Review of Wonder Woman (2017) by Yeghia E — 16 May 2018

This movie is incredibly overhyped. It is one of the worst mainstream movies I have seen in a while. And I can explain why.

First of all, the plot is outright silly, and riddled with plotholes. The amazon's existence, society, and culture is not explained AT ALL. There are maybe two sentences in the whole movie dedicated to explaining why/how they exist. There was zero explanation of how they remained hidden, where they were located, how they reproduced, or lived their daily lives, or how their culture sustains itself and has apparently thrived for thousands of years. There was also no explanation as to why they were perpetually stuck in a pre-industrial society when the rest of the world, populated with men, achieved industrialization (and that's just one example of the not-so-subtle sexism throughout the movie). All in all, the mashup of settings is disorienting in its anachronism, and the writers didn't even try to provide the viewer enough weave it together into something cohesive.

And using David Thewlis as Ares, with his silly mustache and all, was hysterically bad; it was IMPOSSIBLE to take the ending seriously. Having some silly-looking British guy march around in flaming armor and trying to pretend he's a menacing manifestation of Ares himself in the flesh was preposterous.

But more importantly, what I found more fristrating was that the movie is hailed as some feminist godsend, when in reality it suffers nearly all of the sexist cliches and tropes from all hollywood movies. The "strong" female protagonist can't walk two feet without people commenting on her stunning beauty, but is never commended for her apparent superhuman strength. It seems as though she is only valued by other character's for her apparent hotness. Not to mention that she comes across as stupid and naive, never sharp and strategic. She simply plows through enemies without any forethought. Indeed, the movie doesnt demonstrate that she is even capable of thinking at all until the very end when she is actually forced to make a decision. Other than that, the main male character makes all of the decisions for her throughout the whole movie. And in the final battle, she cannot beat the main villain until her male lover is killed: another way she is shown to be completely dependent of him.

All in all, I think many people like and praise this movie because they feel they are supposed to - because so many people have set up a context where if you dont like it then you're somehow at least a little bit sexist. I mean it's Wonder Woman, if you don't like it then you must hate women, right? Wrong. I might've liked it if it was actually well-written and as free of sexism as people claim it is. But i'll give it a little bit of credit, it had its moments, albeit in the midst of a shitshow.