By Hera! Come anticipate the WONDER WOMAN movie with me!

i'd probably feel that way too if my dad killed himself to save the fucking dog

patriarchy vs matriarchy

I was all about GG when she first showed up in the fourth Fast Furious movie. she's amazing.

i thought she was terrible in the f&f movies tbh (and not great in bats vs supes either) but i really liked her in this. i assume patty jenkins' directorial style suits her better than snyder's too

Re: the earnestness or cheesiness.

I don't think Marvel films current brand of humor is much better than DC's grimdark. They both can feel like a reaction of embarrassment about old fashioned superheroes.

Never seen Wonder Woman but this video is so bang on the money on many points.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-QhdzQo66o

Buffy and Angel certainly had their good moments but I generally dislike Whedon and his followers for some of this stuff.

Reminds me on this Le Guin review of a Gaiman book.

What finally left me feeling dissatisfied is, paradoxically, the pleasant, ingratiating way in which he tells it. These gods are not only mortal, they’re a bit banal. They talk a great deal, in a conversational tone that descends sometimes to smart-ass repartee. This chattiness will be familiar to an audience accustomed to animated film and graphic narrative, which have grown heavy with dialogue, and in which disrespect is generally treated as a virtue. But it trivialises, and I felt sometimes that this vigorous, robust, good-natured version of the mythos gives us everything but the very essence of it, the heart.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/mar/29/norse-myths-by-neil-gaiman-review

Fuck chatty smartass dialogue

rmde

Not agree with that video?

does she need to rhde again?

It doesn't spend a lot of time talking about Wonder Woman but I thought it was very complimentary about Jenkins approach.

great discussion

anyway if i had an 11 year old daughter i would take her to see this, i'm glad it exists. i guess for me the movie couldn't really decide what it wanted to be, it seemed a bit suggestive and dark for kids, but as an adult there was just too much that was hard to get on board with. run of the mill special effects and choreography, one dimensional characters, and enough awkward acting and directing moments to keep me distracted (when the aunt died and her finals words were like "you must...you must...*dies*" i actually felt embarrassed for whoever put in the effort to write that death scene)
i did think the final third was ok, tho

xxpost rmde @ "i havent seen the movie that ppl seem to like but i completely agree with this otm takedown " is the laziest most played-out ilx trope. at this point it's practically a posting template so forgive me for not weighing yr thoughts more heavily

That video isn't a takedown. It's pro-Wonder Woman.

He argues that recent superhero movies tend to undercut sincerity with comedy due to lack of confidence in the material, whereas WW doesn't do this.

well see i was parodying i uh well

anyway

hi

:D

Bathos is one of those words I kept forgetting the meaning of and I wish I had memorized, because it's pretty good.

i'm generally not a big fan of the "it works despite its flaws" genre of art criticism

― k3vin k., Sunday, 18 June 2017 17:36

Not sure what you mean by this. That's how I'd describe like 80% of worthwhile things. Working despite substantial flaws. Like most of my favourite films kinda suck ass.

Without going quite as far as Robert, I am curious whether kevin is setting out to only defend perfect things. Or is it that good things must work because of their flaws, that they acknowledge the flaws and work them into the material?

I think it's more that the flaws in "good" things are not large enough to deserve mention

it's like if you find dog shit in your seven layer dip and you say "man the dip was still delicious despite the poop I accidentally ate"

(fwiw Wonder Woman was awesome tho)

I mostly expect shit to be in the dip and only have 2 layers.

Most films that I love really only do two or three things exceedingly well and they get by on that.

I am a father of a six month old little girl, and someone who from 7-15 years of age thought about little else other than Marvel and DC.

The beginning moments in the film when lil Diana runs around Themiscyria, cheering on her sister Amazons, being free, vital, strong and having fun created instant waterworks for me. Nothing else topped that…

And I am grateful there was no "WHY ARE THEY DOING THIS AND THAT WITH THIS BELOVED CHARACTER/MYTHOS" geek bait in the movie. Don't get it was set in WWI insteada WWII, but don't much care. Walking out, my wife said "So that steve guy isn't going to become Captain America?" NO NO NO WW IS IN THE DC UNIVERSE……… "Sorry dude, I can't keep straight which universe every character is supposed to be in. Both actors are blonde hunky dudes named Chris."

Of interest

http://kotaku.com/wonder-womans-giant-painting-is-a-modern-masterpiece-1796440542

omg <3

They are really nice pastiches, I have to say.

Oddly (?) enough, the background/exposition bits in the recent DCEU stuff has always been pretty great. Thinking also of the bit in MoS where Jor-el is explaining Krypton's history, about 1:20 in in this clip:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5bB96Mwidc

This movie was a lot of fun. I am extremely impressed they actually got me to like Chris Pine!

we talked a lot afterwards about how absolutely on point the casting was, ESPECIALLY Gal Gadot being an IDF veteran, because the accent works perfectly and because all of her main character beats are totally classic Jewish Lady

:/

"why isn't anyone doing anything about this?!?!? SIGH *goes over the top, blows up machine guns, annihilates significant architectural features to protect babies*

tbc this was important for us because my wife was able to immediately identify with WW for at least 3 reasons

god I can't wait to be dead

this movie wasn't good but i'm getting less and less mad at it as time goes by

I feel the opposite lol, didn't completely hate it while watching / immediately after, but the #slay #queen crowd (not so much people itt) are making me feel like I did

the ending was borderline incoherent, the exposition took forever, and the battle sequence in Act II needed to be edited down, but I didn't care about any of that because the characters were good and the action was fun and they actually tricked me into thinking David Thewlis WASN'T the big bad at first (nb: it is hard for me to pay a lot of attention to anybody who isn't Gal Gadot in a movie starring Gal Gadot)

also how many comic book superhero movies leave you with "supervillains don't gas children - men do" as the main take away?

