So, Wonder Woman was released in December 2020. What a way to mess up a heroine…..
Wonder Woman 84 or WW84, supposedly a sequel to the first movie, has many issues, but the media insisted on calling it racist because of the way Arabs are portrayed, which may be true at some level, but this is not the main issue of this movie.
In Hollywood, there have been stereotypes of minorities including people from the middle east portrayed as terrorists. They are often portrayed as “the other” in the U.S which thinks this is the same in other countries. They completely ignore their existing domestic terrorists which most of the time are often American-born and raised. In Latin America, Africa, and Asia (West, East, South, and North) the local people see the Westerners as the imperialists, mercenaries, and human traffickers. They are not doing a good job and or don’t really care for these markets.
Wonder Woman (2017) was great, we talked about it in our previous post Looking for something different in Fantasy Movies. Sure, it had its issues, but we thought it was a great way to show her origin story and her character development.
There is a history here in particular with the middle east that started with the casting of Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman. Many people from that region were not happy with this casting which is why the filmmakers tried to make amends by including Sameer but that is not why media platforms (like CBR) are raising the “racist” card. The movie has many other issues they want you to ignore. In this article, we’ll discuss some of the issues that bothered us most.
There will be SPOILERS. You have been warned!
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RELIGION
Most people didn’t catch it but there is a moment in the movie that can be interpreted as antireligion by those of that religion. Why go there?
Hollywood’s culture has become anti-religion more specifically anti “the oldest existing religions from foreign countries”. The old religions in their own country like Christianity and Catholicism, are also not respected but they don’t make it as obvious as the old foreign religions since it’s easier to vilify and ridicule something you are not familiar with. They are far from perfect but most old religions give the perception that there is something bigger than yourself that creates life, some even teach not to do with others what you don’t want to experience yourself and that there is a cause & effect to every action.
It’s not necessary to provide monetary support or go to a specific place to believe in whatever you want to believe in. And that’s the problem with most new religions today that receive some kind of financial gain which is no better than the older religions that also have a history of exploitation of their followers. Which is why most people support Hollywood’s anti religion propaganda. Hollywood celebrities are the gods and goddesses. And the way common people idolize and venerate celebrities to the point of believing everything they say and voluntarily give most of their well-earned money to these wealthy people.
You have a large group of people who say they don’t believe in anything which in most cases is not actually true. It may not be a specific religion, but it could be teachings from several religions.
We know of people that say their atheists but believe in some of the 10 commandments and in karma. That doesn’t mean they are Cristian, Catholic, or Buddhist but they are not Atheist either.
Believing in something doesn’t mean you don’t have to engage with people that are different from you. With engaging, I mean talking to each other and have an actual conversation. Not messaging and tweeting: That’s not talking!
The more you learn about each other, the more you understand each other’s point of view, the better you can communicate. As it is right now, there is a high level of tribalism promoted in media that prevents this from happening which is frightening.
Because of the influence of social media and Hollywood people no longer are interested in studying and discussing religion, history, science, ethics, and morals. Academia has become a place where you can no longer hold intelligent discussions. It all turns out in name-calling and cancel culture with no productive conclusion.
I guess we are not tolerant and accepting any more? Probably if it was an image of crucified Jesus that was taken down it would have been clearer but since it would have been obvious which is why didn’t do it. And since it is foreign and vilified already, nobody cares. The media, in this instance CBR, expertly takes away that discussion by publishing topics like this and it makes it easier to pretend it doesn’t exist.
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GREED is GOOD?
The movie expertly disguises Greed with Desire. It is propaganda: desiring stuff is kind of ok as long as it doesn’t affect you negatively. But what if it affects others? In reality, people go to great lengths to achieve wealth, and those who already have it face no significant consequences for their actions.
The oil industry has generated many jobs and contributed to economic growth. But at what cost It had negative effects on human health. Those living near a refinery will understand what I mean. Fossil fuel production had severe consequences for the environment contaminating air and water. This accelerated climate change. In most cases the regulations on the industry were poor leaving the door open to in some instances catastrophic consequences that were poorly addressed by local governments: there are year-long oil spills that still continue to damage the environment today. There are no “significant” consequences for greed and the movie does a great job reminding that to everyone.
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MILITARISM AND MUSIC
In 1984, there was no active war going on so why the need to show off militarism in this form. We all know the U.S.A spends an exponential amount of money on its Military which you’ll never see on domestic areas like education, health care, infrastructure, etc.
