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Mar. 30th, 2021 06:36 amI finally checked out some of the DC animated movies. The good ones were quite good. Sadly, neither of the Wonder Woman animated movies released to date were in that category.
Wonder Woman (2009) has a nonsensical villain - Ares is a god, and gods crave worship, so why the heck does he want to exterminate humanity and thus deny him any worshippers? But the real problem is that it oozes frat boy sexism, from a slimy Steve Trevor to an Amazon who turns against her people because she was denied the opportunity to marry and have children (bleah). And Trevor saves Paradise island from being destroyed, because behind every powerful woman there has to be a slimy man without whom the day would not have been saved. 🤬 Best avoided.
Wonder Woman: Bloodlines, on the other hand, is an incoherent mess of a film. The only explanation I can come up with is that DC had the script for a TV miniseries, but then a wild goat got loose, scattered the pages, and ate half of them at random. And rather than print out a new copy, they decided to just film the remaining half of the pages and call it a movie. It feels like a much longer story with all of the connective tissue removed. It never once stops to explain motivations, give characters a second to be themselves, or make much sense at all. Again, best avoided.
On the other hand... All Star Superman is a marvellous film that is just as good as the comic book miniseries it adapts. That's right, a film version that is fully faithful to the original material: something I would never have expected was possible from Warner Brothers.
Finally, Batman Soul of the Dragon is a fun love letter to 70's martial arts movies. Thankfully it makes Richard Dragon (DC's version of Iron Fist/white guy who becomes the world's best kung fu master), into an Asian man, thus reducing, slightly, the orientalist and racist nature of the material it's reworking. If it was all about Batman I'd not like it nearly as much, but he is just one of an ensemble cast of martial artists (and he is the only white person among them) who have to band together to defeat the bad guys. Plus, instead of being the best, Bruce Wayne is explicitly called out as the least skilled among them, which was I thought a nice touch.
Wonder Woman (2009) has a nonsensical villain - Ares is a god, and gods crave worship, so why the heck does he want to exterminate humanity and thus deny him any worshippers? But the real problem is that it oozes frat boy sexism, from a slimy Steve Trevor to an Amazon who turns against her people because she was denied the opportunity to marry and have children (bleah). And Trevor saves Paradise island from being destroyed, because behind every powerful woman there has to be a slimy man without whom the day would not have been saved. 🤬 Best avoided.
Wonder Woman: Bloodlines, on the other hand, is an incoherent mess of a film. The only explanation I can come up with is that DC had the script for a TV miniseries, but then a wild goat got loose, scattered the pages, and ate half of them at random. And rather than print out a new copy, they decided to just film the remaining half of the pages and call it a movie. It feels like a much longer story with all of the connective tissue removed. It never once stops to explain motivations, give characters a second to be themselves, or make much sense at all. Again, best avoided.
On the other hand... All Star Superman is a marvellous film that is just as good as the comic book miniseries it adapts. That's right, a film version that is fully faithful to the original material: something I would never have expected was possible from Warner Brothers.
Finally, Batman Soul of the Dragon is a fun love letter to 70's martial arts movies. Thankfully it makes Richard Dragon (DC's version of Iron Fist/white guy who becomes the world's best kung fu master), into an Asian man, thus reducing, slightly, the orientalist and racist nature of the material it's reworking. If it was all about Batman I'd not like it nearly as much, but he is just one of an ensemble cast of martial artists (and he is the only white person among them) who have to band together to defeat the bad guys. Plus, instead of being the best, Bruce Wayne is explicitly called out as the least skilled among them, which was I thought a nice touch.
