Wonder Woman

So I came along with a slightly jaundiced eye, knowing DC’s record on women characters was not very good. We start on the paradise Island of Themyscira where Diana, a young child, thirsts to train with the adult women warriors who inhabit a fantasy ancient Greek world of gods. We are told she is ‘the only child on the Island’, although this lack of children is not explained, nor why there are no men on the island nor where the inhabitants originated from. Her mother Hippolyta tells her that she was made from clay and given life by Zeus at Hippolyta’s request. Whether the rest of the island women believe this nonsense is unknown. The amazons are very good at riding and fighting and shooting bows, but they don’t ask many questions about life. They’re here to defend the world for Zeus and as servants of the male god might be compared  to Odin’s Valkyries.

The island is hidden by mists from the outside world and seems to actually exist in another reality (when Steve Trevor crashes there and he and the pursuing Germans go to the island they penetrate a sort of invisible curtain. It’s all rather like The Mists Of Avalon, though perhaps Marion Zimmer Bradley did not originate this idea herself.)

The women of Themyscira are dignified. They aren’t over youthful and their outfits are reasonably practical (though I doubt anyone really ever needs boob shaped armour, a normal breastplate would probably be better and stronger).

Once Diana gets a chance at combat she turns out of course to be something really special. Hippolyta obstructs her from training, then relents and tells the others to train her ‘ten times harder’. All seems a bit unnecessary and clumsy and I think we could lose the scenes with her as a child and start when she is ready to train.

Despite some impressive female power the story is heavily male dominated with a lot of weight given to Diana’s friend/proto love interest Steve, played by the charming Chris Pine, and with the island women being really only agents of the god Zeus. The main enemy is another god, Ares. Goddesses seem to be in short supply. Perhaps Athene and Artemis could have helped out.

There is a female enemy, the chemist Dr Poison– as it’s WWI they have her experimenting with gas-mask-eating gases. Diana has come along at the very end of World War I when the armistice is about to be signed but a German general thinks he can win with Dr Poison’s new super deadly gas. Also she gives him something nice and druggy that makes him extra powerful, which is handy as otherwise WW would be able to defeat him too easily and they wouldn't have much of a fight.

I like the twist that Wonderwoman kills the wrong person in her quest before the real big bad is revealed. (Though I should have guessed  who that might be as he’s English and those slippery Brits are not to be trusted you know). Not the most original of twists I know but at least there is some attempt to surprise us.

The action is fun to watch, particularly in the scenes where the island women fight the Germans on the beach, with slo mo and bullet time type sequences, very pretty and make me nostalgic for the Matrix. Also, women fighting and doing athletic things.

Noticeable CGI inserts during Wonder Woman’s fights in Europe were an annoyance. I want to see real people doing stuff and I think two pure CGI figures fighting each other is a cheat.

Etta Candy was quite fun though underwritten.


There was a hint that she is a feminist in one scene where Diana shops for an outfit. Perhaps Etta is a suffragette.  But we never find out more. Looking this character up I see her name is a pun, and her role originally was being Wonder Woman’s fat best friend/sidekick. I enjoyed Lucy Davis's performance and I thought she did what she could with what she was given. Perhaps a better part can be written for her in the sequel, which will surely happen given this movie’s popularity.

Wonder Woman  gives us some all women scenes early on and is alleged to pass the Bechdel test 'with flying colours' in several online reviews. But it didn't feel that way to me, as the Amazons were constantly talking about Ares and occasionally Zeus, who are male figures. This movie is a great leap forward. It just isn’t as feminist as it thinks.

Don't bother waiting for the end of the credits, there are no teasers or trailers or other Easter eggs. Boo.

Looking forward to Wonder Woman 2.

Belatedly, Guardians of the Galaxy 2

I wrote this short review of GoG2 then didn't get round to putting it here!
Contains Yondu crest spoiler

Guardians of the Galaxy 2

The first Guardians of the Galaxy movie didn’t excite me that much. I liked Rocket Raccoon, Gamora and Groot but felt Nebula had very little to do and the story was unmemorable.  I went with lowish expectations of GoG2, as normally sequels are less good than the original.  The idea of baby Groot was quite appealing but I hadn’t cared for Star Lord. To me he was just a conceited dick with one redeeming feature, his taste in retro music. But I was due for a pleasant surprise.

