I am writing this a year and a half post release not as someone who has background in reading Wonder Woman comics, but instead as a regular movie goer who has some beef with some of the character motivations, and as it turns out, I have a blog and I can vent my frustrations if I want to. I fully understand the difficulties of adapting something long-form into the confines of a two to three hour movie, however past successes exist, and this movie was so close. Wonder Woman was a huge success and arguably rescued and set a new tone for the rapidly sinking ship that was the DC extended universe. It did not seem ashamed of its comic book roots like some of the previous entries did, and it gave us a character who openly fought for what could be considered kind of corny values, which is actually pretty refreshing. Sometimes it’s okay to have characters who believe in things like justice and love and who are not ashamed to show it.
Where the movie really missed the mark for me was the characterization of Wonder Woman herself as well as the use of Ares in contribution to her story. Ideally this is what I’m going talk about today, but we’ll see where this takes me, okay?
Dianna is kind of a rare protagonist in this day and age. In a market flooded by characters who have things happen to them, Dianna grabs the bull by the horns, turns it around, and show it the error of its ways. She is driven, she has her own agency, she does what she says she’s going to do, and she will settle for nothing less than saving literally everyone. She is the female super hero I think a lot of women and little girls have been missing, but I also kind of found her to be one of the weaker parts of the movie, and I think it largely comes down to her naivety. She is naive almost to the point of farce, but it is played off as just a quirky character trait that she never really has to come to terms with, or at least not in any satisfying way. But in almost the same breath, she is shown to have an extensive knowledge of the world’s history from reading all of the books that were available to her. It’s difficult to buy that she both understands what sex is and how to do it based on these books she’s read, but does not understand how wars start and spread.
I think it could have done a lot to elevate the story if it turned out the Professor Lupin was not Ares, but was actually who he said he was. If Dianna was confronted with the concept that perhaps this war actually did come from man and not from an otherworldly being she is destined to destroy, she would be forced to know what it is that she is actually fighting for. She would also be forced to understand that there is such a thing as a moral gray area as well people who are fundamentally evil. Her naivety does not work well if she still gets to be right in the end. Her conflict over whether or not to save the humans or join with Ares doesn’t mean a lot because she knows that if she destroys Ares, the war will end. If instead, Dianna had to grapple with the idea that the problem does not have one singular cause, and that she may have to pick a side, she could learn and expand her understanding of human kind. I get that perhaps the movie was going for something much more lighthearted than what it has been previously produced by the DC universe, however, there are ways to lighten things up without completely neglecting the idea of character growth.
That’s all for me today! Man, two entries in a row about missed character opportunities. Will I ever be satisfied?
Slowest Reader Reads Slowly 