Diana Prince, cameo queen

I have to wonder how Gal Gadot feels about being asked to lend her star wattage in cameos in other DC movies, when they won't even make a third Wonder Woman movie.

The Flash marks the second 2023 DC film, and the second 2023 DC film in which Diana Prince makes a cameo. 

It's not a spoiler to mention The Flash, because the cameo comes in the first 15 minutes. It may be a spoiler to mention SPOILER ALERT Shazam: Fury of the Gods, because they hold that one to the very end and I'm sure they wanted us all to be surprised. Of course, we live in an era where everyone is all too eager to report that stuff, and who really cares about this kind of spoiler anyway. (Mine was a fairly ineffectual spoiler alert because the image above is from this movie.)

Well, it isn't obvious from either cameo that Gadot is annoyed, but I can't imagine she wouldn't be.

Now we all know Wonder Woman 1984 wasn't great, but I think we can all also admit it wasn't terrible. Okay, some people thought it was terrible. My love for the first movie and Gadot's performance in it probably allowed me to cut it some slack and give it a passing grade of three stars. But whatever you thought about it, the first was great and the character deserved to have a chance at a third.

There are a number of rumors floating out there about why it was cancelled, from Patty Jenkins walking away (that idea may have come from the fact that she was trying to juggle responsibilities on the Star Wars movie Rogue Squadron, which has also been cancelled) to DC changing the way it's doing things (an idea supported by the fact that The Flash is considered to be the last film in the DCEU). The reality is, studios bend and break their own rules if they think there is a reason to do so, and apparently they just didn't think WW3 would have the legs to be a success. 

Then why keep putting Gadot's legs in your movies?

I can't necessarily say that I'm frustrated that there will be no Wonder Woman 3, in a vacuum. Any indication that our unquenchable appetite for superhero movies might be dying off strikes me as a good sign for the movies. I'm not saying we have to get rid of them altogether, but maybe each studio gets to make one each year and that's it. I think their scarcity would certainly make us appreciate them more.

No, it's more like why does Wonder Woman not get a third movie when so many lesser properties do? I'm sure someone is out there making Venom 3 -- in fact, I've just confirmed it on IMDB -- and the first one of those movies was shite. I didn't see the second. 

Even more interesting about this whole "end the DCEU thing" is that The Flash is actually really good. Say what you want about Ezra Miller, you have every right and it's deserved, but Andy Muschietti delivered a damned entertaining movie. Don't tell me someone couldn't have found an awesome way to go with Wonder Woman in one more movie. And it wouldn't even have to have included all these other fools, because she was essentially the only superhero in the first two. 

But the really sad thing is: Without any of these other movies, we may not even see Gadot as Wonder Woman again. In fact, I think that's most likely. 

And try as she might, she just hasn't quite been able to duplicate that appeal in her other projects.

A Cyborg movie? Aquaman 2? 

Anything for one more movie from the cameo queen.*

*But wait a minute ... they are making an Aquaman 2. I forgot about the whole recasting of Amber Heard controversy. So why are they saying The Flash is the last movie of the DCEU? I can't keep any of this straight anymore. 

Justice League bad; Wonder Woman untainted

It was impossible to be sure how I would feel about Justice League. Despite sharing the same general negativity of most discriminating fans toward the DCEU, the DCEU had redeemed itself with Wonder Woman. It's been a good year for DC in general, to the extent that you can credit DC with the success of The Lego Batman Movie.

Justice League came with some advanced bad press, but if you can believe it, so did Wonder Woman. I can't remember what source this was so I can stop trusting it, but the first buzz I heard about Wonder Woman was that it was just as guilty as the other DC movies of unforgivable excess and general lack of quality. Of course, that turned out to be wrong.

One thing I felt sure about, or at least scared about, was that if Justice League was bad, it would directly taint my fond memories of Wonder Woman. It made me not want to see Justice League at all. There are other big 2017 movies I've been skipping for far less legitimate reasons, such as Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, because I am only lukewarm on the original.

Then again, for the hope that Gal Gadot's already iconic hero could elevate poor material rather than be dragged down by it, I went anyway.

Well, Justice League is, in fact, bad. But so far, it doesn't have any impact on my love for Wonder Woman.

"So far" = 12 hours since I've seen it, so we'll have to wait and see, and the true test is when I watch Wonder Woman a second time, probably in December. But so far so good.

What's on screen in Justice League is not good. What's off screen may be worse. The film feels unfinished, especially in its visual effects, which I suppose is not something we can blame only on bad filmmaking. Zack Snyder had to leave the project in order to be with his family after his adopted daughter committed suicide, and that's not a thing anyone should make light of. Snyder should probably just get a pass on this movie altogether.

And in truth, the vintage Zack Snyder sequences in this film really work. There's an opening credits montage in which we get a glimpse of society in the wake of Superman's death, and it's scored to a cover of Leonard Cohen's "Everybody Knows" performed by the singer Sigrid. It reminded me of my favorite sequence of Snyder filmmaking, the opening of Watchmen to Bob Dylan's "The Times They Are A-Changin.'" (And Snyder also used Cohen's "Hallelujah" in Watchmen.)

But so little of everything else feels coherent. That's despite me generally liking each of the three new heroes we're introduced to, particularly Jason Momoa's Aquaman, who I expected not to like. It was Ben Affleck and (heh, "spoiler" alert) Henry Cavill who I really didn't like.

