You are currently viewing our forum as a guest, which gives you limited access to view most discussions and access our other features. By joining our free community, you will have access to additional post topics, communicate privately with other members (PM), view blogs, respond to polls, upload content, and access many other special features. Registration is fast, simple and absolutely free, so please join our community today! Just click here to register. You should turn your Ad Blocker off for this site or certain features may not work properly. If you have any problems with the registration process or your account login, please contact us by clicking here.
I mentioned my thoughts on this film (some of them) in the Random Movie thread, but maybe it's worth more discussion esp since now they are greenlighting a third film.
On first viewing, I was disappointed with this film mainly because of confusing/convoluted plotting where it's difficult to tease out the main concrete goals and action path of characters to get there. Diana really doesn't have a path, she just wanders into the plotting and THEN suddenly has an arc. Barbara Minerva is simply unhappy because she has no potency as a human being, then finds some, and... then refuses to give it up when Diana insists. Maxwell Lord is trying to become all powerful to... what end? Impress his kid? Feel successful? I'm a little unsure of what was driving this.
Basically this is a film without clear goals, so it kind of loses its impetus especially on a character level. I can see what the intended point was for some things but it didn't really work well... along with a bunch of plotting/rationality problems.
Opening sequence back on the island:
Diana is show almost winning a race when she is only 11, but because she has skipped a checkpoint during the race, her mother accuses her of downright CHEATING aka LYING, and this is something she must never ever do because TRUTH is the most important thing. The problem is that it feels like quite the stretch. Diana ran a race, was doing well, lost her horse, and so she uses her ingenuity to figure out how to get back in the race -- but she misses a checkpoint in doing so. That's all. And it's obvious to everyone she didn't make the checkpoint, so she's not lying per se, she simply would be disqualified because she did not do a checkpoint. But it is important to the plotting that Diana be taught the importance of TRUTH, hence this awkward and over-the-top lecture accusing her of FALSEHOOD.
This scene just did not work well, and its inclusion is puzzling, until far late in the film when you realize it was supposed to set up the lesson that Diana uses to reject the ongoing lure of the Wishstone.
The consistency of wishes:
Most of the wishes produced literal results -- except for Diana wishing for Steve back. For some reason, despite ALSO taking some of her power as payment for the wish, it also dicks her over by sticking Steve's spirit in another man's body. We see Chris Pine because Diana sees Steve inside the man -- that's fine, it's how the filmmakers justify putting Pine into the film -- but there is never any real consideration of the man whose body Steve has taken. Diana and Steve have sex as well as risk the man's body (ongoing through the film); and even when they finally decide that Diana needs to revoke her wish, it's not really out of consideration for the man, it's because Diana has to have her strength back and also "live the truth" rather than a lie. SO not only is the plot point contrived -- it would have worked just as well to bring Steve back in his own body but then he would be dead again once Diana revoked the wish, without creating all of these other moral concerns -- but it completely overlooks the ongoing violations of Strange Dude's body.... and the fact Steve was essentially just stealing the guy's life, living in his body, living in his house, taking his money... what happens when he's supposed to be back at work, etc?
All the other wishes were more literal in how they were enacted, so this wasn't even consistent. It ALMOST feels like it was added in a later draft to make it more interesting and give Diana a hope maybe there were other good men in the world, and so they never explored the moral implications of this.
The difficulty of the Wishstone, in a film:
Wishes are super-vague to start with, and it's not clear what the ramification is when Lord wishes to BECOME the Wishstone. It finally becomes more clear that, as the "stone" he is able to grant wishes and then demand something in return (what HE wants) from that person in payment for the wish. But again, it makes everything super crazy, super vague, in terms of plotting, and hard to define where the plot is going. I guess in the end, Lord just wanted a way to talk to everyone on the planet at once so he could... vaguely... get them... to make wishes... aand... feel..powerful... because he could get everything in return.. for himself... but... what exactly??! The end game is not clear in the least, so it makes it hard to know what STOPPING the endgame entails.... so instead we get Wonder Woman using her... lasso... of truth... to touch Lord... and broadcast as well to everyone in the world....to... give up their... wishes?
And then everyone actually DOES?!!
And Lord recants?! Because he wanted a relationship with his son Alistair? Which he always had? But kept rebuffing/ignoring?
Oohhh kaaayyy...
Aside from all of this silliness:
- Why would the wish be recantable? Why does the wishstone work that way? You've already paid for it. Maybe you can recant, but you won't get back what you've already paid? Not everything is returnable... and certainly not a wish from a trickster god.
