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Wonder Woman put me in a melancholy mood. It was dreadful to watch. It felt like a surreal, nightmare caricature on one hand, and on the other- an intentional sleight. There are some things that fail so badly that you would you might be inclined to give up. Like pedestrians wondering the White House trashing it. How does that happen? It’s the pinnacle in failures that results in us blaming gods and morality instead of recognizing we are often the cause of our own problems.
I love Gal Godot. I mean, who wouldn’t? She is charming and works hard to do her screen magic. She deserves better. I love Chris Pine. Who couldn’t love the other James T Kirk? Wonder Woman 2017 was working for me until they brought in a god to fight with. If you go deeper into this- Wonder Woman 2017 was ‘the Aeneid’ revisited- only, this time, instead of the warrior-queen dying, it was Chris Pine- who played Steve who was really ‘Aeneas.’ Without Aeneas, Rome doesn’t only fail- it never gets started. Seeing Chris return in the credits, I was wondering if they would be doing something sneaky, like- invoke classic Trek and do a parody of ‘City on the Edge of Forever:’ in order for Rome, the Federation, to exist Kirk must travel through time to kill Edith Keeler- Joan Collins. That may have actually been a better story than the one we got, which is essentially, the story of ‘Pandora’s Box,’ and the ‘Monkey’s Paw’ twisted into one.
Wonder Woman failed the moment the child Diana was competing with adults and was shown to be superior. It failed further when it showed the male child, played by Lucian Perez as being completely useless. Does he even a name? His lack of lines and limited facial expression, locked on being the saddest boy in the world, wasn’t only manipulative, Disney level trope, it reeked of male hatred- where boys are useless and fathers are negligent, reckless, and flat out abusive. There were really only two children in this to contrast- unless you count the mall scene, and again- males being mean too kids. Did you know, in real life, even bad guys hate people who are mean to kids? The lesson Diana got about cheating is a reasonable lesson. To compete with adults, children would have to cheat. But when you think about how fast the ‘world’ failed in this movie, all of it apparently driven by the insanity of adults- that all the adults were failing, even Diana, the redemption…
