Wonder Woman, in theaters Summer 2017

[sh9000]

http://www.target.com/p/wonder-woman-blu-ray-dvd-digital/-/A-52615166

[TangledThorns]

When it comes to looks alone...

Lynda Carter > Gal Gadot

 

 

Edited June 6, 2017 by TangledThorns

[seti88]

They are both beautiful! 

Edited June 6, 2017 by seti88

[Thom]

38 minutes ago, seti88 said:

They are both beautiful! 

I'll go with that! Though Gal is #1 in my book!

[Thom]

17 hours ago, myk said:

Just got back from seeing this movie on a whim, and I'm glad I did. I don't think I've ever been more pessimistic about a movie, but after seeing it I can say that I've never been more suprised about how much I enjoyed it. 

Gal Gadot may not have the boobs or the butt that I think Wonder Woman should have, and her accent is off-putting also, but she is beautiful and she played the part of Diana so endearingly that you can't help but fall for her and the rest of the movie.  I also LOVE what they did for the costume; somehow the update doesn't make a half-naked woman running through a battlefield seem corny like I thought it would. 

I could go on and on, but suffice to say this is one of my favorite superhero movies to date, right behind Ironman #1, Avengers and the Dark Knight Trilogy. Gal has made me a fan of herself and the movie.

I do have questions, though: 

  Hide contents

 

*what happened to the German cruiser/destroyer/whatever ship that made it through the barrier concealing the Amazon island?  

*why can't Diana return to the island?  Is this part of the Wonder Woman mythology?

*is Diana just lucky that she managed to evade the thousdands of rounds shot at her?  Her sisters didn't seem to fare so well on the island. 

 

 

Spoiler

1) From my - repeated- viewings, the German ship strikes the reef around Themyscira. In the background, you can see it heeling over and going down fast. That doesn't mean that there were no survivors though, from the wreck at least. I don't think the Amazons would treat any kindly however after basically shooting first and killing second...

2) She can return. Nothing was stated that she couldn't. But it was her mother's fear that she would die in her quest against Ares. 'You may not return,' meaning, 'you may die..'

3) Diana is a demigod, daughter of Zeus and an Amazon, who are clearly already for superior physically to normal Man. So she is far more god than human, with speed and strength to match. Plus Diana had the shield when she was crossing No Man's Land, as well as her bracers. She can be wounded, as seen just after  the beach battle, but she heals quickly. I'm thinking if her Aunt Antiope had not intervened, she would have died on the beach when that soldier was about to shoot her in the back.

 

Edited June 6, 2017 by Thom

[myk]

I appreciate the input Thom.  

In any case, I bought some clay and tried to fashion my very own Amazonian princess who would be absolutely loyal to my bidding but it didn't work out...

[azrael]

5 hours ago, myk said:

In any case, I bought some clay and tried to fashion my very own Amazonian princess who would be absolutely loyal to my bidding but it didn't work out...

Needs divine intervention. 

[renegadeleader1]

1 hour ago, azrael said:

Needs divine intervention. 

Needs a RealDoll.

[TangledThorns]

5 hours ago, renegadeleader1 said:

Needs a RealDoll.

Needs... WEIRD SCIENCE!!

 

 

[sh9000]

 

[myk]

I'm glad she didn't disappear after her 'Fast days.  She deserves this.  I'm happy for her...

[sh9000]

 

[technoblue]

I'm late to the party, but the movie was fantastic!

10/10 invisible jets

[Big s]

Just saw it yesterday, movie was sold out last week. Definitely the best film of this new D.C. franchise by far. It's a really good film and looks great. The only things I can complain about would be the cheesy dialogue, the over use of slow motion and that's about it. that's really just being as nit picky as possible. As far as a comic book  movie it's up there with the marvel films and hopefully the rest of the franchise will push to do better from now on.

