You said Captain Marvel, I thought Wonder Woman. Same thing though. 😅
I do understand why many people react like that to criticism of something empowering though. If you’ve been oppressed, bullied and hurt for something forever you of course see it everywhere (because that’s where the source of pain usually is/was, fucking everywhere). I’m dealing with that shit myself, it takes serious energy not to immediately jump at people when they express anything that could be transphobic. After an awful day I might only realise later how I overinterpreted a situation.
Now of course there is a small but loud minority of performative “supporters” who completely misinterpret most criticism, verbally attack people on sight and are genuinely annoying for no good reason. That’s an absolute minority though, hard to distinguish from (bad-faith) trolls and just a menace to everyone. Unfortunately you generally can’t distinguish those on social media…
A lot of people love Wonder Woman 2017 but definitely not for her own character development. She just kind of wants to do whatever she wants, escapes the island and does it, and then they shoehorn in a twist villain at the end.
I think what makes it work is the refreshing grimdark take on the war and that the character who does the development and experiences a magical adventure is this sidekick pilot dude and gets to bear witness to the antics of a goddess.
I have similar feelings about the Aquaman Sequels.
Wonder Woman also manages to make great humor out of how she’s basically in the wrong place, wrong time. That contrast works and makes all the interactions and characters themselves around it more interesting than they would be in a different plot. The ending really is the greatest weakness of the movie; a clearly way easier and better ending would have been that there was no big bad guy, that it was just the humans being humans. Now it just fell flat instead of having some slightly deeper and way more interesting insight.
I’d say it’s what usually fails most action films in general though. Big bad evil, hero fight evil, evil beaten yayy but heavy cost. Even otherwise good action films like John Wick end up repeating the cliché. It’s very disappointing every time they do it and has ruined so many movies already. Do people really want to see the boring end fight that you know is coming and will always go the same way over and over again?
You said Captain Marvel, I thought Wonder Woman. Same thing though. 😅
I do understand why many people react like that to criticism of something empowering though. If you’ve been oppressed, bullied and hurt for something forever you of course see it everywhere (because that’s where the source of pain usually is/was, fucking everywhere). I’m dealing with that shit myself, it takes serious energy not to immediately jump at people when they express anything that could be transphobic. After an awful day I might only realise later how I overinterpreted a situation.
Now of course there is a small but loud minority of performative “supporters” who completely misinterpret most criticism, verbally attack people on sight and are genuinely annoying for no good reason. That’s an absolute minority though, hard to distinguish from (bad-faith) trolls and just a menace to everyone. Unfortunately you generally can’t distinguish those on social media…
A lot of people love Wonder Woman 2017 but definitely not for her own character development. She just kind of wants to do whatever she wants, escapes the island and does it, and then they shoehorn in a twist villain at the end.
I think what makes it work is the refreshing grimdark take on the war and that the character who does the development and experiences a magical adventure is this sidekick pilot dude and gets to bear witness to the antics of a goddess.
I have similar feelings about the Aquaman Sequels.
Wonder Woman also manages to make great humor out of how she’s basically in the wrong place, wrong time. That contrast works and makes all the interactions and characters themselves around it more interesting than they would be in a different plot. The ending really is the greatest weakness of the movie; a clearly way easier and better ending would have been that there was no big bad guy, that it was just the humans being humans. Now it just fell flat instead of having some slightly deeper and way more interesting insight.
I’d say it’s what usually fails most action films in general though. Big bad evil, hero fight evil, evil beaten yayy but heavy cost. Even otherwise good action films like John Wick end up repeating the cliché. It’s very disappointing every time they do it and has ruined so many movies already. Do people really want to see the boring end fight that you know is coming and will always go the same way over and over again?