At one point Whedon was going to direct this, years ago. He seemed like a perfect fit.

― Josh in Chicago, Friday, June 2, 2017 7:01 PM (one month ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

That script got leaked a few weeks back and hmmm, it's not good.
http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2017/06/19/joss-whedon-wonder-woman-script_n_17210508.html

The "Whedon is a misogynist" tumblr crowd have been ripping it a new one. I'm not denying it has some issues on that front(there's certainly an unpleasant male-gazey tone to the script that feels a bit icky) , but honestly the main problems are more to do with characterisation, dialogue and location. Virtually all the action takes place in a fictionalised city which I suspect is supposed to WW's version of Gotham or Metropolis, but it only serves to make this supposedly adult and edgy version of the character feel less grounded and more comicy. Also, as well as being the POV character in this version, Steve is written as a real dick for some reason.

Also doesn't help that the script is over a decade old, and the smartass dialogue that is the Whedon stock in trade feels very tired after years of Marvel movies doing the same shtick.

I don't think the released WW film is perfect by any means, but I'm glad that got made and not this one.

they actually tricked me into thinking David Thewlis WASN'T the big bad at first

haha, my wife and i turned to each other as soon as he appeared and were like 'oh so he's definitely the villain'

i was kinda expecting the twist to be that zeus had killed ares in battle and the horrors of the war were 100% caused by mortals

warning: hot take coming

given whedon's track record with this sort of stuff with buffy, i bet his handling of the WW/dave sex scene and fallout is a bit more nuanced and interesting than "wonder woman gets some dick and now can save the world"

not reading the script tho, could be wrong

wonder woman gets some dick and now can save the world

I don't have a lot of love for this woke-imperialist movie but I don't think this is a fair criticism

The "Whedon is a misogynist" tumblr crowd have been ripping it a new one.

THere was a lengthy Twitter defense from someone (a woman, fwiw) in the industry, not as a Capt. Save-A-Whedon thing, but more of a "This was a draft script, and draft scripts don't get shot, and even when you're dealing with shooting scripts you deal with what's on the screen, not what's on the page." It was interesting, but I can't be bothered to find it right now. I'm sure it's searchable.

it's crazymaking that anyone would even have to say that, or that it would constitute a "defense"

wonder woman gets some dick and now can save the world

I don't have a lot of love for this woke-imperialist movie but I don't think this is a fair criticism

― a serious and fascinating fartist (Simon H.), Monday, July 3, 2017 10:56 AM (three hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

it's obv a very cynical view and one i don't actually fully endorse, but it's not that much of a stretch imo. i would say the relationship between WW and steve was at best conventional

i was kinda expecting the twist to be that zeus had killed ares in battle and the horrors of the war were 100% caused by mortals

She does think this for all of ten seconds, before Ares reveals himself. I think a case could be made that it would have been a better movie without Ares. I had hoped the big showdown at the end would be between WW and the mad scientist lady (who they could have given some crazy powers to)

Saw this last night. Enjoyed the middle parts b/c I thought the character interplay was fun. Last third had some fuuuuuuuucked up multi-reversing ideology, tho.

I seriously don't think they shoulda set this during WWI. The village fight scene was one of those bits where I actually had to say aloud, "she's not fighting Nazis, these are 18-year-old conscripts FFS"

The village has the worst bit of discontinuity in the film. She leaves her cloak in the trench before crossing No Man's Land (which was also the worst dialogue in the film) and the village fight but is wearing it in the photo taken after the battle (that Bats gives her).

Was it really a priority that she went back for it straight away so she looked good in the picture? Or did some of the Allies bring it with them as they pushed forward for the battle in case the woman that had just gone over the top into a hail of gunfire survived (and a presumption they'd win the battle while encumbered with someone else's shit)? Or did she send someone else back for it after the battle so she could bask in the gratitude of the villagers and take all the credit?

there was absolutely no need to set it in WW1. in fact it worked against it hugely because to get any sort of satisfaction out of the fights you have to pretend some poor german kids are the big bad. if she's smart enough to read 30 languages, why isn't she smart enough to analyse the situation and work out that the british and german aristocracy and military are to blame before smashing hundreds of people into walls? is her only power being able to hurt people well?

why do i try to analyse comic book films you say? BECAUSE THEY SET IT DURING A REAL HISTORICAL EVENT DIDN'T THEY UGH

if she's smart enough to read 30 languages, why isn't she smart enough to analyse the situation and work out that the british and german aristocracy and military are to blame before smashing hundreds of people into walls?

The cognitive dissonance between her relentless naivete and her book learnin' was very weird and funny to me, generally not in a good way

Likewise, as I mentioned earlier, why doesn't she eventually prevent WWII?

I mean, are we sure she doesn't

for real though there's an interesting contrast to be made between this movie and Skull Island in terms of handling a major 20th-century conflict, though technically the latter takes place immediately *after* Nam