[seti88]

After a second viewing....in fact i thk she looks even hotter than a first viewing if that's possible 

and i thk i appreciated the edits and flow of the plot better too...patty's use of close up and timed slow mo's are quite effective...

[Big s]

I think that slo mo is the part that bugged me the most. It's something they should have used less of. But I still gotta recommend the movie to action comic book movie fans, especially the ones that thought DC couldn't do a great film. It can't compare to Logan, but it can compete with the marvel/ disney franchise films and is definitely doing well at the box office. 

[seti88]

slo mo done with intent can add detail to otherwise blurry fight scenes...i liked the slow mo kick to the general in the guard tower...reminded me of ole jackie chan flicks..

[Vifam7]

After the failures with MoS and BvS, I went into this movie with low expectations. I saw the movie yesterday and I thought it was quite good. IMHO, Chris Pine's character and performance as Steve Trevor carried the movie. Gal Gadot is OK as Wonder Woman.

Overall, I'd say it's on par or just a step below Captain America First Avenger.

The few nitpicks though. They never really explained how Steve Trevor and the Germans got to Themyscira.  Also, it doesn't make much sense for a naval ship to be chasing an aircraft. And, what happened to that ship and its crew?  Finally, Steve was flying a Fokker Eindecker - which was obsolete and out of service by 1918.

 

[Negotiator]

Time period is somewhere between 1914- 1918.  Probably closer to the end.

[myk]

3 hours ago, Vifam7 said:

After the failures with MoS and BvS, I went into this movie with low expectations. I saw the movie yesterday and I thought it was quite good. IMHO, Chris Pine's character and performance as Steve Trevor carried the movie. Gal Gadot is OK as Wonder Woman.

Overall, I'd say it's on par or just a step below Captain America First Avenger.

The few nitpicks though. They never really explained how Steve Trevor and the Germans got to Themyscira.  Also, it doesn't make much sense for a naval ship to be chasing an aircraft. And, what happened to that ship and its crew?  Finally, Steve was flying a Fokker Eindecker - which was obsolete and out of service by 1918.

 

 

I had asked about the ship and was reminded that when it passed the barrier it was already listing and presumably sunk.  As for the crew, I guess the ones that weren't Amazon'd drowned with the ship?

[Thom]

8 hours ago, Vifam7 said:

After the failures with MoS and BvS, I went into this movie with low expectations. I saw the movie yesterday and I thought it was quite good. IMHO, Chris Pine's character and performance as Steve Trevor carried the movie. Gal Gadot is OK as Wonder Woman.

Overall, I'd say it's on par or just a step below Captain America First Avenger.

The few nitpicks though. They never really explained how Steve Trevor and the Germans got to Themyscira.  Also, it doesn't make much sense for a naval ship to be chasing an aircraft. And, what happened to that ship and its crew?  Finally, Steve was flying a Fokker Eindecker - which was obsolete and out of service by 1918.

 

I'm assuming Ludendorf radioed ahead for others to intercept the plane, and the ship managed to hit him in passing. Seeing it going down they then went in search, hit the fog bank and sent out the boats to navigate a way through the shoals.

For the ship, you can see in the background of the beach scene that it hit the rocks and was sinking. I'm thinking a lot of the crew was probably already in the small boats, but those who weren't probably drowned with the ship, or were killed when they reached the shore.

As for his plane being out of date, it is mentioned that they (the Germans) are running low for supplies in all areas, so I would assume that would mean aircraft as well. I could easily see them pulling some older aircraft out in order to keep operations going, so it's not much of a stretch for it to be there.

 

Edited June 13, 2017 by Thom

[seti88]

 

[derex3592]

Saw this Friday night with the fiancé. We both really liked it.  Good flick. Will definitely pick up the bluray. 

[TangledThorns]

Saw it with my wife last night. She did not like me calling it a princess movie

[Thom]

1 hour ago, TangledThorns said:

Saw it with my wife last night. She did not like me calling it a princess movie

Well, Diana is a Princess going on an adventure...

