Wonder WOman in Good Company

[minoanmiss]

Wonder Woman is a glorious movie about a goddess. And now after having taken a ridiculously long nap due to headache I want to write about this viewing. jadelennox invited me, and I invited spinrabbit and Snert. Which was good because we missed the meet up with Jade, but we still could go see it together.

It is annoying that movies these days come with a half hour of ads, but at least I had fun mocking the hell out of them with Snert, who is awesome and witty. (On the way there she told me about making the case for Hamlet's non-straightness to her English teacher. I am so proud!) There were also a solid half hour of trailers -- I love trailers but that was too much, as a lot of them run together in my head, which defeats the purpose. Some highlights:

Valerian and the city of a thousand planets -- would have been my favorite movie ever when I was 16, looks pretty.

Atomic Blonde -- Charlize Theron beats up people for 2 hours. Sounds worth the price of a ticket.

Spiderman:Homecoming, Justice League, Thor:Ragnarok -- was going to see anyway, trailers were badass, even for Iron Man 5, and anyone who whines about Cyborg can talk to my melanin covered fist.

Murder on the Orient Express -- Kenneth Branaugh has a broom glued to his face and the entire audience laughed our faces off at the sight.

Dunkirk -- Now that Harry Potter is over the British actors need work. I look forward to seeing what the British actresses will be in.

The rest -- a big mess of forgettable noise. Michael Bay might have been blowing shit up somewhere in there.

At least none of the trailers caused my psychic pain, such as the one for Boss Baby did. *shudder*

Also, Wonder WOman was awesome. I will write more about it after I see it again and have calmed my brain down, but I wanted to note -- the director clearly went out of her way to work nonWhite people into this movie, to show the true diversity of WWI and to depict Themiscyra's population as representing all women, and I really appreciate that. Also, Snert and I had a lot of fun snarking about the OBVIOUS GIRLFRIENDS who called each other "sisters". Okay, that might be a tiny spoiler.

Comments

Yes...

[ysabetwordsmith]

We saw it recently and loved it. :D

I think they gave it away with Diana's little treatise on men: "necessary for procreation, but irrelevant for pleasure." ZOT!

And did anyone else notice that Steve seemed to be some flavor of not conventionally heterosexual? He was very quick to insist that he slept with women, but he didn't have the panting fascination with Diana's body that everyone else seemed to, and explicitly said that he had no idea how people managed to make a marriage work. Interesting.

[acelightning]

I've been wondering whether I want to go see Wonder Woman, because the trailers I've seen on YouTube involve an awful lot of shooting, punching, throwing things, kicking, breaking things, and other forms of personal violence, and that's never been my idea of fun. And some of the folks on various Pagan mailing lists have found fault with the treatment of ancient Greek mythology in WW's origin story. But I figured it might be worth it just as a "popcorn movie", with a very attractive woman and a very attractive man for me to watch.

So now I just have to convince my husband it's time for popcorn :-)

[minoanmiss]

I feel like I should warn you.

1) it's a war movie. It's set in WWI and makes th point that War is Hell.
2) Have you heard the term "Hijacked by Jesus" when another religion gets described in [Protestant American] Christian terms? That happens to the Greek Pantheon here, to an extent -- Zeus and Ares sound more like God and Lucifer if Lucifer got further in his rebellion.

That said, it was gorgeous and worth seeing.

[acelightning]

1) I suspect that the trailers deliberately use the most violent scenes, so as to grab the viewers by the lizard-brain as quickly and completely as possible.

2) That was what my Pagan friends (some of whom are Hellenic Reconstructionists) said about the treatment of religion, although they didn't use the phrase "Hijacked by Jesus".

But Gal Gadot is so beautiful, and so strong! And Chris Pine is witty eye candy. And I love popcorn :-)

[darkmarcy]

Yay Wonder Woman! Will mayhaps squee about it once you make the movie its own post. But just wanted to say,

That is a lot of trailers! I only had to endure Transformers: Idgaf and a homegrown war classic remake. Plus the annoying ads. Then again I took the 3pm screening, can't remember if Friday evening shows have more because that's when normal people go to the cinema. But definitely as many as you listed!

Lol @ Branagh's Broomstache though xD

[minoanmiss]

Transformers:IDGAF is the PERFECT term for that waste of CGI.

