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A Few Reasons Why Wonder Woman Let Me Down

Rachael Casagrande
Alanna Keren
This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at UWindsor chapter.

This article contains spoilers!

I went to see Wonder Woman which came out in Canadian theaters June 2017 and immediately I liked the movie, but I did not love it.

There were quite a few problems I had with it, and the more I thought on it the more annoyed I was with the movie.

I’m always looking for a good movie with a strong female protagonist, and Wonder Woman gave me that, but the plot and her superhero qualities were lacking.

Here are a few reasons Wonder Woman did not meet my expectations:

  1. If the first Wonder Woman movie was meant to be an origin story then why didn’t she stay on the island of Themyscira longer? Besides Queen Hippolyta (Diana’s mother) and her aunt, Antiope, there are no other Amazons with lines or screen time. Plus, both Diana’s mother and aunt are very two dimensional. Before Antiope sacrifices herself for Diana and dies we don’t really get to know her very well. A bit more time was needed to establish the Amazons, especially as we already know a whole lot about Europe during WWI from movies and tv shows, but what we don’t know is how the Amazons lived.

  2. The moment Chris Pine, Captain Steve Trevor in the movie, enters the scene the story naturally falls onto him. Suddenly he isn’t just a love interest or a sidekick but he almost becomes the main character of the film. Gal Gadot as Diana Prince/Wonder Woman, though charming and likeable, falls to the side while she is in scenes with him. I felt the whole time during the movie I was waiting for Chris Pine to show up, for more screen time for him even though the movie is supposed to be about Wonder Woman.

  3. The cheesy romance and raunchiness of the movie was not needed. Sure, all origin stories need romance and all Superheroes need a partner, but I felt like the romance took hold of the entire story. Don’t get me wrong, I love a good romance, but this subplot took away from the main plot of Diana coming into her powers and defeating her first enemy, Ares.

  4. What Diana is doing for almost one hundred years to present day (WWI ended in 1918). Apparently, she is just going to work like a regular human being. I felt like Wonder Woman lacked the different scenes and stories that other superhero origin stories had. Maybe because the only other movie she was in so far was Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, however, her story should have been a lot more tangible than it was in this movie.

  5. Not to mention the fact that Diana in this universe just casually ignores WWII because she abandons mankind, even though the war crimes and death count are much higher than those of WWI. Plus there are Nazis, genocide, and concentration camps. If you missed Batman v Superman, this is the line where Diana explains she leaves mankind: “A hundred years ago I walked away from mankind; from a century of horrors… Men made a world where standing together is impossible.”

Wonder Woman would never in a million years ignore that war, plus in the comics she is known for fighting the Nazis. Even Gal Gadot admits that to abandon mankind is not something she would do: “None of us knew exactly, exactly, the backstory of Wonder Woman, and once they decided to shoot the solo movie for Wonder Woman and we started to dig in to understand the core of this character, we realized that, actually, there is no way that Wonder Woman would ever give up on mankind.” (http://comicbook.com/dc/2017/10/27/wonder-woman-gal-gadot-abandon-mankind/)

Despite my complaints I loved Gal Gadot and I believe she fit the role well. Wonder Woman is also a cherished feminist icon and there are no arguments that she isn’t a strong female protagonist, which is what we need at the moment (both DC and Marvel need to step there game up here).

I and many others admire her for what she is: a compassionate, strong, female hero.

I did like the movie (I even liked the cheesy romance a little) and I felt for Diana as being different from the other Amazons. But I want everyone to know that I think we deserve more. I think we deserve a movie about our favourite female (or non-female) superheroes that are well made, with characters developed and the plot seamlessly in tact.

I believe that Wonder Woman could have, and should have been a better movie.

 

Rachael is a fourth year double-major in English and History. She is both a writer and editor for Her Campus. She spends most of her time trying to multi-task but spends the majority of her day watching Netflix, reading, or hanging with friends.
Alanna Keren

UWindsor '20

Alanna is currently a 1st year student at the University of Windsor pursuing a degree in Education. She graduated from the University of WIndsor with double major in English and French in 2018. She was Co-CC/Editior in Chief of HCUWindsor from 2015-2018 and is now the Tresaurer and Guidance Counsellor. She is a figure skater and loves to get in some extra ice time in her free time. Her favourite animal is a polar bear and her favourite colour is purple. She love sparkles. Her clothing style is girly and kind of dressy. Sparkly make-up and big earrings are a big part of her look. When she is not doing homework, working at her job at Tootsies Shoe Store, coaching figure skating, or writing for Her Campus, she likes decorating cakes and cupcakes and hanging out with friends.