We saw Wonder Woman over the weekend, which may be the summer’s biggest box office hit.
I thought it was a good movie, a far better than usual comic book flick. Growing up, I was a D.C. fan, as opposed to Marvel. One difference is that D.C. heroes are much more awe-inspiring than Marvel’s angst-ridden heroes who can’t even feel good about having superpowers. Also, D.C. heroes don’t make wise-cracks all the time. They are serious, earnest, and sometimes inspiring. True, D.C. started emulating Marvel, which I think was a big mistake.
Now that movie special effects can do whatever the comic book artist’s pen and brush can do, we now have D. C. Studios competing with the more successful Marvel Studios. But this Wonder Woman movie feels like a D.C. comic book, and it makes D.C. Studios a contender again.
The movie was not nearly as feminist as I was expecting, though many women are exultant about having a female superheroine. Nor is it political, though some Arab nations are banning the film because its star, the impressive Gal Gadot, is Israeli.
There was some intriguing theology: Greek gods, killed by the god of war Ares; a sword called a “god-killer”; a strong theme of sin that Wonder Woman has to discover; the notion that no one “deserves” to be saved.
But no homosexuality, no moral relativism, no snark, no irony. There is a love story, some fine World War I imagery, and some genuinely touching moments.
Some viewers and critics have been projecting their ideologies and issues onto the film, but I think it’s pretty innocent of those deeper meanings and is mainly first-rate entertainment.
Have you seen it? What did you think? I may have missed something because of my escapist mood.
After the jump, a review by Megan Basham from the Christian news publication World Magazine.
From Megan Basham, Amazon vs. evil | WORLD News Group:
Somewhere in the bang and crash of what begins as a typical if enjoyable superhero movie, Wonder Woman takes a surprising theological turn. . . .
From the outset Wonder Woman feels refreshing for its relatively unexplored setting of World War I. Kicking restlessly against the goads of her idyllic, Hellenistic life on an island hidden from time by Zeus, the Amazonian princess’s path takes a turn when Steve Trevor (Chris Pine), an American flyboy, crashes off her beach. Diana rescues him, her warrior-women cohorts dispatch the Germans on his tail with a dazzling display of martial artistry, and soon she’s sneaking away from her overprotective mother to fulfill her destiny and help Steve end the War to End All Wars.
Once she gets to London, Wonder Woman’s forthrightness plays hilariously against Edwardian mores and modesty. Pine and Gadot trade plenty of double entendres, but the jokes mostly stem from Diana’s innocence and Steve’s chivalry. When she invites him literally to sleep beside her, he explains that a man should never assume a woman will be willing to “sleep” with him outside the bonds of marriage. It’s a cute moment, made cuter by the fact that this kind of wry humor, crackling with chemistry and wit, only works in a historical context now that Western society no longer holds any sexual boundaries in common.
[Keep reading. . .]
Photograph of Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman from Bagogames, Flickr, Creative Commons License
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