Wonder Woman: Warbringer

Diana lives on Themyscira with her mother and her sister Amazons. Formed from clay, she isn't really considered a full fledged Amazon and looks for ways to prove herself. During a race she is sure to win due to her practice and alternate route, a boat explodes off the coast of the island, so Diana has to decide to the leave the lone survivor to die and finish the race or save the girl and throw the race. She finally decides to save the girl Alia, but after leaving her in a remote cave, earthquakes wrack the island and sickness comes for the Amazons for the first time since they settled there. Diana suspects that Alia's presence on the island is the reason, so she goes to the Oracle with an offering to see how she can fix her mistake. It leads to a quest to the modern human world where Diana can prove herself, protect her charge, and save the world if she succeeds.

The beginning of the novel establishes Themyscira, the Amazons, and Diana plus her origins. Themyscira is a utopian society populated by only women of all different nationalities and sexual preferences who have chosen to live there after rejecting the wartorn, violent world of man. Some of them a resentful of Diana because she doesn't have the experience and hasn't proven herself as an Amazon, yet receives preferential treatment as Queen Hippolyta's daughter. Although Tek, the most vocal about this subject, has a point, she resorts to pathetically insulting teenage Diana overtly and covertly at every turn. As a result, Diana has to hide her true feelings, brush off the poor treatment, feel like she doesn't belong, and strive to prove herself as capable as much as she can. When Alia lands on the island, the storms, disease, and earthquakes are shocking on such an idyllic island and fill Diana with guilt. The Oracle brings the timbre of ancient myths as a powerful, dangerous mystic who gives useful information if approached correctly.

Diana is thrown into the modern human world without being totally ignorant of their technology or modern sensibilities. The island is somehow aware of all the technological advances and human history, so Diana's gaps are in actual interactions in this unfamiliar world. She has knowledge of cars, helecopters, war, disease, etc, but it's completely different to hear the noise of the city, sit in a moving car, and dodge lethal bullets. What I love so much about her character, especially compared to the cinematic version of her, is that she defends herself physically and verbally. She throws clever barbs when needed and translates modern sensibilities through the lens of her experiences instead of looking at everything cluelessly. The biggest adjustment to our world is the ease with which we lie. She's so used to people being genuine that it shocks her and makes her cautious in the future. Her abilities are a mystery to her since she's never had to use them to actually protect herself before and she pushes her limits time and time again. Her journey to prove herself is understandable and blossoms into a genuine desire to protect humanity and their world.

Alia comes from an affluent family with a Greek father and a Louisianan mother. She tries to escape notice and keep to herself as a way to avoid how she's inevitably treated due to her skin color. She also somehow always finds conflict surrounding but not including her. Her status as Warbringer brings violence and chaos wherever she goes, completely involuntarily. Her very presence will cause the next worldwide war if she doesn't either die or bathe in the waters of Helen of Troy's resting place. Alia thinks Diana is insane and part of a cult before Diana's proved right, but they find common ground in both of their disparate experiences. Both want to be judged for their actions rather than things they have no control over like origins, money, family, or bloodline. Alia is much more sarcastic and funny than Diana and has a point of view more relatable to the reader. She doesn't have physical strength, but strength of will and interesting ways of thinking through situations with her science background. By the end of the book, she develops into someone unafraid of attention, willing to fight for her friends and what she believes in.

After seeing the Wonder Woman film, I was curious to see how this book fits into that lore. They prove to be in completely different universes and most of the changes are ones I would have liked to see in the movie. So much of this book is amazing from the natural character interactions to the crazy awesome minor characters like Alia's best friend Nim, eccentric clothign designer. I especially loved her unique point of view seeing the world's patterns and finding meaning in visual art plus her killer sense of humor. Some plot points didn't feel right to me even though it fit the theme. The villain in particular seemed to come out of nowhere, but the ending is satisfying. Wonder Woman: Warbringer is an action packed book with friendship, heart, and characters struggling to find their place in the world. I would love to see another Wonder Woman book by Leigh Bardugo because she fundamentally understands Diana and creates a fantastical world grounded in reality.

My rating: 4.5/5 fishmuffins

Wonder Woman (2017)

* Spoilers *

Diana lives in Themyscira, an island isolated from the world of man. The Amazons of Ancient Greece live and train there, ready to combat Ares in his return after killing the complete pantheon of Greek gods except for Zeus. An American spy crashes near their shore and Diana saves him, leading the German troops to their hidden island. The Amazons suffer casualities and refuse to help him. Diana decides to help him, unable to stand by while millions of people die in the World War, and leads him to England where she vows to destroy Ares.

