Wonder Woman

[ysabetwordsmith]

We went to see Wonder Woman today.  It was totally awesome.  Definitely one of the best superhera movies ever.  \o/  Lots of athletic women running around kicking butt.  Also check out the fantastic merchandise.  If you look closely at the dolls, you see they match the actress surprisingly well: reasonable breasts, a little hip, a fairly thick muscular waist, and nice powerful legs.  :D  Also the Amazons mostly weren't willowy.  They were trim and muscular, or beefy.  I lost count of how many times someone said "You can't ..." to Diana, and in the next frame they were looking around for her while she ran off doing it anyhow.  And that's feminism for you.

I have to look pretty hard to find flaws.  I did noticed that Diana's mother was an idiot.  (You made a baby Amazon, not a dahlia.  How could you possibly think she'd be a pacifist?)  It was just generally brilliant.

If you like watching women kick ass, go see this movie.

Comments

[serpentine]

My mom and I have made plans to see it next weekend. It looks like it will be a great movie to watch with her. The stills I've been seeing just make me want to see it v. much.

[serpentine]

Also I read that they hired actual women athletes to play the Amazons. The article is here.

[mirrorofsmoke]

I'll have to see if I can get our fiancees to go see it with us when we're in California in just over two weeks.

They have a friend who is a HUGE Wonder Woman fan, so maybe we can poke her into going. XD

Go for it!

[ysabetwordsmith]

That is an excellent plan.

Thanks so much!

[dialecticdreamer]

I got an accidental spoiler yesterday which was significant enough that it could have entirely wrecked the fun of seeing this in the theater with hubby, who is a GIGANTIC fan of Wonder Woman. I mean, having a BAD movie come out would be as devastating to him as his reaction to Batman v. Superman, maybe worse.

I trust your enthusiasm is genuine, I trust that you're not making excuses for poor script writing or direction just because this is probably the ONLY Wonder Woman movie which will be released for the next quarter century. (Then the nostalgia mining will start all over again, don't worry.)

Now, we've resumed our plan of going to the first showing tomorrow morning, and spending the hour after the movie nattering on about favorite/least favorite bits, et cetera.

Re: Thanks so much!

[ysabetwordsmith]

>> I got an accidental spoiler yesterday which was significant enough that it could have entirely wrecked the fun of seeing this in the theater with hubby, who is a GIGANTIC fan of Wonder Woman. <<

That sucks.

>> I mean, having a BAD movie come out would be as devastating to him as his reaction to Batman v. Superman, maybe worse.<<

It does not have the raging case of FAIL that was *Superman. (Linguists use that * to mark wrong examples.) This feels like a great Wonder Woman to me.

I predict that you won't like all the violence, and there is a LOT of that, because it's a war movie. However, there are also some gorgeous moments. The fight scenes are beautifully choreographed, if often unrealistic, and some of the moves are just damn clever.

There are also some deeper psychological and philosophical things going on that I think you will enjoy.

*ponder* I don't recommend "Collateral Beauty" though. I had really high hopes of that one, which we watched in video recently, and while it had its moments, it was mostly an hour and a half of boundary abuse. *headdesk*

C.b. and w.w.

[(Anonymous)]

Personally I was making gaslighting quips once I realized what was going on with "collateral" it irritated the heck out of the person with me at the time but felt very apropos considering.

As for wonder woman how gory is the war/combat scenes? Am considering going but have a very low tolerance for really graphic bloodshed/war stuff.

Re: C.b. and w.w.

[ysabetwordsmith]

>>Personally I was making gaslighting quips once I realized what was going on with "collateral" it irritated the heck out of the person with me at the time but felt very apropos considering.<<

Well, that's what it was. They burgled someone's mail and then took advantage of a grieving man's fragility to make him look insane -- and think he was too -- so they could manipulate him into doing something for their financial benefit. That's heinously illegal and downright evil. He might not have been coping well but he was at least working on his problem as best he could.

>> As for wonder woman how gory is the war/combat scenes? Am considering going but have a very low tolerance for really graphic bloodshed/war stuff.<<

More of it is a general overview than graphic, but there are some scenes that are not just graphic but exceptionally evil. Plus one that wasn't all that graphic but set a new highwater mark for sheer diabolical sadism. As a majority of the movie is warfare of one flavor or another, it's probably not to your taste.

Re: Thanks so much!

[dialecticdreamer]

Specific reactions to violence are da*n odd for me.

A few weeks ago someone sent an "encouraging" pic about procrastinating as a writer. The gist of it was summed up by a pic of one of the Winchester brothers pointing a gun at the viewer, with a caption very similar to the phrase, "You know you should be writing!"

I don't know what it specifically said-- I couldn't look away from the handgun. It took several tries to CLOSE the message, too, and as a motivator--- my word count for the day was zero, and for the next day about 400 words, total.

