So, here's how the anecdote goes; the land of the Amazons has enjoyed boundless prosperity since time immemorial until the sudden ingress of a strange creature that no one had ever seen before. Flummoxed by his paradisaical environment, this 'man' finds himself quickly captured by ornery women who proceed to drill him for information whereupon he turns out to be a major chauvinist horn dog. How better to drive home the schism between the sexes, eh? Trouble quickly starts brewing in some shape or another and for some reason the man escapes the noose and finds himself stranded in the US of A together with one of the native ladies, who inevitably encounters the most egregious of female oppression and the worst the male species has to offer and comes to realize men are exactly the type of virulent pigs she was warned about. Trouble follows them to the mainland and they get into a battle where he displays his chivalry by saving her life or whatever, following which they have a big falling out and the amazon woman grudgingly accepts that the man isn't so bad after all. They kiss and make up and band together to save the day...
Now, you may call out 'Shock and outrage! You just spoiled the entire plot of Wonder Woman!' You'd only be half right since I wrote pretty much the entire above paragraph before I actually started watching this movie (I put up the spoiler tag just to play it safe). As with most of Marvel and DC Comics, I know virtually nothing about the Wonder Woman comic book series, but if this movie is any indication they're sure doing a good job keeping to the formula, for Zeus's sake. Why must every work of fiction focusing on female empowerment go out of its way depicting men like warlike savages or sex-crazed buffoons? I have several male friends and some of them are alright. Sometimes, I wish movies like these would surprise me just once by doing the exact opposite of what I'd expect of them, like paint the male main character to be a cultured and sensitive person, wide-eyed idealist, pacifist or hopeless romantic or, dare I say it, gay, or make the women out to be rambunctious, down and dirty booze sponges who like the sins of the flesh just as much as the penis-owning crowd. I won't buy for a second that these women never experiment with their own. It's things like these that remind me why I like Futurama's 'Death By Snusnu' episode so much. Then again this is a DC production and after many decades of comic book writing DC is nothing if not formulaic, and I expect that the PG-13 rating may have held them back from going into too much detail on the more interesting and unexplored themes, the abundance of sexual jokes notwithstanding.
It's nice though that despite the treatment the men have been getting there's not much of a double standard; the amazons themselves are depicted as murderous militants with a penchant for beheading and that hold competitions involving getting shot at with arrows. At first, Wonder Woman/Diana's mother, Hippolyta, the amazon queen from myth, came over as no more sympathetic than Ares himself, having killed her own son not because he was her enemy in a war (it's not really made all that clear whether he actually was or not) but simply to spite her former lover, while Ares is what Ares does as a supernatural embodiment of war and strife. Under the rule of a woman like that, I would have expected male intruders to be shot on sight or at least publicly executed, which made the subsequent events in the movie a tad unbelievable. Maybe she just mellowed out over the many centuries; none of the amazons seems to freaking age considering they all look the same as they did in the flashback presumably from ancient times. So either they're all immortal or the last battle against Ares was waged roughly when disco went out of style. Or are they gods as well? Some of them were named after Olympian goddesses... Clearly, these recent Marvel and DC animated features require a certain measure of foreknowledge that I don't have, but I can't blame a movie for not really being part of its target audience.
Having gotten all the negative stuff out of the way though, I have to say this movie was still freaking awesome. The art style was crisp and clean and I swear by the lasso of truth around my neck that the many visceral fight scenes are some of the very best I've ever seen in any western made animated film. Clearly, a lot of work went into this film and I'm sure any Wonder Woman fan will enjoy it greatly for what it is. It's not the smartest or the wittiest movie but it's far from being dumb or unfunny. That scene in the run down bar would've been a lot more interesting though without the amazons' high tolerance for alcohol. Ares' affability made him an interesting bad guy, not so much evil as acting on his instinct as, well, the God of War, and the portrayal of Hades as a decadent fat body was intriguing and excellent. Its superficial flaws don't detract from the experience in the slightest, and Wonder Woman radiates with character and detail. Despite my occasional confusion I definitely had a lot of fun watching it. Two and a half stars.
Now, you may call out 'Shock and outrage! You just spoiled the entire plot of Wonder Woman!' You'd only be half right since I wrote pretty much the entire above paragraph before I actually started watching this movie (I put up the spoiler tag just to play it safe). As with most of Marvel and DC Comics, I know virtually nothing about the Wonder Woman comic book series, but if this movie is any indication they're sure doing a good job keeping to the formula, for Zeus's sake. Why must every work of fiction focusing on female empowerment go out of its way depicting men like warlike savages or sex-crazed buffoons? I have several male friends and some of them are alright. Sometimes, I wish movies like these would surprise me just once by doing the exact opposite of what I'd expect of them, like paint the male main character to be a cultured and sensitive person, wide-eyed idealist, pacifist or hopeless romantic or, dare I say it, gay, or make the women out to be rambunctious, down and dirty booze sponges who like the sins of the flesh just as much as the penis-owning crowd. I won't buy for a second that these women never experiment with their own. It's things like these that remind me why I like Futurama's 'Death By Snusnu' episode so much. Then again this is a DC production and after many decades of comic book writing DC is nothing if not formulaic, and I expect that the PG-13 rating may have held them back from going into too much detail on the more interesting and unexplored themes, the abundance of sexual jokes notwithstanding.
It's nice though that despite the treatment the men have been getting there's not much of a double standard; the amazons themselves are depicted as murderous militants with a penchant for beheading and that hold competitions involving getting shot at with arrows. At first, Wonder Woman/Diana's mother, Hippolyta, the amazon queen from myth, came over as no more sympathetic than Ares himself, having killed her own son not because he was her enemy in a war (it's not really made all that clear whether he actually was or not) but simply to spite her former lover, while Ares is what Ares does as a supernatural embodiment of war and strife. Under the rule of a woman like that, I would have expected male intruders to be shot on sight or at least publicly executed, which made the subsequent events in the movie a tad unbelievable. Maybe she just mellowed out over the many centuries; none of the amazons seems to freaking age considering they all look the same as they did in the flashback presumably from ancient times. So either they're all immortal or the last battle against Ares was waged roughly when disco went out of style. Or are they gods as well? Some of them were named after Olympian goddesses... Clearly, these recent Marvel and DC animated features require a certain measure of foreknowledge that I don't have, but I can't blame a movie for not really being part of its target audience.
Having gotten all the negative stuff out of the way though, I have to say this movie was still freaking awesome. The art style was crisp and clean and I swear by the lasso of truth around my neck that the many visceral fight scenes are some of the very best I've ever seen in any western made animated film. Clearly, a lot of work went into this film and I'm sure any Wonder Woman fan will enjoy it greatly for what it is. It's not the smartest or the wittiest movie but it's far from being dumb or unfunny. That scene in the run down bar would've been a lot more interesting though without the amazons' high tolerance for alcohol. Ares' affability made him an interesting bad guy, not so much evil as acting on his instinct as, well, the God of War, and the portrayal of Hades as a decadent fat body was intriguing and excellent. Its superficial flaws don't detract from the experience in the slightest, and Wonder Woman radiates with character and detail. Despite my occasional confusion I definitely had a lot of fun watching it. Two and a half stars.