We’ve got a lot to say about Wonder Woman, so the Brittney doesn’t start up until the 1:38 mark. But then we back up and read our great listener emails about Wonder Woman, so the actual 3×3 doesn’t start until the 1:56 mark. At which point we mount a discussion of stairs in movies.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at http://www.quartertothree.com/fp/2017/06/19/qt3-movie-podcast-wonder-woman/
So far the highlight was me saying “Allora…” out loud to myself in the car and being delighted to realize Dingus said it on the podcast at the exact same time.
With regard to my rejected number two pick for the 3x3, I will blurt out some spoilers.
There isn’t a ladder in Jacob’s Ladder, nor are there grapes in The Grapes Of Wrath.
There isn’t an actual panther in The Pink Panther, but there is one on the poster - a rotten trick! I watched it twice before I twigged.
I thought Tom’s ghost joke was lovely.
I withdraw my praise for Tom’s joke, having remembered he’s a divinity scholar and failed to support my rejected number two pick.
Regarding Ares’s motivation and how him masquerading as a diplomat, and how him brokering an armistice plays into him being the god of War: HE WINS! HIS PLAN TOTALLY WORKS!
WW1 ending and the Versailles Treaty led to the rise of the NatSoc party in Germany and to Hitler gaining power. WW2 follows. So Ares wins, in a way, probably leading to Diana feeling that humanity failed her, since even after she won vs Ares and ended WW1, they still did horrible things. Queue her characterization in BvS.
I am so freaking pleased that you caught this.
-xtien
I will admit something which may seem weird. One of my first thoughts this morning upon waking up was the following…
“You know ladders have steps right. Step ladders. That’s a thing!”
So I felt bad about putting you in jail upon waking up. But I’d only gotten a couple hours of sleep, so the guilty feeling went away after coffee and I thought, “Nah. Ladders should be a separate topic. Maybe he will be released for good behavior eventually.”
Sorry Keith3!
-xtien
Sorry. Hmmm.
It may not have physical forrm, but it has a landing. A balustrade.
I should’ve gone with all three staircases from Home Alone. Then you and indeed everyone would have been sorry. :(
Fair enough. But they never would be sorry since as it turns out your email was just a dream.
-xtien
I cannot tell you how happy I was to hear Tom call for superhero story endings coming down to a conversation between the two adversaries. A zero-sum debate can be as compelling, or more so, than any CGI-smeared dust-up. The world of stupid fallible humans will still need saving when they’re done.
Paging the Coen bros, I guess.
Ugh, that WW third act totally belonged to Snyder. Such a disappointment.
My brother messaged me on Friday, saying he missed my birthday but he wanted to take me out to see Wonder Woman at the theater this weekend to make up for it, and we’d go with his son. Sounded like a good plan to me! I could go straight from work on Saturday, and my wife should never find out and be jealous that she’s at home taking care of our newborn. The plan was set! And for once I’d watch a movie on the same weekend as the Qt3 movie podcast! I don’t think that’s ever happened before.
Come Saturday though, as I spent a couple of hours with my nieces and nephews, suddenly my two younger nieces also wanted to go to the movie. So we slowly herded them all to my car, and we made it to the theater with only 20 minutes to spare before the movie started. And we got there, and the show was sold out. But… the movie has been out for two weeks already!! We were all pretty surprised by how popular the movie still is at the theater on the third weekend.
Oh well. Maybe in two weeks.
If anyone’s looking for some male superheroes to call out for a complete lack of physicality undermining their characters, look no further than Danny and Davos in Iron Fist. Danny Rand isn’t a bulky guy, but he should have that lean muscly look like Bruce Lee or something. Okay, maybe it’s hard to get anyone to drop to zero body fat for a Netflix role, but Finn Jones still doesn’t really look like he’d be a serious athlete in any way.