Not to mention there is nothing like actual 1984 in this movie regarding clothing and music. The 80s had some iconic songs but the year 1984 had some popular music that was not included in the movie. And it’s not like they can’t, Warner owns a large catalog of movies and they know the other distributors so they can easily make a deal to get the licenses to play the music. To give you an idea here are some of the most popular artists of 1984: Prince, Michael Jackson, Cindy Lauper, Phil Collins, Tina Turner, Elton John, Lionel Richie, Madonna, Billy Joel, Duran Duran and Stevie Wonder. Time after time, Against all Odds, Hello and Like A virgin were all top one songs of billboard.
They forgot to check of a movie and a TV series that got the music and the clothing right: Back to the Future and Stranger Things.
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BRINGING STEVE BACK
What is more bothersome is the way Steve came “back” possessing someone else’s body. It would have been better if they left the body with the 2 minds fighting each other for control.
As it is, the possession can be compared to being under the influence of narcotics or hypnotic drugs (out of body experience).
Even if the guy was a “casanova” it is still not ok. There is no sufficient evidence to know what that guy’s preferences were in 1984. Imagine if instead, it was a woman that liked “going around”. It would still be considered wrong! Its not like everything disappears and forgotten when they take their wishes back. They still remembered what happened.
On top of that Steve had very little to do. Why bring him back like these if you are not going to give him a proper story?
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CONTINUITY AND STRUCTURE
At the beginning of the movie, we learn things we already know about WW. There is no significant wonder woman character development to say this is something I didn’t know about WW. Most of the movie is about other characters.
In Batman vs Superman, Diana tells Bruce: “I walked away from mankind 100 years ago”. One can interpret it as: because of the pain of losing Steve, she didn’t engage with mankind as Wonder Woman but continued living as simply Diana. Now that interpretation doesn’t make sense with WW84.
The whole dream stone (or monkey’s paw) trope was puzzling. Everyone that wishes something touching the stone had to face an unintended consequence of that wish. By renouncing of the wish that unintended consequence would disappear. It would have been interesting to see the god who made the stone interacting with Diana.
The Maxwell Story was interesting. Kinda like Loki, he is pushed to the extreme to act the way he did, he is bad and needs someone to bring him back from madness. But unlike Loki, who received physical and mental punishments, he faces no significant consequences for the horrible things he did.
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FINAL THOUGHTS
As a Wonder Woman sequel, I’m so disappointed in this movie. I loved the first movie as what it was: A Wonder Woman origin story. WW84 is no sequel by any means. It’s not a Wonder Woman Story. There is no character development other than the wishing thing which is not even character growth in any way. She meets with the guy that she had nonconsensual sexual relationships with, and we are supposed to believe that that is her way of getting over Steve after 60+ years?
Again, if this was done by a man how would that look? Imagine for instance that Lois dies and it’s Clark who wishes her back. She comes back in the body of a geeky girl or a tomboy or a hooker. In none of these scenarios is it right for a man to do this so why is it ok for a woman? Some people say that men don’t care as long as they get laid but that its not the case for all men. It’s the same as saying women dressing up sexy are looking for trouble. If a woman gets harassed/drugged, has nonconsensual sexual relations, forgets what happened and discover she is pregnant, that’s ok. It is NOT! Why is it so difficult to understand?
In the DCEU Diana is supposed to be on the good side. She is not a rule follower like Clark but her taking advantage of someone without any remorse this early on is just not what her character deserves. Imagine Bruce killed someone he thinks is his enemy but later realizes that he killed someone else, someone that’s innocent. Even he would have some kind of remorse to deal with.
This movie is one of the many recent agenda driven franchise-based movies that just demotivates you as a fan to see something you like being mess up with when you know it has the potential to be great. After our last post “Looking at the Joker 2019” we have not been able to get inspiration to write more articles in 2020 to be honest. It was a difficult year in many ways for everyone.
We noticed that there is a great effort to mess up the canon of existing franchises with agenda driven political and social issues that are less important than critical issues that everyday people has to deal with in real live like the housing problem and unemployment. And its presented in such a way that it is as if they are dealing with dump people and they have their army of online (probably paid) supporters to help keep it that way.
It has been difficult to watch the people that are supposed to be inclusive and progressive inciting their base by looking for issues where there aren’t any, name calling those that don’t agree with them and death wishing those that dare to defy them. And when their people copy them and do the same they don’t take responsibility. They either remove the evidence, block or delete their account. It’s hard to believe that they would do this on their own, what kind of human being are they if they do. Its most probable that they are getting paid to do this or are incentivize in other forms like getting a gig or material stuff they want.
Overall Wonder Woman 84 didn’t do any justice for Wonder Woman. I can’t say that we are looking forward to the third movie because we don’t. We rather rewatch Wonder Woman 2016.
