of men - as it is men that are conducting the war effort that possibly damaged her, and it is men who seem to value women almost exclusively on appearances).

The end gets a bit thematically muddled. After highlighting that men were warring independently of Ares, it does ultimately end with his defeat. They show him whispering ideas to Dr. Poison and to Ludendorf, and presumably he secretly prolonged the war serving as a member of the British government as well, so what exactly is the cause of the war? On one hand, it's kind of brilliant to set it in WWI because it defies some superhero expectations. Normally, we know a villain is the source of the bad that happens. Here, the "bad" is war in general. Yet we also know that ending WWI does not stop war in general. WWII, Korea, Vietnam, et cetera, are all on the horizon after we see Ares brought down. We also know that nationalism was the driving force for WWI and prior wars. Yet once he is brought down, everyone stops fighting. Is the implication here that he did instigate the war and force people to do things? Or is it that men can be corrupted by all manner of forces, not just divine? If it weren't Ares compelling the German soldiers to fight, it was their ambitious, power-obsessed leaders. If that is the case, then was Diana correct in the first place that men are inherently good unless otherwise corrupted - by gods, by governments, by society? And if that is what it is implying, then what was the point of her having to come to terms with the idea that people are actually quite complex? That people aren't really "black and white" like that? That it isn't that we're "inherently" good, but that we have the capacity for good?

Either way, there are other themes present in the film as well, and it is refreshing to have a superhero flick that actually attempts something a bit more meaningful than the basic "with great power there must also come great responsibility" tagline. That is certainly part of it, to be sure, but it is hardly the only thing. Wonder Woman also balances the tone between the seriousness of those elements with the fun action and well-placed comedic relief that makes the superhero genre entertaining. For a film that is nearly two and a half hours, it's also paced well. It doesn't often feel like it's dragging outside the opening exposition dump, which is a prerequisite of the superhero film. The scenes in the present, which bookend the film, serve only to remind us that the character is part of a larger universe. To that end, it feels completely unnecessary; it doesn't hurt the film, though. Otherwise, the movie is entirely contained within itself, lacking much of the "universe building" that plagued previous DC installments.

The very existence of the film is something of a tent-pole event for feminism. The most popular female comic character in her own solo feature directed by a woman is itself a symbol. As for whether the content of the film is particularly feminist, well, that's going to vary depending on who you ask. It is perhaps unfair to expect it to mean something greater when all they are trying to do is make a fun, entertaining blockbuster film that adequately adapts a beloved character to the big screen. We shouldn't expect deeper meaning here than we do in, say, a Spider-man film. That baggage of "meaning something more" is unique here because, again, female character/female director is a rarity in the genre, and in Hollywood as a whole. They set out to make a good superhero film, and that's exactly what they've done.

Internal messages are a bit of a mixed bag. Some could easily look at it as very much substantially a feminist film: a woman saves the world from a war started and conducted by men in which their masculinity is ultimately the driving force, the savior is from an island of women warriors who are also compassionate and nurture life as much as they fight to defend it, an overqualified heroine is rarely listened to or respect and constantly has to call the patriarchy out on their bullshit, and all saving the day by exhibiting the more "feminine" traits of love, empathy, and compassion in the end. (My personal favorite quasi-feminist moment came with the discussion about the watch. When Captain Trevor steps out of the bath, he thinks Diana is asking him about his penis. She's actually talking about his watch. He explains that it is what he needs to know when to wake up and go to work and all of these other things. Diana responds, "You let that little thing tell you what to do?" Of course, I might be reading way too much into this. I got the impression that they do a switch here. He thinks she's talking about his junk, but she's talking about the watch. This leads the audience to laugh because of the misunderstanding. A relatively solid joke, but now we're thinking about his junk. Then she makes the comment about that "little thing" dictating what he does. I would argue the subtext is that they have swapped, where he's still on the watch, but her comment also refers to his dick. You know, men "think with their dicks"? I'm probably alone in taking it this way, but I thought that was pretty funny.)

Conversely, people might not see that much feminism outside those very basic premises. The ultimate conceit is that men are not to be blamed for their actions (they are good unless otherwise corrupted). Diana is freed from her temporary bondage by Ares after she sees Steve Trevor sacrifice himself (so she's driven to success by the actions of a man). Some have criticized the film for sticking to a traditional male gaze of the character, and her physical beauty is frequently framed in a manner that highlights it. From Steve Trevor criticizing her new outfit as being "too distracting" (because she's too beautiful) to one of his buddies asking for a photograph of her because she's so pretty, the film doesn't exactly do much to knock the objectification of Wonder Woman. These are all presented as little, harmless jokes. Even more, the origin story involving Zeus as her secret father makes some sense in context of this universe, but isn't exactly on point. Wonder Woman's origin has always been strange and has changed, but having her be the literal daughter of Zeus rather than a creation of the gods (or even being altered to be a child of a goddess) still ultimately adds this layer of male-driven action. She wouldn't be powerful without the male Zeus.

Probably one of the strangest moments is when Diana literally gets distracted and goes, "oooh, a baby!" It's easy to crap on this moment when viewing the film through the feminist lens, but I'd argue this is more just clumsy film-making than anything worse. I think the point of this scene was to two primary things. The subtext is that she is an Amazonian princess, a people that are nurturing, compassionate beings. It was perhaps meant to highlight that side of her character. On the surface, it was probably meant more as just a little joke, given that she had never seen a baby before. They don't have those on Themyscira, remember. She was the only child. Trevor says, "That one isn't made from clay," as he drags her away. I think this was meant more as a joke about never seeing a baby more than anything, but it isn't handled super well, and they don't really go too into it.

It might not be entirely accurate to argue Wonder Woman is itself a feminist film as much as it might be to argue it's more of a "feminine" film. It still engages in a number of the more "masculine" traits of its counterparts in the superhero genre, but the compassion, empathy, and desire to protect, mixed with almost more of a ballet-style of combat, make this a superhero film that maybe breaks out from the boy club in more subtle ways. Granted, I'm a CIS, straight, white dude, so you have to take everything I say on the subject with a grain of salt. (I don't think this disqualifies me from having a valid opinion on the matter, but having a life from a male perspective means I probably see things a bit differently than women, so I will refer to them for more insight on the topic.)

All in all, it isn't perfect, but it does enough things really well, and different from the rest of the superhero crop. By virtue of being self-contained and focused on the character herself, it provides fans with what they've been craving from DC movies for years now. It's strange that we had to wait until after Suicide Squad and fifteen separate Marvel movies to get this, but Wonder Woman lives up to its long-awaited hype. After three films that massively disappointed fans, it turns out that it is a woman director who could breathe actual life in this otherwise male-dominated spectacle that is the DC cinematic universe. And, of course, it is nice to finally get a recognizable musical anthem associated with a character.

Just as an aside, I do think it is important to acknowledge Patty Jenkins as the director, but not ignore that the bulk of the creative team was male. The story was conceived and written by a team of men, and it was based on comics largely written and drawn by men. Wonder Woman might be the most famous fictional female character, but it has been a rare occasion in which women have been given creative control over her. It was a bit strange seeing the "special thanks" part of the credits and seeing nothing but male comic book writers and artists. They are all great creators, of course, but it is a little jarring to remember that there have something like four women writers to pen a Wonder Woman series (a character that has been in existence for 76 years).  A solo Wonder Woman feature is great, but progress doesn't stop with its existence. It does little good if women still can't get their feet in the door for writing and directing gigs.

REDUCTIVE RATING:  Really good!   (But, if you were one of those dudes who complained about those select few shows for people who identify as women, you were going to hate this movie no matter what - and also, grow up.)