But Davos? Even worse. In the comics he’s a big intimidating guy, bulkier than Danny. He’s the one in the pants:
On the show he’s played by Sacha Dhawan, who’s all of 5’7", and positively scrawny. It doesn’t help that his head is kinda big. He looks borderline emaciated and frail standing a half-head shorter than everyone else he shares a scene with.
You’re so wrong about the sex bit @ChristienMurawski. She’s totally in control there. He stands there in the doorway kinda sheepish and uncertain, and then she gives him that look that says “close that door buddy, we’re doing this” and made my dick stand up and shout Nice!
She’s assertive, but in a different way than throwing him on a bed.
On Wonder Woman aging (or not aging). I pretty easily accept without further explanation that your standard sci-fi/fantasy “immortal” would grow from a child to an adult normally, and then just remain somewhere in their 20s/30s in appearance. Aging means growing in the beginning of your life—a positive change, and then after a while it starts to refer to your body breaking down slowly once you’ve passed your prime physically. So it makes sense to me that an immortal would still grow normally, but then just sort of stall out when the growing is done. Makes sense for Wonder Woman, Logan, etc.
Is that not a pretty standard trope? It seemed odd to me that you guys questioned it, but maybe there are more examples of I’m not thinking of that don’t follow this logic.
What actually seemed strange once I started thinking about this question (it didn’t occur to me in the movie) is why Zeus would’ve created Diana as a child in the first place. She’s not “just” immortal, she was literally sculpted from clay and brought to life magically. I wonder why Zeus didn’t create her as an adult? Did he create her as the child at the age we first see in the movie? Was she created as a newborn baby? I don’t have answers for any of that.
Zeus didn’t create her out of clay. That was a lie, along with many other things her mother Hippolyta told her.
Zeus made her the old-fashioned way. Ares says as much when he finally reveals himself.
The whole “created from clay” bit is from the George Perez 80’s run in the comics. The previous stories for Wonder Woman had no divine origin. She was just an Amazonian from Paradise Island. She was kind of like a Captain America in that she was the absolute best athlete that was humanly possible, and her strength and dexterity was augmented by her tiara, bracelets, and lasso which had magic powers. Over time, she gained more and more power in the comics as decades worth of writers just added to her.
Then Perez came along and rebooted the character in 1987, this time leaning hard into Greek mythological roots. The Amazons were created by Artemis, Athena, Hestia, Demeter and Aphrodite from the souls of murdered women infused with the clay from the Aegean Sea. In Hippolyta’s previous life, she was pregnant. Her baby’s soul was not turned into an Amazon until Hippolyta asked the goddesses to return her infant to her sometime in the 1940’s. This version of Wonder Woman was meant to age almost normally. She was “born” in the late 40’s and showed up in “Man’s World” in the 80’s physiologically about 25-ish, but comics gonna comics so she stopped aging completely while her power levels started creeping back up. In fact, towards the end of this era, she was equal to Superman in power!
Wonder Woman was rebooted/revamped in 2010 by J. Michael Straczynski, but everyone really hated that run, so it’s been largely dismissed.
In 2013 Brian Azzarello rebooted Wonder Woman yet again, this time going back to her mythological roots, but making her the demigod daughter of Hippolyta and Zeus thus giving her a reason for being as strong as Superman and whatnot.
So, the movie sort of combines the George Perez and Brian Azzarello origin stories. But neither story dealt with the issue of her aging, so the movie doesn’t either. Which is weird since we go from WWI to now with Diana remaining largely unchanged.
Oh, and for bonus DC stupidity, the comics rebooted her in 2016 with Greg Rucka!
I agree w/ @WhollySchmidt. The presumption is that immortals grow to physical maturity and stay there. It doesn’t need to make more sense than that.
I believe I’ve made that point about Wolverine more than once, dangit!
-xtien
I’m not disputing the use of that trope. It is weird though that Diana stops aging at 25-30, while all the other Amazons stopped in the 40’s and 50’s. Or maybe they all age, just reaaaaaaaaallly slowly.