[Thom]

BUMP just for greatness!

And cause I saw it again... What an awesome movie!

 

[sh9000]

 

[Thom]

Man, I really hope that WW theme stays with the DC logo no matter which movie it is!

[kajnrig]

Finally saw it. Overall sentiments: "Eh..." The nephew couldn't hold it in any longer and we had to leave a few minutes early (last thing we saw was the lightning explosion), so maybe something happened in that brief span of time that completely redeems the movie's more disappointing aspects, but I'm pretty confident in my opinion that it's the best of the DCEU only by virtue of being completely average.

Spoiler tag mostly for length. I just rant a bit, feel free to ignore.

The movie takes too long to get to the good bits. The humor is more often forced than not, or at the very least is at odds with how the movie seems to want to present itself. The writing is stiff and leads to overacting, especially on the part of the Amazons. That aside, once the ball FINALLY gets rolling it's a smoother ride than not.

I really dug the beach fight, but it ended too quickly and unsatisfactorily. Robin Wright's Antiope had a commanding presence, and it was really annoying that she died within the first third of the movie (and that the Amazons as a whole became largely irrelevant to the story soon thereafter). The story can't keep a steady pace, always jerking and halting, but the awesome trench scene is where things start getting REALLY good.

The mythology is hot garbage. I hate how they mix in the Christian creation story into the Greek gods. Zeus was not a benevolent ruler, he did not create humanity (and certainly not in his image), and he did not make Earth as a paradise for them, nor did either Ares or any other god corrupt them. There's no reason to do this; all it does is introduce plot holes.

Diana's origin as part of this myth is dumb, and again only serves to create more plot holes and unnecessarily convolute the story. So, in the beginning, she's a person made out of clay with life breathed into her by Zeus (Aphrodite in the original, but since we're going with Good Guy Zeus here...). No reason for her being this way, and that's totally fine. Greek gods, they're weird, magic, we can run with that. I mean heck, for 90% of the movie we run with that and the only thing that happens with it is it gets played for laughs. Then they throw in the line, "She must never find out who she truly is." Why? Because then Ares will know she exists? What's wrong with that? I mean, isn't she the godkiller, bred specifically for the purpose of killing Ares?

Speaking of which, why is she the godkiller? Do the writers really think that "Only a god can kill another god" is some sort of law of the universe and not just a metaphor? Do they not realize that their supposed law is broken in their own movie by Diana herself, who is only a DEMI-god yet kills full-blooded Ares? And who herself is put in serious danger by an altogether non-god (Doomsday)? Do they really think that Superman couldn't do exactly the same thing to Ares that Diana does? It's baffling, to be honest.

It reminded me of that stupid throwaway comment in Transformers 2 (3?) where someone says that only a Prime can kill the Big Bad of the movie, and the moment that happened I was like "Wait, are you sure? What if the US Navy used that big frakk-off railgun on the Big Bad? You know, the one that pulverized a Transformer ten times bigger than it? What if a really big explosion happened right in front of Big Bad's face? What if Megatron or Starscream decided to betray it and combined together the way Optimus did with SR-71 Guy?" And I'm not saying this movie is anywhere near as bad as that one, but what I AM saying is that I would have loved for Bumblebee to get Blackbird wings and go to town, is all.

 

And if you MUST have her be Zeus's child, if you just really really want to do it that way, there are plenty of OTHER reasons to make it so that don't involve some inane truther conspiracy. Maybe they don't want her to know her lineage until she's a certain age because she wouldn't know her own strength. Maybe they don't want her to know that Zeus raped her mom to conceive her because Zeus is known to be a rapist like that. Maybe eschew the conspiracy plot and the fabricated "life from clay" story altogether and just have it be known - to her, to the rest of Themyscira, to everyone in the outside world she meets - that she's Zeus's daughter. How would that at all significantly impact the story of her seeking out Ares to kill him?