I've probably said this before. Action sequences are always a problem for me. If they go on for more than a short time I am usually thinking about something else or asleep. The choreography loses me and I don’t know what the hell is going on.

But with this movie something strange happened. I watched every second and was always engaged. It was easy to see what was happening and I was bothered about each character. The characterisation was way above any other Marvel movie I have seen. Nebula had an actual story with Gamora that got some screen time. Starlord was enough less of a dick for me to care about his story with Ego (though that name was really something of a spoiler, I mean he was hardly going to be a good guy was he?) Starlord’s abductor/foster father Yondu was great, very nice performance by Michael Rooker and the character was beautifully rehabilitated. 

Anything I didn’t like? The heavily prosthetised ravager looked pretty terrible.

 

It must be so hard to make your alien tough guy not resemble one that has been done before.

Mantis


Was she there for any reason other than decoration? She was so retro as a character, only there to serve a man. She bored me. It seems the character's creator was not impressed either

https://www.polygon.com/2017/5/17/15624888/guardians-of-the-galaxy-vol-2-mantis-wrong

By the way she looks like Diana Rigg in The Avengers with an alien makeover.

Also did not like the nonsense where Yondu’s crest was plainly visible being burnt (oh, what a waste, I said, someone else could have used it) and then reappeared in one of the during-and-post-credit inserts. Do be careful not to leave the cinema before everything has rolled past by the way, as you will miss a lot, far more than the usual disposable tease. I recommend this one wholeheartedly, nine out of ten.

Wonder Woman

(warning: contains spoilers for Wonder Woman, and the films of the DC and Marvel universes)

Marvel seems to have captured the mood for the superhero genre of late.  They've played a long game of drip feeding audiences with minor-character superhero movies (Iron Man, Thor) over a number of years, and then capitalising on their success by bringing them all together for ensemble extravaganzas (Avengers Assemble).  These films have balanced action, humour and pathos in roughly equal measures, and audiences have lapped it up (Avengers Assemble is the 5th highest grossing film worldwide as I write this*).  But where Marvel have been repeatedly called into question is over their portrayal of women in films.  They do well with female characters on television (Jessica Jones, Agent Carter), but the same doesn't seem to be happening for women in Marvel films.
(Exhibit A: there have been 15 films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) with a further 9 in the pipeline over the next 2 years.  None of them have a female lead. 
Exhibit B: There has been repeated criticism of a lack of female merchandising, with Gamora and Black Widow repeatedly being missed off merchandising lines, despite demand.)

The DC Extended Universe have also had their criticisms.  They have had Batman and Superman in their arsenal, but have yet to make a film that hasn't been onerous, bloated, uber-serious and - at times - nonsensical (>cough< Suicide Squad >cough<).  To compare the two universes critically, Rotten Tomatoes aggregate the MCU range as between 66%-94%.  DC...don't fair as well.  Their scores range between 25%-55%.

But!  Here we have their new line of attack.  DC have brought us Wonder Woman - the first of the female led superhero films.  So if they get this right, DC have upped their game and done something to make them critically and commercially relevant again. 

So no pressure then...

So how did they do...

It's worth noting from the outset that DC have taken up quite the gauntlet.  It's not just the comic book universe that wavers in its portrayal of women - it's Hollywood in general.  There are so few films which are led by powerful females that, when one comes along, the weight of feminism is dumped upon its shoulders and judged accordingly.  Which is unfair - no one looks at Thor and critiques the themes of 21st century masculinity.  But Wonder Woman is the first female led superhero film, and so it sets the bar.

Discuss the use of hammers in Thor as critique of 21st century masculinity

There's a lot to be said for it.  Gal Gadot is tremendous in the title role, as Diana the Amazonian warrior princess who leaves the hidden paradise of Themyscira to take on Ares, god of war, on the frontlines of World War 1.  Powerful, beautiful and driven to pursue peace and a better world, Gadot is easily the best thing in this film.  She is complimented by Patty Jenkins (most notable for writing and directing 2003s Monster) under whose direction the camera focusses on our heroine, but never gratuitously.  Yes, there's still a lot of skin on display but the camera doesn't ogle or leer.  The clothes she chooses in "this world" have deliberate agency and importance to her character: "I can't fight in this", "it's choking me", "it itches".

