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Post by robeiae on Dec 28, 2020 9:13:21 GMT -5
Yes, yes, I know I'm bashing, but someone just noted something on twitter that I missed: the movie had no '80s music!!!! How is that possible? This piece claims it did, but I can't remember hearing any of these songs:
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Post by robeiae on Dec 29, 2020 7:30:39 GMT -5
A little more:
My fairly woke eldest daughter (23 today) told me that while she hadn't seen the movie, all of her friends who had thought it was beyond awful. These are friends--mostly women--who are in the US and Europe. Some of them were particularly upset with the geopolitics of it all, with the way that muslims were portrayed in relation to a white savior. Others--most, actually--were perturbed at how "female empowerment" is supposed to be a theme, yet both the female protagonist and female antagonist need their men to save them, both literally and figuratively. Also, some (my daughter has a degree in film studies) were put off by what they saw as awful CGI and effects. Apparently, there are scenes were one can see green screens reflected in characters' eyeglasses, as well.
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Post by prozyan on Dec 29, 2020 10:27:09 GMT -5
Adagio in D Minor plays during the awkward "she's learning to fly" scene. That's the only one I recognized.
Movie was really pretty blah.
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Post by Optimus on Apr 10, 2021 22:29:16 GMT -5
Okay, finally got bored enough to rent this tonight. It's a failure on almost every level. I knew immediately it would be because any movie that opens with an extended, cheesy voice over is a red flag that it's going to be awful.
I could definitely tell that this movie dripping with the WB's executives and Geoff Johns's dumb desire to make the DC movies more colorful and happier than the Snyderverse movies in the misguided belief that it will make them compete with the MCU. It's also clear that Patty Jenkins and Geoff Johns had complete control and likely no story editor or professional writer with any talent to help them craft a story that wasn't complete shit. The 2017 WW story was written by Snyder and two other people who actually understood the character. Jenkins and Johns obviously do not.
This is clear even from the opening sequence, when "kid Diana" beat all the top Amazons in that competition. That totally defeats what made her origin good in the previous movie. In the original WW, she had to train in secret, made mistakes, wasn't good at first, and then eventually became the champion after training for decades and overcoming her weaknesses. In WW84, she's basically the best on the island when she's 8 years old, from the very start, which is complete horseshit. She was basically the WW version of Rey from The Force Awakens (another terrible Mary Sue character)
The next sequence with the robbery and the mall looked and felt like it'd been directed and written by Richard Lester (the one who took over for Richard Donner on Superman II and filled it with all the corny jokes and dopey humor). It was god awful and didn't match the tone of the rest of the movie at all. That was another problem; this movie's tone was so inconsistent.
I might not have been quite as harsh on it had I not seen the Snyder cut of the Justice League recently (it's excellent, btw) which portrays Diana as much more serious and intelligent and allows Wonder Woman to be a complete ass-kicking badass. This movie makes her look weak and almost incompetent.
Even the music sucked. Hans Zimmer's and Junkie XL's Wonder Woman theme is cool and one of the things that makes it cool is the electric cello (sounds like an electric guitar) used in it. Taking that cool theme and playing it as a symphony piece made it sound more like some lame, tired Danny Elfman cliche. Took all the punch out of it.
Also, two questions about the end:
1) She was already on her way to the military base without the armor, then she gets there and suddenly has it on? When did she go to her apartment and get it? Also...this ancient god armor was just sitting in her closet like an old wedding dress? She just happened to find it at some point and then...hung it in her closet? Batman takes better care of his suits and they're not god armor.
2) Also, why the hell did she need it? She already gave up her wish and got her powers back before the fight with Cheetah. Seems like it was just something Jenkins and Johns thought would look cool, so they crammed it into the movie despite the fact that it didn't serve the story at all and made no sense to have it in there in the first place.
Her monologue at the end to Max Lord while she's crying in the corner was just really stupid.
