(Reviewed March 25th, 2021)
*Before I go into the details of my review, I first want to say that I’ll be throwing in spoilers from the Zack Snyder cut of Justice League since that’s the only JL I’ve seen as of now.
My interpretation of this movie stems from that and other scattered DCEU movies I’m catching up on so if you want to avoid spoilers of Snyder’s JL, Man of Steel, Batman vs. Superman, Shazam, and Aquaman, come back later 🙂
Also, I’ll have spoilers in this review as well for Wonder Woman.
Also there is MCU spoilers as well. 🤣*
But anyways, yeah… three stars? On Wonder Woman??? How dare. Well lemme explain 😅
Halfway through the movie I had my heart set on giving this the prized five stars. Diana is an ENFJ and I love her! All the scenes of her and Steve in London onwards gave such a fascinating commentary on how men and women were treated back in the 1900: and I loved the direction of where things were going.
As the story unfolded and the scene in which Diane stepped out into No Man’s Land because she couldn’t handle not helping other and courageously going to fight the Germans, I realized that she is in fact my favorite DC character!
But then I also came upon the revelation of why I like the MCU over the DCEU simultaneously at the same time.
When I watch Captain America: The First Avenger, I’m watching a movie about a man who inherits super strength and struggles in knowing what’s his purpose.
He goes through the movie becoming a war hero and proves to everyone how big his heart is and that things aren’t about himself but others. And so to save a bunch of people from dying, he defeats the Red Skull and crashes into the water and at the time he knows he’s gonna die.
He doesn’t, but at the time he didn’t know that. He was sacrificing his life for the greater good.
In Iron Man, we see Tony Stark, a billionaire who’s a narcissist that’s gets kidnapped by terrorist and is tortured and after a man sacrifices his life for him, he sees the world through a different lenses and from his trauma, he tries to protect the world – even going to extremes of saying that he would put a shield of armour around the world to protect it.
In Thor, we see a Greek god who is very arrogant and naive and one day he goes too far and so his father Odin strips him of his power and sends him to the mortal world.
We see him internally struggle finding what his purpose is until Loki decides to attack and then Thor – having experienced what it’s like to be a human by being with Jane Foster – sacrifices himself (and also I haven’t seen this movie in a while so I may have butchered some details but you get the gist xD)
There are a million other marvel movies I can summarize, but the point of the matter is a majority of them follow a same pattern.
The movies values weakness first, then strength.
…Ant-Man: Reckless and irresponsible; but because of not feeling enough.
Spider-Man: Ignorant and Persistent; but because he feels like he needs to prove himself.
Black Panther: Cautious and hesitant; but because he’s insecure he’s got what it takes to be a good king.
The point of all of this is that these characters are flawed. They feel human and relatable and the reason a lot of them are endearing to so many people.
I also want to first address before going on that this is all focused on the MCU versions of the characters and not the other iterations of them. The same for where I’m going with the DCEU versions of their characters.
Now: in comparison…
Man of Steel (gah I haven’t seen this in a while; bear with me 🤣): Clark’s home planet is destroyed and his parents send him out on a pod to earth. There, he is raised by a couple on a farm.
He meets a news reporter, Lois Lane, and fights Zod, who wants to destroy earth and Clark saves the world of humans that he cares about so much because of the beauty in their humanity.
Wonder Woman: Diana is an Amazonian and daughter of the Queen of the Amazonians when she comes across a man on a plane who’s about to die and she saves his life. When he shares the the world is at war, she feels compassion for him and goes off to stop the spirit of the God of War, Ares.
When she kills the German general and the Germans still plans on sending out the gas the will kill millions, she realizes how corrupt and easily influenced humanity is.
But after witnessing Steve’s sacrifices by giving up his life to save millions from dying, she sees there is still good in humanity and stops Ares once and for all.
Clark is caring and compassionate, but also resentful to the point where he can become a scary force to be reckoned with.
Diana is empathetic and compassionate as well, but also self-righteous and could possibly become cold and judgemental about others to the point where she might shun helping humanity altogether.
And even though you can relate to their empathy, there is something so condescending about them at the same time. This superiority complex that isn’t really addressed.
DC values greatness first, then weakness.
And this isn’t just applicable to the “godlike” characters.
Batman: Very articulate about his every move and understands how people operate, but also hes a know it all and has a superior arrogance about himself.
The Flash: Hes a loveable dork who is super fast and is trying to figure out who killed his mother so he can get his father out of jail who’s falsely accused, but he’s also very reckless and sort of self-absorbed to the point in which he doesn’t seem too attuned with how others around him feel.
Cyborg: Hes like the surveillance camera of the world because he’s the product of an experimentation done by his own father, buts he’s also very bitter and rude to everyone around him.
Once I got to the last 30 minutes of Wonder Woman and after enjoying it so much, all of it just clicked as to why I was feeling so disconnected and why all the DC films felt off.
I was struggling to relate to any of them. I mean, sure I can relate and even put myself in these characters shoes from their perspective, but as soon as I jumped into their POV, I didn’t like being them – if that makes sense.
I didn’t want to be Superman because I would resent humanity too if I was perfect and being treated unfairly for doing nothing wrong.
I didn’t want to be Batman because if I would be annoyed as well because no one cares about how I feel and that my parents died; they only see me as the rich guy that can be taken advantage of.
I didn’t want to be Wonder Woman because I would hate to be dismissed all the time over human matters even though I was right.
I don’t want to watch movies about perfect or innocent people learning about being human.
I want to watch movies about corrupted humans learning the consequences of their bad behavior or be put in situations that test their characters.
I want to watch Natasha Romanoff hide behind a mask of a stoic, cold agent because when she was vulnerable and at her lowest bad things happened and she did bad things and now she’s on her own mission to convince everyone she’s a good person – including herself.
I want to see Wanda creating her own alternate reality and block out the rest of the world as she tries to deal with her trauma by herself without no ones help.
I want to see Sam Wilson step up and advocate for himself. I want to see Bucky Barnes make amends for things out of his control. I want to see Loki do things for others instead of himself.
In Man of Steel, I cared about Lois the most and throughout Snyder’s Justice League, every scene with her dealing with loss and depression was relatable. I’ve experienced those things.
In Birds of Prey, I cared about Cassandra Cain the most who is just a little girl fending for herself in the midst of several very mental unstable characters (and I’m still very worried about her after that movie tbh 😬).
In Wonder Woman, I cared about Steve the most because he came to terms emotionally in what he was fighting for and sacrificed his life by jumping onto the plane and became a hero.
Those three characters mentioned above are more heroes then the heroes of those films. Because all of the main “heroes” of those films are just fake gods designed for the audience to praise and bask in their greatness over their self indulged self righteous.
There is a reason why too; look at Zack Snyder’s personality as his vision is very reflected in those movies, the good and the bad.
And now as this review is just turning into a critic of the DCEU as a whole…
Let’s just say this: We have Shazam! That doesn’t fall into this rut for the most part and then for the MCU we have Captain Marvel that does fall into this superiority complex for the most part.
But considering the direction MCU is going – weakness first; greatness second – and where the DCEU is going – greatness first, weakness second – we better see more consequences of weak characters traits in DCEU films or in the future Warner Bros. is never gonna recover from the errors in the designs of Zack Snyder’s theme structure.
I have a rekindled hope after watching the Snydercut JL and there was a lot of very good things in that – but I also see the recurring theme of “Holier Than Thou” seeping through the film.
Thank you for reading because like idk where this passion comes from sometimes. 0.0 🤣
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