She rescues Steve Trevor (a strong, non-Kirk performance by Chris Pine), she fights in the war, she crosses No Man's Land, she is enhanced by - not limited to - her weapons.  All her fighting has meaning and purpose and isn't just for the sake of it.  Her use of her sword is limited by choice to the person that she intended to kill with it.  Her lasso of truth is not relied upon - it's a back up to what she can already do.  She literally does what no man can do - and that is a huge tick in the box of feminism. 

This is underlined by the women of Themyscira.  Connie Nielsen, Robin Wright and the rest of their clan are gladiatorial women, fierce, real and marked with the scars of their previous battles, always preparing for a war that they hope doesn't come again.  It's an interesting contrast that the world full of women is paradise, and the world full of men is war.

Love them.  Fear them.  Don't mess with them.

For me, it's when the men appear that this film falters.  I'm not sure how people manage to find their way to Themyscira (could they always find it, but just hadn't yet?  Or is it because Diana managed to do some kind of sonic boom with her bracelets that weakened the invisibility around the island?), but they do, and Diana learns of the war and leaves paradise with Steve to go and end the fighting.  Steve has seen Diana fight, has seen her home and knows of her power, but in the "real world" wastes no time in telling her where to go, who to speak to and what to wear.  And Diana, for her part, mainly just obeys this guy she's just met who has no discernible strengths other than perhaps being a bit "above average" in the genital department.  After heading into battle, seeing Diana succeed in everything she decides to do in true superhero fashion, and being awed every time, Steve then...continues to rob her of her agency consistently until the credits roll.  He also unnecessarily gets his own "hero-arc".  I would argue that Diana brings nothing of her Themysciran self to "this world".  Her world is paradise, and ours is hell, but she doesn't appear to teach anyone anything to try to help rectify that, which feels like a real failing.

What of the other women in the "real world"?  There are two, maybe.  Lucy Davis (as Etta Candy) who is supposed to be comic relief but does little more than hold Diana's sword for a bit.  When describing her secretarial role, Diana confuses her for Steve's slave.  Then she disappears off screen and isn't seen again.
The other is Elena Anaya's Doctor Poison, a more complex and interesting character.  She's a scientist hellbent on creating a more toxic form of mustard gas (a sort of Mengele-figure), and missing half her face.  The film takes great pains to point out that Steve Trevor can't talk to her for more than 5 seconds before being distracted by someone prettier (to her justifiable outrage), but doesn't seem to do anything with that information.  It portrays her as intelligent, determined, and superior to most of the men in the film and sets her up to be the most dangerous villain of the film, and then undoes it all by revealing that all her ideas were given to her by Ares (a male god).  Gah!

It wasn't until the end of the day that Doctor Poison realised
she had forgotten to blend her foundation...

Then again, the men don't fare much better.  The band of rogues (Ewan Bremmer, Eugene Brave Rock, and Said Taghmaoui) tick the box for casting diversity but aren't particularly fleshed out as characters.  I couldn't tell you much about them other than one has some form of PTSD.
And the requisite Big Bad?  Wants to destroy the world...fights the title character in a no-stakes fight until the fighting stops and the villain is defeated for no reason other than the script says so.  Sigh.

This all sounds very damning.  It comes down to this: 

Pros:

• Gal Gadot is the best thing in the film. 
• Diana does what no man can do.  And that's very empowering for women.
• It is intermittently a very entertaining film.
• Gal Gadot and Chris Pine are very compelling to watch.
• The film makes some decent attempts to be light-hearted in places to counteract the solemnity of the other DC films. 
• Generally good direction, and some excellent action sequences.

Cons:

• It would have been a much shorter film if there hadn't been such a reliance on slow-motion throughout.  Seriously.  Cut that out and we could have had a sub-2 hour film.                  
• Some good themes which are set up but unexplored: for example - the relationship between Steve and Diana, or challenging the patriarchal society (there were so many bits where women were belittled and subjugated that I assumed it was a build up for some kind of smackdown that didn't happen).
• Patty Jenkins was brought in when the first choice for director (male) left.  Eight of the ten producers are male.  All of the writers are male.  Would it have been better if it was more female led?  This woman wonders.

* not adjusted for inflation