Review of Wonder Woman (2017) by Susi L — 25 Jun 2017

Okay, good at times, but not great and definitely not revolutionary.

Gender-wise, I didn't see anything in it that was groundbreaking. There have been millions of other movies with strong female leads, with women who get what they want with their intelligence and personality, not their brute strength and fighting skills like Diana. Also, Dr.Poison's portrayal is more anti-feminist than feminist. She is undeniably evil and sadistic, but she's also a female scientist in the early 1900s in Nazi Germany. She overcame gender biases of time and place by becoming a scientist and that's pretty spectacular, but the movie takes away her agency and intelligence when Ares says that he whispered the formulas into her ear. So everything groundbreaking (though terrible, akin to the science behind the atom bomb) that Dr. Poison came up with was not the work of a woman, but of a man. Yeah, gender wise, that's not groundbreaking, it's problematic.

I was also bothered by the way the movie glorifies violence even though Diana is supposedly against war. She's a (supposed) pacifist who spends almost all her time killing people. Also, by glorifying Diana as she fights (she's so graceful, beautiful, skilled) the movie trivializes the fighting and efforts of the soldiers in WWI. The trenches seem so trivial in the movie after Diana leaps right out of them and crosses no man's land in a matter of minutes.

A few specifics that aggravated me: (1) Steve has to explain snow to Diana. She knows hundreds of languages but needs to be told that the falling flakes are snow? 2) There's a Scot in a kilt and an Arab in a fez: played heavily on stereotypes. (3) What's with the Chief hugging a random German after the war ends? And why are all the Germans suddenly peaceful when the plane blows up?