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#two of my succulents literally disintegrated
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hot takes on the new “wonder woman” movie
Before I get really into this, I just want to say I really did like this movie. There were some really amazing moments. The village dancing scene? I don’t remember telling Patty Jenkins where I live. 
And God in heaven, can I say that it was marvelous, stupendous, wonderful to see a movie with all them ladies and not a single shot designed around how sexy the actors were. 
There’s a post wondering around here about how OP didn’t realize how prevalent the male gaze was in films until she saw one stripped of it. Just--yass girl. Yass OP. Have you ever eaten something succulent like a burger after going all day without eating, and not realizing how starved you were? Yeah. That’s this movie!
Go. See. This. Movie.
But that being said, a lot of what I was worried about the movie still made its mark. I was at a high 8.5/10 for most of the film. While I definitely enjoyed myself, these issues kept me from the 9 or even 10 spot. But hey, you can like something and still find flaws in it. It is possible. 
Come, let me show you the way.
Long post is long, so here’s a cut. also spoilers probably.
For those of you who don’t know, I've been rather ambivalent if not downright antagonistic about the Wonder Woman movie since I saw the first trailer last summer. Not because I opposed DC making a female-led superhero movie and not because DC has been nothing but disappointing since Man of Steel. (Side note: I have tried to watch BVS three times over the past two years and have fallen asleep each and every single time before the hour mark). 
No, my main quibble came from something a little deeper. Something a little...Discourse-y.
When I realized this movie was going to be taking place during World War I, I freaked out a little. My friends, who were thrilled about the film, were confused. “Sarah,” they would say, “shouldn’t you be happy? Haven’t you been bitching about the over-saturation of World War II movies? It’s new and refreshing and exciting!” They’d also say, “Isn’t World War I your favorite conflict?”
Sidestepping the fact that I even have a favorite conflict, yes, this movie should have had Me written all over it. It’s not that I wasn’t excited for a movie about turn-of-the-century battles, the disintegration of Empires, the fall of the Old Order and the rise of the New, man’s absolute brutality against man. It’s not that I wasn’t excited for a movie set during the War to End All Wars. When War Horse was announced years and years ago, I “yeah boy’d” so hard I almost blew out my vocal chords. I’m not opposed to telling stories from the trenches. What I am opposed to is telling superhero movies from the trenches.
Superheroes are modern melodrama through and through. Melodrama is about exaggerating the goods, deepening the bads, all while expressing a moral objective. Even when there’s a little dirt on them, or they’re a little grey in their methods, what makes a superhero is that they endeavor to be the better person.  A superhero movie inherently flattens ambiguities. You have to have a villain. You have to have a good guy. If you don’t, it may be a fine movie, but it’s not a superhero movie.
Which is fine, honestly. There is nothing wrong about that. I’m literally wearing my Captain America shield t-shirt as I type this. I have two Cap keychains on my backpack and a giant Winter Soldier poster on my door back home. I’m all about my sups.
But to everything, there is a season. World War I, I said to my friends, is not that place. World War I was brutal, nasty and most importantly, every European nation had some hand in its breakout, its brutality and its infamous relentlessness. Every side was a perpetrator; every side was a victim. The soldiers in those trenches were by and large teenagers and young men in their early 20s.
When I was talking to my sister about this last week, she said the last trailer that came out looked “awesome” and I straight up did the White Guy Blinking Meme. The last word that should be associated with In Flanders Fields or All Quiet on the Western Front is “awesome.”  When I heard that Aries, the God of War was going to be the main villain and was supposed to be driving the corruption of man’s mind and soul, I couldn’t hit my head on my desk hard enough.
My main fear was that this ambiguity would be lost in the film. That the crew would try to bring an element of spectacle to the war. That, even though this wasn’t another WW2 movie, we were still going to see the Germans portrayed as The Enemy Hun.
Side note: Now, I know this movie was in production long before Trump was elected, but the recent escalating tensions between him and Merkel (WHY OF ALL PEOPLE, I screamed from the mountaintops of my dorm) make this framing a bit awkward to say the least.
This was my fear going into the movie. After the credits rolled, this, is what held me back from sinking into the film and loving it with all my heart.
I know so many people got pumped during the scene where Diana walks out of the trench and across No Man’s Land, but I just couldn’t. I tried. I really, really tried.
Now, to the movie’s credit, there are some moments that spoke to this ambiguity. In the war chamber, Diana calls out a British general for wanting to waste thousands of soldier’s lives by not trying to stop the manufacture of a new chemical weapon. 
“They’ll die!” she bellows (I think). 
The general says something like, “They’re soldiers. That’s what they do.”
And she’s horrified by this, as she should have been.
That part was great! But the movie just plopped that on the audience, hardly even a ta-da and didn’t really do anything with it. There wasn’t a deeper conversation about the great War Machine that ground up these soldiers by the tens of thousands, orchestrated by leaders who were convinced the only way to victory was through offensive maneuvers. I would have taken back every abovementioned disposition to the film if they had cracked that nugget open and engaged with it more.
The lines that Steve delivers when Diana is in hysterics because the war machine keeps raging even after she thinks she’s killed Aries in Luddendorf is also spectacular. They struck at the core of what I was afraid the movie’s unintentional thesis was. There is no scapegoat; there is no puppetmaster. Sometimes people are just really, really shitty.
During Diana’s battle with Aries, and he says something to the effect of: “I gave them the gun, but they pulled the trigger.” That also lends credence to the movie’s theme. People make choices, and sometimes that choice is to be the worst, most brutal version of themselves.
And in a conflict like World War I, that is exactly the message that needs to be drilled home. That idea is what makes this particular war a good one to couch this story.
I just wish it balanced the brutality a bit more. We really only ever saw the Germans on the offensive. We saw young English soldiers saying goodbye to loved ones on the platform. We saw the tragic effects of PTSD through the Charlie. But we only saw the German soldiers in stormtrooper helmets. We only saw them high in steeples as snipers, or as belligerents invading and shooting the Amazons in the opening sequence. We got just a touch of ambiguity when, after Aries is defeated, they take off their helmets, revealing the fresh, smooth faces of young boys. But like the scene in the war room, the movie just says, “Here,” and doesn’t do anything with it.
Also, now that Aries is defeated, I couldn’t help but wonder how the DC universe would go about explaining The Bomb?
I really did enjoy this movie. I’m glad I spent the 10 or so dollars I did to see it. And I’m more than willing to see it again! But the elements I was afraid it would handle clumsily, it did. That comes inherently when you’re dealing with such a messy, entangled conflict. Moving it up to World War 2 wouldn’t have assuaged any of my concerns (because then we’d have to talk about Love Conquering All in the face of the Holocaust and that’s just got “sad trombone 24 hr version” written all over it). Moving it back to, I don’t know, the Crimean War would have been equally foolish (also, who here other than you massive history nerds even know anything about the Crimean War other than it happened?).
With a $100M opening, my opinions, obviously don’t mean anything. But, film, more than anything, is an impetus to talk. I think there’s a lot to unpack here and some really great conversations to be had. So. Go see Wonder Woman if you get the chance, and let’s talk.
My recommendations for some WW1 sources, if you have some time to kill:
Europe’s Last Summer by David Fromkin 
Unknown Soldier by Neil Hanson, 
Of course the marvelous multi-part podcast series Blueprint for Armageddon by Dan Carlin. 
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