I don’t really planning on going out and seeing Wonder Woman. Not because I’m a sexist pig that refuses to support a film with a strong leading woman, but because I’m just not really that interested. One, it’s a DC Comics film, and I know there’s a fallacy of predicting the future based on the past, but if the last few stinkers were any indication, it’s probably not going to be that great. And two, the monumental amount of attention and press that this film has received, regardless of it was actually about the film or not, has put this movie on a plateau of expectations that I just don’t think can realistically be reached.
Had Wonder Woman just been released like any other comic book movie, I might’ve had more interest in seeing it. I mean, this variant of Wonder Woman was introduced in such an epic manner, giving a modicum of life and interest to the steamer known as Batman v. Superman, that it really shouldn’t have been too difficult to expect that a stand-alone Wonder Woman should be just fine.
Now I know that as a man, it’s not really my place to speak on behalf of women, but I still have a lot of opinions on how the buildup and arrival of this movie has basically taken on a life greater than the film itself, and I think that it’s kind of unfair to the film and those who worked on it, that it’s being treated as anything other than a feature film that people will pay money to hope to be entertained by, and little else.
Don’t get me wrong, I think Gal Gadot is awesome. If anything at all, I feel like I’ve been a fan of hers longer than most sudden Wonder Woman fans are, because I’ve enjoyed her throughout the later Fast & Furious films, where she plays Gisele, who isn’t just eye candy, but another strong female protagonist not defined by her role in the lives of men. I know she served in the Israeli army, which explains why she’s so rock hard and convincingly tough, because she actually is, and nobody needs to give me an elaborate dossier for me to know that I appreciate her.
But in the months, weeks and days leading up to the release of the film, I felt overwhelmed, agitated, and downright annoyed by the sheer amount of volume of the clashing feminism and the counter-arguments, sometimes passively aided by sheer contrarian troll behavior. I get it, it’s a film about a strong female protagonist that doesn’t have to be objectified and is awesome in her every right, I know this, because I grew up reading comic books.
Social media, which is really the worst, has taken a movie and turned it into this obnoxious symbol of strife, conflict and shouting about feminism, and I’m fully aware that despite it being 2017, the inequities in the world when it comes to men compared to women, but Jesus Christ, I wish the volume just weren’t so loud. By no means am I going to say to not say anything, but tone it down just a notch please. It’s just a fucking movie, and I feel like it’s already been tainted by just how much people are trying to make it something more than that.