This movie suffered from the "too many villains" problem. It should've either been Max Lord OR Cheetah. Not both. Cheetah turned out to be a completely unnecessary character and served no purpose but to bloat the story with a character and B-story that was mostly unrelated to the main plot...whatever the hell the main plot was (it was a convoluted mess regardless).
Gadot tries her best in this given the shit material she had to work with, but the fact that Jenkins has signed on to write and direct the next sequel doesn't fill me with much hope that it'll be any better than this steaming pile of manure. But, with all the controversy surrounding Johns and him basically being pushed aside at WB (because of the Joss Whedon investigation), maybe they'll bring in somebody good. Actually, given that AT&T forced WB to release the Snyder cut, and it was a huge success for them, maybe the smarter heads at AT&T will intervene to ensure that the next WW is good. One can hope, at least.
This was more proof that, despite the issues with some of Snyder's choices in Batman v Superman, his vision for this cinematic universe has been far and away better than anything anyone else has done with it that WB has allowed to make a movie (e.g., WW84, Harley Quinn movie, Aquaman, Suicide Squad).
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Post by robeiae on Apr 11, 2021 8:14:03 GMT -5
1) She was already on her way to the military base without the armor, then she gets there and suddenly has it on? When did she go to her apartment and get it? Also...this ancient god armor was just sitting in her closet like an old wedding dress? She just happened to find it at some point and then...hung it in her closet? Batman takes better care of his suits and they're not god armor. I actually noted this in my spoilers post upthread: In Highlander II, MacLeod suddenly regains the sword he had in the first movie for the end battle. There's no explanation as to how or why given. Highlander II, of course, is total shit. I think there are writers/directors out there who simply fail to appreciate geekdom, who think that "coolness" outweighs consistency, so they do things like this, offer up a sword or magical armor for no other reason than because they think fans will just go "awesome!" It reflects a fundamental pov that sci-fi/fantasy/comic book fans are easily impressed, are unsophisticated. Which is funny, since we're probably waaaaay more sophisticated--when it comes to plots and plot devices--than those who don't like these genres. Snyder, Cameron, Whedon, Ridley Scott, these people get it. I don't think Jenkins gets it at all. Johns should get it, given his history. Has success just made him pathetically lazy? As to Jenkins, I think the feminist cache the first WW garnered was her undoing. People treated her like she was the first women to direct any sort of major blockbuster and they treated the movie like it was first time a badass heroic woman was the lead. She bought into that hype, thinking whatever she did was automatically brilliant.
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Post by Optimus on Apr 11, 2021 21:36:47 GMT -5
Johns should get it, given his history. Has success just made him pathetically lazy? Johns is a great example of failing upwards. He's never written anything good outside of comics. He wrote the Green Lantern movie, which majorly sucked. Co-wrote the story for Aquaman, which was dumb and actually way too "comic booky" for movies (Wan tried to save it via the director's chair as much as he could, I suppose). Co-wrote the shit-sandwich that was WW84. He wrote one decent episode of the Justice League cartoon from nearly 20 years ago. Wrote the worst episode of season 1 of Arrow (actually the only bad episode that season). Etc. etc. He only really got popular in the comic world for writing Flashpoint, which was a really cool story. Unfortunately, him writing that led to the mostly disappointing "New 52" phase of DC which had a few decent points in it but was also disliked by fans for erasing Wally West from the comics. Johns has always had a hard-on for Barry Allen but Wally West has always been the more popular Flash among comics fans (by a mile). But, Johns prefers Allen, for some stupid reason, and has forced Allen on everyone any chance he gets despite the fact that the modern audience grew up loving West (through the comics and the popular Justice League cartoons). As I said, he's had a couple of good ideas but the peak of his career (and really his only good accomplishment) was Flashpoint and because of that one great story, he has gotten much more praise and success than he actually deserves. Everything else he's done has mostly sucked but so many people at DC quit or were fired over the past decade (aside from Jim Lee) that he's been able to fail upwards at an astonishing pace, to the unfortunate detriment of the overall product (comics and movies).
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