I've have been excitedly anticipating the movie adaptation of Wonder Woman for a long time. It's gratifying to see a kickass female superhero who has a similar powerset to god-like figures like Superman. She lifts and throws tanks, blocks bullets, tears through bad guys like paper, and generally kicks ass. Her breakout scene where she smashes into No Man's Land between foxholes is awe inspiring. It's the moment she truly becomes Wonder Woman. Her softer side has her enamored with babies and sympathetic towards the victims of war, who give her a more personal reason to fight against Ares than just her ancient legacy of obligation. She shows off her education and intelligence in translating a difficult hybrid text. At every turn, she proves those wrong who would underestimate her and push her into the gender roles of the time. She also experience the very best and the very worst of what the human world has to offer.

Her home Themyscira is a beautiful, colorful, bright place that I wish we could have stayed at the whole film. The society was fascinating and it showed strong female friendship, which is rare to see. Their society is completely separate from the world of man even though they are charged with protecting it. The others are happy to stay in their utopia while the rest of the world suffers because man is inherently flawed and prone to violence. It showed how Diana fought even as a child to become the warrior she knew she could be when her mother was satisfied with her state as a beautiful, ignorant, innocent child. Robin Wright has the best role here as General Antiope, the woman who trained Diana when it was forbidden. Although she is short lived, it was wonderful to see her as well as the rest of the diverse cast of Amazons running their own society and defending what is theirs.

Wonder Woman has numerous flaws including Diana's treatment by others, her romance, and her intelligence not matching her actions. Once Diana and Steve get to England, the film returns the typical DC monochrome and muted look. Most of the film has Diana follow him around being condescended to, commanded, and sexualized by others at every turn. It borders on a Born Yesterday plot and gives Steve way too much power over her. There a way too many remarks about her beauty and it's annoying and lazy writing when she's obviously capable. Lip service is paid to her bisexuality and then she's shoehorned into a hollow heterosexual relationship. Steve dies so Diana will have the emotional pain to tap into her true power. The romance wasn't well developed enough for that and it fell flat. It's also a crappy trope and only interesting because of the gender reversal of what usually happens. Also, Antiope's death had much more emotional weight even though she was only onscreen for a few minutes. Diana seems way too naive, especially in the ways of war. Despite being so well read, she refused to believe she couldn't save everyone. Her singleminded belief that all of man's evil is attributed to Ares got annoying because it didn't seem to fit with her character and made her more childlike than warranted.

Other problems with the film are the terrible villain, the portrayal of the human villains, the CGI, and the ending. Ares is the villain of the piece, but he disappoints when he appears. I was at least surprised by his identity. The Germans are the only human villains portrayed in this film set in World War I. It felt more like they wanted to portray Nazis, but set it in the wrong time. That aside, I felt the human villains were more interesting and compelling than Ares in every way. Dr. Maru, a female scientists dedicated to creating the most destructive weapons, and Ludendorff, the German general, had more excitement and passion for their work. It was also refreshing to see a woman villain playing a significant role. The CGI was terrible and very obvious in most instances. The fight scenes keep having this Matrix-esque moment of slow motion in between normal time in every single one. The ending is a huge mess of CGI ridiculousness.

Wonder Woman is the best DC movie by far, but it doesn't come close to most Marvel movies. I found it to be poorly written. Although the acting was decent, it doesn't change that story is predictable and the dialogue doesn't feel natural. I wanted to the film to be so much more feminist than it was. I honestly had incredibly high expectation going into it and I was pretty disappointed by the end. It has a lot of good going on in Gal Gadot and the Amazons. It was so universally lauded by critics and individuals that I don't think DC is going to learn from the mistakes made here. I'm glad of its success both critically and in the box office because of what it will mean for the future of superhero movies led by women. I will be seeing it multiple times to support it despite its flaws and I look forward to more Wonder Woman movies that will hopefully improve as time goes on.

My rating: 3/5 fishmuffins

Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice

* spoilers *

Bruce Wayne vows vengeance upon Superman for the havoc he wreaked in the battle against Zod, Superman just wants to save people whenever it's convenient for him. Lex Luthor wants to throw everything into chaos and reap the profits by pitting Batman against Superman. The government is trying to contain Superman and restrict him to their rules. You would think the film would be straight forward with such simple story lines, but you would be very wrong.

