By Siddharth Shiva
Superman. Batman. Spider-Man. Wonder Woman.
These are the first four names that anybody would think of, when comicbooks are
brought up, whether you've been reading them for years, or have only heard of
them in passing.
Superman, Batman and Spider-Man have all had
several film and TV adaptations. They've been rebooted over and over, heck -
Spider-Man has been played by three actors within a single decade.
But there’s only been two Wonder Women, the
first one being the wildly popular Linda Carter TV series from 1975. The show
ended in ’79. Thirty six years had to pass before we would see a live action
Wonder Woman again.
The fourth movie to be released as a part of
the DCEU, Wonder Woman is the first to gain widespread critical acclaim. It
holds a solid 92% on Rotten Tomatoes. It is also the biggest grosser among all
the DCEU movies in America so far. This is (hopefully) a gamechanger and
Hollywood takes the right lessons from it. Because this movie has some strong,
strong merits.
For one, it's the first DCEU movie to show
any optimism in its story. After so many grim and pointlessly dark movies, with
dour heroes that endlessly moralize about things nobody can relate to, Diana
and Steve are incredibly refreshing. It has a great deal of humor, that was
completely absent from the previous movies, and tasteful humor at that. This
movie is so different from previous entries that it essentially boils down to
the two leads both being as idealistic as possible, in very different ways. For
Diana, her idealism comes from the naivety borne of living in Paradise all your
life. For Steve, it comes from a place of love and hope.
That's not to say Diana isn't loving or
hopeful, but to elaborate on the difference here would be to ruin the movie.
This idealism is definitely the movie's biggest strength. More so, against the
backdrop of the rest of the DCEU.
That's not to say that that's it's only
strength. Gal Gadot shines as Diana, Chris Pine does a pretty good job; he
succeeds in doing the unthinkable. He makes Steve Trevor likable, which is a
thing that most comicbook writers have struggled to do for decades. Robin
Wright and David Thewlis are excellent as the characters they play, regardless
of how much screentime they get. The supporting cast on the whole is
sufficiently likable and convincing.
It has an extremely colorful pallet,
visually, as opposed to the dull grays and steely tones of the previous Zack
Snyder (and David Ayer) helmed efforts. Director Patty Jenkins definitely borrows
certain visual cues from Snyder in her action sequences (which isn't a bad
thing), but in bringing the universe her characters live in to life when there
is no action? She surpasses Snyder by far. From the sunlit paradise of
Themyscira, to the dusty streets of London, to the warmth of a small French
village, she nails every setting.
But the most appealing thing about the way
she shot her movie is the lack of male gaze. There were no senseless upskirt
shots or strategic bits of clothing getting torn off. The only candied
character here was Steve Trevor, in a scene that I shall not spoil.
Patty Jenkins came close to directing the
second Thor movie. Marvel must be kicking themselves for not allowing her to
realize that project -- it might have kept her from kickstarting the DCEU by
giving it its first unquestioned success. The folks at DC on the other hand
must be kicking themselves for not promoting this movie to even a fraction of
the degree with which their other movies (even Suicide Squad) were promoted to.
Either way, their first hit finally legitimizes their quest of building a
Marvel-like cinematic universe, so there must be some relief there.
People have criticized this movie for being
cheesy, but to me this wasn't a problem. Patty Jenkins responded to this
criticism far better than I possibly could:
"Cheesy is one of the words banned in my
world. I’m tired of sincerity being something we have to be afraid of doing. It’s
been like that for 20 years, that the entertainment and art world has shied
away from sincerity, real sincerity, because they feel they have to wink at the
audience because that’s what the kids like. We have to do the real stories now.
The world is in crisis. I wanted to tell a story about a hero who believes in
love, who is filled with love, who believes in change and the betterment of
mankind. I believe in it. It’s terrible when it makes so many artists afraid to
be sincere and truthful and emotional, and relegates them to the
too-cool-for-school department. Art is supposed to bring beauty to the
world."
There are two other criticisms; one relating
to Gal Gadot's support for the IDF and Palestinian occupation which is deeply
troubling, and another relating to the representation of women of color in the
movie. It was quite thoughtless of them to use a black woman as young Diana's
caregiver, not building on her character at all. A very disturbing aesthetic.
Furthermore, one of the movie's villains, Dr. Maru, is Japanese World War II
scientist in the comicbooks, having a Japanese name. The movie retconning to
the First World War resulted in them having to further retcon the character to
become European, changing her first name, but inexplicably maintaining her
Japanese last name. In the comicbooks, the Themyscirans are racially very
diverse; not so in the movie.
Altogether though, the movie is a gigantic
victory. Its shown executives that women directors can make some of the best
comicbook movies, and aren't more "risky" than a male director would
be. It's shown that women leads do not have to be sexualized for a movie to
pull in money, especially after the leaked Joss Whedon Wonder Woman received a
universal panning. Hopefully these are lessons they learn, going forward, and
that it doesn't take them another four decades before the movie's few
criticisms are addressed.