If you get rid of the godkiller subplot altogether, would that not make for a more pleasing story? As it stands, she kills Ares because of genetics; for all the hard work she does, for however much she trains and experiences, her victory is foreordained. Would it not be a better story that BECAUSE of her hard work, BECAUSE of all her training and experiences, she manages to claw out a victory against an ostensibly more powerful being?

Yikes. You know, I came out of this movie thinking it wasn't half bad, actually. But now that I've had time to process things and actually write down my thoughts (here and there across like seven hours), I gotta say... this movie isn't very good, either. I mean, it's still way better than any other DCEU movie, but it's still only like a 4 or 5 out of 10.

...oh, also I laughed out loud at the "I believe in love" line, and I did not feel bad about it.

[Thom]

9 hours ago, kajnrig said:

Finally saw it. Overall sentiments: "Eh..." The nephew couldn't hold it in any longer and we had to leave a few minutes early (last thing we saw was the lightning explosion), so maybe something happened in that brief span of time that completely redeems the movie's more disappointing aspects, but I'm pretty confident in my opinion that it's the best of the DCEU only by virtue of being completely average.

Spoiler tag mostly for length. I just rant a bit, feel free to ignore.

 

  Reveal hidden contents

The movie takes too long to get to the good bits. The humor is more often forced than not, or at the very least is at odds with how the movie seems to want to present itself. The writing is stiff and leads to overacting, especially on the part of the Amazons. That aside, once the ball FINALLY gets rolling it's a smoother ride than not.

I really dug the beach fight, but it ended too quickly and unsatisfactorily. Robin Wright's Antiope had a commanding presence, and it was really annoying that she died within the first third of the movie (and that the Amazons as a whole became largely irrelevant to the story soon thereafter). The story can't keep a steady pace, always jerking and halting, but the awesome trench scene is where things start getting REALLY good.

The mythology is hot garbage. I hate how they mix in the Christian creation story into the Greek gods. Zeus was not a benevolent ruler, he did not create humanity (and certainly not in his image), and he did not make Earth as a paradise for them, nor did either Ares or any other god corrupt them. There's no reason to do this; all it does is introduce plot holes.

Diana's origin as part of this myth is dumb, and again only serves to create more plot holes and unnecessarily convolute the story. So, in the beginning, she's a person made out of clay with life breathed into her by Zeus (Aphrodite in the original, but since we're going with Good Guy Zeus here...). No reason for her being this way, and that's totally fine. Greek gods, they're weird, magic, we can run with that. I mean heck, for 90% of the movie we run with that and the only thing that happens with it is it gets played for laughs. Then they throw in the line, "She must never find out who she truly is." Why? Because then Ares will know she exists? What's wrong with that? I mean, isn't she the godkiller, bred specifically for the purpose of killing Ares?

Speaking of which, why is she the godkiller? Do the writers really think that "Only a god can kill another god" is some sort of law of the universe and not just a metaphor? Do they not realize that their supposed law is broken in their own movie by Diana herself, who is only a DEMI-god yet kills full-blooded Ares? And who herself is put in serious danger by an altogether non-god (Doomsday)? Do they really think that Superman couldn't do exactly the same thing to Ares that Diana does? It's baffling, to be honest.

It reminded me of that stupid throwaway comment in Transformers 2 (3?) where someone says that only a Prime can kill the Big Bad of the movie, and the moment that happened I was like "Wait, are you sure? What if the US Navy used that big frakk-off railgun on the Big Bad? You know, the one that pulverized a Transformer ten times bigger than it? What if a really big explosion happened right in front of Big Bad's face? What if Megatron or Starscream decided to betray it and combined together the way Optimus did with SR-71 Guy?" And I'm not saying this movie is anywhere near as bad as that one, but what I AM saying is that I would have loved for Bumblebee to get Blackbird wings and go to town, is all.