Yet, I can watch sword fights FOREVER, if they aren't gory-- even the Highlander (1st) decapitation is so taken over by electrical effects that it is not GORY. Sometimes stupid, yes, but that's another rant. The Three Musketeers movie with the fight in the winery, well, that deserved awards for the stunt coordinator and crew.

Often, all it takes is a WARNING to give me a chance to 'buckle up for the ride,' metaphorically speaking, and I'm fine with even things that are normally outside my comfort zone. That's why I try to use trigger warnings in my writing, actually. Sometimes, the person who needed the warning is the author!

Re: Thanks so much!

[ysabetwordsmith]

>>A few weeks ago someone sent an "encouraging" pic about procrastinating as a writer.<<

I've seen that one, and didn't like it either. Even if my reaction to Dean would be "Put that fool thing down before you hurt yourself." Boy's as dumb as a box of hammers.

>>Yet, I can watch sword fights FOREVER<<

There are a lot of lovely three-dimensional swordfights in this movie. But the things I found most disturbing were not conventional images. Someone has a real flair for the macabre and unsettling. *ponder* Or possibly just chatted up Ares and said, "Hey man, I'm making you the bad guy in a movie. You want to help me scare the crap out of some humans?"

>>Often, all it takes is a WARNING to give me a chance to 'buckle up for the ride,'<<

That makes sense. Hence why some of mine are things like "because the inside of Shiv's head is always a warning."

Re: Thanks so much!

[dialecticdreamer]

Some deaths are MEANT to be unsettling. There's one in "The Giver," which is the only book I have ever thrown-- tossed clear across the room to bounce against the wall.

Looking back at the key death scenes in "Logan's Run," and "Soylent Green," both of which I was not only allowed to watch as an under-ten child, but which formed the topics for MANY dinner discussions, the deaths take on entirely different meanings, unsettling and deliberately used as a prybar to wrench one's thinking to a particular topic and angle.

Too many movies, especially, rack up a random-stranger death toll simply for shock value, OR to show how "important" a threat is. One key death could make the difference between Thanatos conquering the Earth in the Infinity Wars, BUT I doubt that the writers and director(s) would be able to pull that off. Instead, it'll probably offer hints that entire worlds have been obliterated as offerings to Hel.

I'd be more frightened by the single-death scene, if it were even halfway decently written.

Re: Thanks so much!

[ysabetwordsmith]

>> Some deaths are MEANT to be unsettling. <<

Agreed, and in my opinion, these were well crafted.

>>Too many movies, especially, rack up a random-stranger death toll simply for shock value, OR to show how "important" a threat is.<<

Well, there is a lot of death, but it's WWI. You can't really write about a world war accurately without draping the stage in corpses. They politely refrained from mentioning the smell in this movie, but other than that, did an excellent job of highlighting some of that war's characteristic horrors.

Ironically, the most disturbing deaths were all minor characters. Just really fucking creepy moments.

[pronker]

Glad to read a review - it's particularly appealing because of the WWI era setting, not the usual WWII one that I've read since 1967.

[samuraiter]

Should be going to see it next weekend. Unfortunately, I was at work for all of this past weekend.

[neotoma]

This is a question I'm asking of people who've seen the movie -- when did you suspect he was Ares?

Well...

[ysabetwordsmith]

Not until fairly late, although I did think the more bellicose options were too obvious. Dr. Poison was a strong contender in my mind, but she turned out to be another priestess. Ah well. Fucker hid himself well -- I didn't clock him until he started manipulating things to cross purposes.

[paynesgrey]

I can't wait to see this movie. I am jealous of anyone who has seen it. I might have to go alone and ditch work or something. AHHH! I'm so glad it's a good movie. I was worried being a DC movie.

Well...

[ysabetwordsmith]

I was worried too, because recent DC movies have largely sucked. But if you thought the Wonder Woman trailers were good? The movie is better. \o/

Re: Well...

[paynesgrey]

YES. Sounds even better!

[fayanora.livejournal.com]

There's merchandise? That's interesting. Last I'd heard, they weren't advertising or promoting it at all, aside from putting the trailers on YouTube.

I want to see it. My roommate doesn't. She says the woman playing Wonder Woman is too stereotypically white, thin, and clean shaven for her to suspend her disbelief; she wants a Wonder Woman with big muscles, who's black or at least Greek, and has armpit hair and leg hair. I basically told her, in so many words, that a starving man would be unwise to demand five-star cuisine in a barren wasteland.

Well...

[ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com]

I didn't see body hair, but there were a lot of black Amazons, including some of the brawny ones. It looked like someone threw together all the Mediterranean folks.

Re: Well...

[fayanora.livejournal.com]

Cool. Thanks!

[see_also_friend]

Spam comment-with-links near the bottom of all these comments. Links aren't graphic [I think -didn't open them.] They look lide ads?

Anyway, flagged in case you want to remove it.

Fixed!

[ysabetwordsmith]

Thanks.

Re: Fixed!

[see_also_friend]

You are welcome.