[corylea]

A feminist slogan from the 70's was "Sisterhood is powerful." :-)

[minoanmiss]

True! But/and these two ladies were so obviously girlfriends.

[corylea]

I didn't quote the slogan to say that they WEREN'T girlfriends; since I haven't seen the movie yet, I trusted your report on that front. I quoted to slogan to say that two girlfriends together were powerful. ;-)

[cereta]

Yay, I'm so glad you liked it! I've been as squeeful about the squee as I have been about the movie.

I confess to being puzzled by Cyborg, by when and how that particular decision was made (because he's been showing up in JL stuff for a long time now). I was annoyed when he started showing up in coloring books and other things aimed at very small children instead of Wonder Woman - like, there was not a single woman in the Justice League in these products - but as an addition, I like him.

[minoanmiss]

They do crap such as that on purpose -- setting [White] women and men of color against each other so that people who want progressive representation will fight amongst each other rather than opposing those who think a hero can only be a White man with a long list of required adjectives. See also the furor over Black Panther when Black Widow doesn't have a movie and Captain Marvel keeps getting pushed back, which has led to some truly heartbreaking fights between people who should be on the same side.

I mean, I know they threw in Cyborg because they wanted to put in a Black guy and he was the easiest to explain, but I'm still glad he's there. ANd WW is so glorious.

[cereta]

which has led to some truly heartbreaking fights between people who should be on the same side.

This is an absolutely fair point that I will try harder to remember. I like Cyborg, and I welcome diversity in the JL (see my complaints about The Batman, which went from being interestingly diverse to being an all-white boy's club in five seasons, in no small part by the introduction of the all-male, pretty much all-white Justice League). This zero-sum game nonsense...arg. Thank you for reminding me not to get caught up in it.

[minoanmiss]

*beams* Hey, thank you for listening to me.

[acelightning]

Off-topic, but that icon is gorgeous!

[johnpalmer]

I remember thinking, on a related theme, that some people complained that they made Iron Fist white when they could have gone with someone Asian, and I had very mixed feelings about that. I don't think Iron Fist is some overall hero of China - just a hero who was trained in amazing kung fu skills. But then the arc of the movie *is* a bit "sacred guardian" and "hero of the location" and... it was like, I don't blame the actor for not being Asian, and I agree that it would have been an amazingly good choice to pick a non-white dude.

The bit about fighting amongst when we should be on the same side is what triggered this. I mean, I think it's necessary to have people who are angry that they didn't decide to throw canon-about-race/sex. If people don't get het up about something like that, they probably aren't paying attention.

And yet - I see it as a monstrous missed opportunity, but not a sin. (I don't go by "sin" in the religious sense, but that's the closest word I can think of right now for "an actual offense, not unthinking mistakes.")

[minoanmiss]

So I was thinking about this because 1) I haven't seen or read Iron Fist and 2) I'm not Asian-American - racism affects different communities and different people differently. But from what I understand, Iron Fist was created as a "Mighty Whitey" character, a WHite guy who learns something from a non-White culture and does it better than anyone from that culture. That's kind of an annoying trope, so I can see why people would want it subverted with an Asian Danny Rand.

[johnpalmer]

I have to admit, the Iron Fist in the recent Netflix series (I'd said movie earlier) was not too far from that trope - he does win out over many other contestants for a singular power awarded to the best of them all. In the earlier works, he was considered really good but I never had the sense that he was the best of the best(though I hadn't followed the storyline too closely). An American who'd become a martial arts hero, sure.

That's why I certainly understand the sincere desire that they'd have decided to go against standard canon - they had room to do so, and wow, are there some great actor/athletes who could have done amazing things with the role.

This is also one of those places where I could be wrong, too - reading Wikipedia's entries of him (rather than a small collection of his exploits) lends more to the Mighty Whitey trope... especially because my experiences of his stories were when he was Luke Cage's partner, which doesn't make for deep martial arts. fantasy storylines.

I also realize that my love of Ranma 1/2 has spoiled me for martial arts fantasy. That's an anime where people leap higher than buildings, split large boulders, raise a geyser with a single blow from a volcanic region (so that they can use their prowess to throw blobs of water at the big-bad, who can block any punch or kick with his chopsticks...). So I might not see Iron Fist as that big a hero any more, while not placing him in his proper place in the Marvel universe.

[thnidu]

OKAY! A reminder to me that I want to see this one!

[minoanmiss]

YES YES YOU DO.