 

And if you MUST have her be Zeus's child, if you just really really want to do it that way, there are plenty of OTHER reasons to make it so that don't involve some inane truther conspiracy. Maybe they don't want her to know her lineage until she's a certain age because she wouldn't know her own strength. Maybe they don't want her to know that Zeus raped her mom to conceive her because Zeus is known to be a rapist like that. Maybe eschew the conspiracy plot and the fabricated "life from clay" story altogether and just have it be known - to her, to the rest of Themyscira, to everyone in the outside world she meets - that she's Zeus's daughter. How would that at all significantly impact the story of her seeking out Ares to kill him?

If you get rid of the godkiller subplot altogether, would that not make for a more pleasing story? As it stands, she kills Ares because of genetics; for all the hard work she does, for however much she trains and experiences, her victory is foreordained. Would it not be a better story that BECAUSE of her hard work, BECAUSE of all her training and experiences, she manages to claw out a victory against an ostensibly more powerful being?

Yikes. You know, I came out of this movie thinking it wasn't half bad, actually. But now that I've had time to process things and actually write down my thoughts (here and there across like seven hours), I gotta say... this movie isn't very good, either. I mean, it's still way better than any other DCEU movie, but it's still only like a 4 or 5 out of 10.

...oh, also I laughed out loud at the "I believe in love" line, and I did not feel bad about it.

 

Could not disagree more on nearly every point.

[kajnrig]

3 hours ago, Thom said:

Could not disagree more on nearly every point.

Yeah, I can dig that. I can see why people like it. I just didn't, as much.

[myk]

Overall I agree with 'kaj; with the movie being the best of the DCU which isn't saying much, unfortunately.  

My principal gripes were the pacing, with what I felt to be unnecessary scenes that should've been left for the director's edition blu ray just to keep the movie at a good pace.  

Nevertheless, Gal Gadot won me over with her portrayal and allows me to look over the faults.  The acting certainly wasn't the best of Chris Pine or anyone else in the movie...

[derex3592]

I will agree that Gal Gadot saved this movie 100%....without her it would be a trainwreck. Pine makes a great Kirk IMHO, but I really wasn't feeling his character in WW.

[kajnrig]

Very much agreed that Gadot does a great job given with what she gets. (Also, every time them gams flash on-screen... Zettai Ryouiki indeed.)

Another minor nitpick: Everyone charging forward with their firearms. It was as silly here as it was in Dark Knight Rises, and here they do it many, many, MANY times over, and they do it with bolt-action rifles to boot, AND they never have bayonets affixed to double boot.

RE: the pacing issues, I was wondering how the editing could have helped get to the story proper (WWI) more quickly, and it occurred to me that one problem I kept having was just mentally placing where everything was geographically and in relation to each other, the current state of the war, etc. Themyscira has all the indications of being Mediterranean, with super Greek architecture and culture, but they leave it and go straight to England, and from there to Belgium. So either they travel all the way around Spain and France in their dinghy, or Themyscira is located somewhere in the North Sea, and their paradise is just... Zeus magic? I thought his magic barrier was just to keep it hidden, but it also controls the climate? Why? And why a Mediterranean/coastal temperate climate, specifically? (It's almost as if it's just for convenience's sake and Themyscira SHOULD be in the Mediterranean and be hidden just by the fact that it's a remote island in the middle of nowhere.)

But anyway, once they get to the war, it's hard to know what's where in relation to what. I wonder if framing it as a historical war movie would have made the political and military context easier to understand. Or frame it as a conversation between Diana and Bruce Wayne in the future, where he's trying to learn more about the photo of her. It would allow him to act as an audience surrogate, asking questions about the war and Themyscira and the like.

[TangledThorns]

17 hours ago, derex3592 said:

I will agree that Gal Gadot saved this movie 100%....without her it would be a trainwreck. Pine makes a great Kirk IMHO, but I really wasn't feeling his character in WW.

 

I disagree about Chris Pine, his performance was... above average