Wonder Woman 2017 - Beating Marvel to the punch

As a hard boiled John Woo fan, it’s maybe not surprising I fall somewhere in the neighborhood of, “There’s no such thing as too much slow motion.”

I think the slow-mo mostly works works in Wonder Woman – it’s used to convey that she’s in control and she’s being deliberate and methodical in her violence. As opposed to Man of Steel, where it’s used to show how awesome it is to punch someone super hard.

(Also, it’s really hard to show a bracer deflecting a bullet outside of slow-mo.)

Pretty much all of WW’s equipment is magical - the bracelets, sword, lasso definitely, and probably the shield and armor.

Patty Jenkins told Collider that there aren’t any deleted scenes. In a post-release Hollywood Reporter interview, she maintains that the movie is generally the same as what she envisioned, with the exception of one reshoot for a specific scene.

I think either Collider or somewhere else pointed out that her previous movie, Monster, didn’t have any deleted scenes either.

[quote]
Emmerich says that Jenkins is already working on a “Wonder Woman” sequel. It won’t take place in World War I, as the first film did, but it will also likely be set in the past.

“It will take place somewhere between 1917 and 2017,” Emmerich says coyly.

He’s also thinking of ways that DC can differentiate itself from Marvel projects, which tend to be family-friendly. Emmerich says he admires violent, irreverent and very adult comic-book movies such as “Logan” and “Deadpool.”

“I would be surprised if we didn’t at some point make an R-rated DC movie,” says Emmerich.[/quote]

And

[quote]
“Suicide Squad” and “Batman v. Superman” made money, but critics hated them. Did you learn anything from the poor response to the films?
Berg: There are lessons from every movie. You would be silly not to analyze how a movie was received — what went right and what went wrong on the making of a movie.

On “Suicide Squad,” the movie did incredibly well commercially. It didn’t work narratively. You had some great casting and some great characterizations, but where the story fell down was on narrative, on plot. We could do better. “Batman v. Superman” was tonally dark. People didn’t respond to that.

Johns: “Wonder Woman” celebrated exactly who the character is, but looking at it, it’s not like we should change everything to be about hope and optimism. There’s nothing to change. That’s what these characters are.[/quote]

FFS, it’s not that it was tonally dark; that’s fine IF done well (eg - Nolan as well as the Gotham tv series). It’s that the movie got stupid as hell at critical moments. This seems to harken back to “People apparently don’t like to see their heroes deconstructed” BS that Snyder uttered after the film fell flat.

I left B vs S feeling I was unlikely to watch the next one because I wasn’t really interested in seeing what was next for either of them. Suicide Squad… barely cared about the characters while I was watching them and certainly didn’t want to know more about any of them. It’s not about what these characters are… those movies did not instill the desire to see more in people who were not already fans of the characters. They certainly suggest it was lacking, that something needed to change.

There’s a viral story going around about how Gal Gadot was screwed on her paycheck for Wonder Woman. It’s based on fundamentally not understanding how these movies work. She reportedly got $300,000 for her role, which sounds shitastic when compared to Ben Affleck’s or Henry Cavill’s 7-figure up-front checks for their work in Batman v Superman. The story continues that this is obviously another egregious example of how women in Hollywood get boned on pay compared to their male counterparts.

But here’s the thing: Gal Gadot’s pay is completely to scale for other young actors in these franchise blockbusters. Chris Evans got $300,000 for The First Avenger. Chris Hemsworth got $200,000 for Thor. Tom Hiddleston made $160,000 for The Avengers and he didn’t get any back-end points. Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, and Jason Isaac each got about $200,000 for The Force Awakens.

Ben Affleck gets what he gets because he’s Ben Affleck - a known draw for audiences. Henry Cavill got his paycheck because Warner Bros was in the similar situation that Marvel was in with Robert Downey Jr. They needed him more than vice versa.

These lowball paychecks for sophomore actors in blockbusters are more common than not. The key is that these folks renegotiate their deals down the line. (See everyone in The Avengers after that movie.) If Gal Gadot gets a shit paycheck in Justice League 2 compared to the guy playing Cyborg, then you can fire up the outrage engines.

Stories like this wouldn’t fly so quickly if there it wasn’t the other part of a sandwich that said the movie was barely marketed and not well supported when it opened.

Japan gets Wonder Woman better than America!

Dig it:

-Tom

Can someone describe the Hello Kitty demographics?

That depends. Are you talking about the pink notebooks and pens, the make-up or the S&M hotel and sex toys. Aka, the answer is Hello Kitty covers a lot and therefore has several demographics.

Strong woman, weak plot… I loved every scene with her (because Gal Gadot), but the plot didn’t do it for me. I never felt she was in any danger, so the action was nice to watch but not exciting. How do we get into this german infested castle? 5 min. later they were in. Also WW1 Germans were not Nazis, but they were displayed that way… and Chris Pine was a bit too much above average, so he never clicked with me… and that scotish guy? It looked like they were the dirty quarter dozen, but didn’t … But no denial, Wonder Woman, she is hot … but she needs a better plot/movie (it felt very much like Captain America 1 to me)…

Saw it, liked it a lot. Gal Gadot is just amazing. Plot was very typical, but not completely boring. Side characters were fun, Chris Pine did a great job. This was basically Thor and Captain America in one movie, and I liked this better than both.

I didn’t like that Ares existed at all. Would have been a much powerful film if the idea was that there was no Ares at all, or that an Ares that showed up would have had nothing to do with WW1 and make the case against humans in that way.

Not perfect but the best origin film since Iron man.
4/5

I also was half-expecting this kind of approach, and that would have been a welcome criticism on the weaknesses of humanity; Ares shows up, sees the devastation and bloodshed, and with a shrug of his shoulders mutters something like “I guess my work was already done. Well done, mortals.”

I’m pretty sure they decided that Ares was necessary largely to wrap up the “divine origin” part of Diana’s story, not necessarily as a “big bad guy prodding humans to do bad things” character. With him out of the picture, there aren’t any gods left to meddle in Diana’s affairs and future movies don’t have to worry about using them in the story. Unless they want to, of course.

I thought it would have been cool that in one of the scenes of the German troops after Ares’ defeat, you saw a young Corporal Adolf Hitler slink out of the trenches . . .

Nah. I’m pretty sure he was there because Wonder Woman’s revamped Brian Azzarello origin matched up nicely with the movie studio’s need to have a special effects heavy blockbuster last act. The fact that they had to twist the story (painfully) to account for Ares being the last living god made this obvious because they were clearing the slate and making sure they wouldn’t have to deal with a pantheon of Greek gods in the modern day JLA movies.

I think you’re over-analyzing it. I believe the studio just wanted the movie to have a boss fight, because super hero movies need boss fights.

They sorta had to give WW an god-like enemy, that German dude taking Super Soldier Serum wasn’t going to cut it. She already tanked Doomsday in BvS, who swatted Superman away like a fly and Batman spent 10 minutes kiting and trying not to get hit. So they had to match that.

That’s what I was getting at. Could have been done without Ares, true, but I didn’t mind the way they ended up going.