- Barbara makes her wish before Lord becomes the stone, yet loses her wish anyway despite never recanting after Lord recants.
This whole "wish" business is really a mess, and it should have been dumped as the main plot in early drafting because it's just not very workable as it was implemented and is in fact very difficult to visualize on camera. It's the reason (for example) that Marvel decided to make Scarlet Witch a telekinetic rather than a "probability hexer", it's far easier to understand and show the former in an action movie. It really makes it hard to understand where the plot is going and why.
Barbara Minerva:
Barbara feels completely inept, impotent, invisible, and so she decides she wishes she was Diana who is the success story she never has been... so she gets powers like Diana's. And once she gets powers, suddenly everyone is interested in her, and she actually can DEFEND herself... maybe even right some wrongs.
So why the hell would she give this power up? It's been a win-win for her. Diana is telling her she lost her humanity... but what does that mean? Her humanity isn't quantifiable in her life; she went from being a nothing to being a someone. It's not like she had something she valued, that she then lost; she really had nothing, in the script. Diana told her she was funny and smart, but no one else noticed that... and I bet Diana would have never spent much time with her after, so how much good is that, in terms of being happy in life?
This was kind of lame, to expect Barbara to give up a winning situation to return to a losing one. You gotta set it up that Barbara has SOME THINGS going RIGHT in her life, but for some reason she isn't happy, so she gives it all up -- but then at the end she realizes what she really wanted was what she had all along rather than power per se.
I found Kristen Wiig to be excellent, and it was a really interesting progression to see her realize as Cheetah that she actually had power not only to protect herself but to destroy other predators. This is the great scene where she beats up the drunk guy on the street who tried to rape her previously. I was really interested to see where this would go... but it went nowhere, she just became a bad guy beating up Wonder Woman to protect Lord. Meh.
Steve Rogers
Chris Pine is great and captures Steve perfectly. On the other hand, he's almost put on a pedestal -- he actually is pretty perfect, morally, and acts as Diana's conscience. He does everything right. In fact, as I am writing this, I wonder... I would suggest he's not even the real Steve -- he's a personality reflecting all of Steve's best parts as Diana remembers and objectifies. But that kind of thing would be too deep for this film, honestly -- making him not the real Steve but more like Mal in Inception... as Cobb says, "I wish. I wish more than anything. But I can't imagine you with all your complexity, all you perfection, all your imperfection. Look at you. You are just a shade of my real wife. You're the best I can do; but I'm sorry, you are just not good enough." This Steve is too perfect because it's the Steve she has idolized for 60 years, never bothering to look for someone else but clinging to him. I do love that he forces her to move ahead.
Personally, as a story, I consider it a whiff by Jenkins. Maybe someone else should tackle the writing if they do another film?
Someone compared it to Batman Forever, which is not high praise. That's the first movie I remember not liking, haha. It's so BLAND.; it didn't come across at al the first time I watched that Batman and Two-Face were supposed to have a history together (of course not, that would have been interesting). The rogues in it are so undercooked; they both do pale imitations .of Jack Nicholson.
I'd actually rather rewatch Batman and Robin.... at least that has Arnold delivering a lot of dumb ice puns and Uma Thurman wearing poison lipstick. It's a stupid, stupid movie but at least it has personality. Batman Forever is just studio execs going "we let Tim Burton get away with too much last time so let's take absolutely no chances on anything." Thurman, Schwarzenegger and whoever played Bane (yes, he's in that) at least try to do their own thing, even if it's dumb as hell.
I heard that WW worked with a literal ball of energy in her hands in one scene (which is awesome, and actually a thing in Reiki and other forms of holistic healing).
I heard that WW worked with a literal ball of energy in her hands in one scene (which is awesome, and actually a thing in Reiki and other forms of holistic healing).
There was a lot going on that made no sense. One minute she was using a coffee mug trick to turn a jet invisible to escape radar although that would have no effect on radar, another she could lasso lightning bolts to pull herself through the sky, and then she could just fly with her winged armor, and then she was just flying without wings because hey why not, Steve taught her how.
I listened to a podcast where they discussed the film; the script really does sound like an incoherent mess. Is it true that the things Pedro Pascal does only make sense if you remember that he's supposed to be a Donald Trump stand-in?
I mean of course I love Pedro Pascal; he nailed it as my favorite character from ASOIAF in the last great season of GOT, but it sounded like he didn't have that much to work with.