Full disclosure: I did not enjoy Man of Steel and I went into this film knowing I would also not enjoy it. I did like some things about it, but there are fundamental problems that make it a bloated confusing mess. The best thing about the whole film is Wonder Woman. At first, she's an enigmatic character kind of like Catwoman whose motivations are murky. Her fight scenes bring to mind Snyder's 300 that was his strength: a fighting movie with very little plot and a lot of cool visual effects. I look forward to seeing more from her character, especially since she used to fight with the humans and gave it up due to perhaps disillusionment. Alfred is my other favorite character. He's a sassy, tech-savvy drunk who is tired of Bruce's shit, not the obedient formal butler of the past. I also enjoyed Ben Affleck's Batman for what it was, but I had more of a problem with the writing than his portrayal. It was nice that he actually used his detecting skills and thought critically about the situation.

Now for the bad stuff which way outweighs the good stuff. I didn't like the pacing, the tone, the "heroes," and the convenient coincidences. The pacing is horrible. First, the film is way too long at two and half hours and it feels like an eternity. Second, if all the terrible and unnecessary dream sequences were cut out, it would be at least a half hour shorter. All of these Bruce Wayne dreams were over-long and had something laughable in them. One had young Bruce lifted into the air by bats. Another had a Mad Max style future with Superman logoed Gestapo. It way slowed down the film and took time creating ridiculous situations that didn't even mean anything. The set-up for later films also takes up time and stalls the plot. The two second cameos of Aquaman, the Flash, and Cyborg were mildly interesting, but needed to be cut. The title fight didn't happen until well into the film and it wasn't even the main fight. 

The tone problem is consistent through most DC films. They focus on being dour, humorless, and angsty. Even the colors are incredibly muted. I like films with some humor to cut into the drama and some actual color. I prefer Marvel movies because they have levity along with the superhero drama, color, and actually value human life (which I will get to later). Suicide Squad seems to be a step in the right direction, but it still looks dour and monochromatic. DC is obsessed with appearing gritty and realistic, but they are never rated R to keep the wide audience and end up being more unrealistic and cartoonish than their Marvel counterparts. If you're going to be gritty and realistic, then do it, but they are half-assing it and want the best of both worlds with disappointing results.

The "heroes" of this film aren't real heroes at all. Batman is up front with this admission and says he's not a hero. He does save people from the Zod fight, but then sets his sights on taking down Superman exclusively. When stealing the Kryptonite chunk, he doesn't hesitate to open heavy artillery fire on people and of course vows to kill Superman. His critique makes sense, but he ceases to really help innocents in his quest for vengeance. Superman, on the other hand, only seems to care about humans directly related to him or sleeping with him. Everyone else is expendable. It was painfully apparent in Man of Steel that he didn't care about anyone in the buildings he was smashing to oblivion. He saves a girl once in the film to further shove the messianic imagery surrounding him down our throats. The character is a wet blanket of a person and seems to have no critical thinking skills at all. Even the villains are underwhelming. Doomsday looks like a Lord of the Rings cave troll with a skin problem and Lex Luthor was a sloppy, crazed child, a huge departure from his usual character.

These two characters' conflict is solved by the shared name of their mothers in a bizarre mood change for Bruce and suddenly they are best pals. Because of the criticism of Man of Steel, it is explicitly stated multiple times that the buildings being crushed by our heroes are completely deserted. Even ones that are business buildings in a tightly packed city...Just no. There will always be people around a metropolis at all hours of the night. Then Batman has the great idea to have the main actual villain follow him back to the city to endanger even more lives. There are so many lapses in judgment and weird decision making. I'm not sure what exactly the writers were doing, but they need to hire new ones for the next films. 

Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice is a bloated mess of bad writing, dour tone, horrible heroes, and weird reasonings and coincidences. The ending is especially stupid because the audience is supposed to believe that Superman is dead despite the fact that we know the Justice League franchise is just starting. It's insulting and no one is fooled. The false emotion is wasted and again just wastes even more time trying to get the audience to feel bullshit feelings. I went in expecting horrible and that's about what it gave. I have hope for future movies, but not much. I have more hope for X-Men , Disney's Marvel Cinematic Universe, and Deadpool. DC is too busy trying to be gritty without losing profits and mimicking Transformer fights to make quality films. 

My rating: 2/5 fishmuffins