So what about Diana Prince, the erstwhile Wonder Woman?

I suppose Gadot's magnetism and heroism are still there, but she's definitely someone who benefits from good direction and is limited by bad. I suppose any actor is that way, but it's clear how much more comfortable Gadot felt in the hands of Patty Jenkins. Of course, being the main character in your own movie puts you in a different head space as a performer. Even though Wonder Woman has as much to do here as anyone does, her character arc is definitely squeezed in, and it feels like that. What's worse, the story suggests that she's basically been in hiding for the full century (!) since the events of her movie. Although Wonder Woman 2 (and 3, and 4) will certainly give lie to that, it's pretty damn disappointing to learn that Diana is ashamed of her own filling or failure to fill the role of a hero for a hundred years.

And yet I don't think this has any practical impact on my feelings toward Wonder Woman, though as I said I can't be sure until I watch it again. The same logic applies as for inferior sequels. You don't now hate The Matrix just because the two sequels are sub-par. (Or maybe you do, I don't know.) I'm seeing Wonder Woman and Justice League the same way.

The only thing I wish is that Justice League had not been in the same calendar year as Wonder Woman, as it does potentially complicate my year-end ranking of the latter film. I don't mind telling you that Wonder Woman is currently entrenched in my top five of the year, out of nearly 100 movies I've seen. I'd rather have gotten its ranking out the door and into the official record books before I had to even contend with Justice League, but short of skipping that movie, I wasn't given the choice. I suppose one of these years Marvel or DC might even manage to squeeze the same character into three different movies released in the same year.

And there's a chance Wonder Woman, at least this Wonder Woman, won't have to undergo any further tainting. Gadot has said she won't play Wonder Woman again if Brett Ratner stands to profit from it in any way. This is in the wake of allegations of sexual misconduct against everybody's favorite hack punching bag.

That's the Diana I know and love.

Wondrous

There are so many movies with the word "wonder" in their title that have been or will be released in 2017, they make up an actual measurable percentage of the total number of films. (That measurable percentage would be less than 1%, but it would be a lot more measurable than the films that have, say, "Ragnarok" in their title.)

Getting us started back in June, and really deserving to have this all to herself, was Wonder Woman – a trailblazing comic book film in many respects, and now in title as well.

It’s not the only Wonder Woman-related film of the year, though – not even close. One of them (Justice League) does not have the word “wonder” in the title, though I sure be the studio wishes they could fit it in there somewhere. (Wonder Woman and the Justice League? Wonder Woman and Her Glowering Male Counterparts?) The other does, though – it’s Professor Marston and the Wonder Women, which we haven't gotten here yet, but will soon. It's a story about the creator of Wonder Woman and appears to get into some of the themes of bondage that were initially present in that character and those comics.

The conglomeration of these films can be explained by Wonder Woman having a moment, I suppose. But these other three figure to only be coincidences:

This one comes out next week in the U.S. and stars no less than Julia Roberts and Owen Wilson. It's directed by Stephen Chbosky, whose Perks of Being a Wallflower was a favorite of mine.

Then there's:

Todd Haynes' new film. Already out in the U.S. Not here yet. (A predictable pattern.)

And finally there's:

Woody Allen's new film. We get one a year, and he had to put "wonder" in the title of the one that came out in the same year as four other "wonder" films (or five if you count Justice League).

I wonder which one will be the best?

All I know is that the four (or five) others have a tough act to follow after my beloved Wonder Woman.

Embracing the hard T

Yes, you counted correctly -- this is my fourth post about Wonder Woman in the month of June.

But at least this one is about Wonder Woman and not Wonder Woman.

Gal Gadot's name throws smart people for a loop. For the purposes of this argument, I credit myself as being one of those people.

We have a default way we imagine saying the name, which owes much to our understanding of French and the work of Samuel Beckett. But Gal Gadot is not French and she may never have read Waiting for Godot.

The first time I heard the correct pronunciation of her name, it was by my editor and co-podcaster, when he mentioned her in passing on our Alien: Covenant podcast. I just thought he was simple, poor guy.

The second time I heard the correct pronunciation of her name, it was by another podcaster, this one a bit more famous: Stephen Metcalf, one of three hosts of The Slate Culture Gabfest, whose podcast I saw recorded live here in Melbourne. I thought "Oh, what a shame, Stephen Metcalf has embarrassed himself in front of the world by saying her name wrong."

The third time I heard the correct pronunciation of her name, it was the same speaker as the first time, this time during our Wonder Woman podcast. This time, I called him on it. "Are you sure you're saying that right?" I said, a smart allecky condescension dripping from my voice.

"Yes, I am. I googled it," he responded. "It was a YouTube video which just had her name spoken over and over again for about 50 seconds, by different reporters and herself."

Pretty definitive proof.

Yes indeed, you say the T. It rhymes with "vote," though how much it rhymes depends on exactly how much you are trying to approximate an Israeli accent.

Part of the reason we gravitated toward "Gadot," rhymes with "snow," was because the only other alternative our dumb American (or possibly dumb Australian) brains could imagine was to say it as "Gadot," rhymes with "hot." But because our dumb American brains are trying as hard as possible not to sound like dumb American brains, we recoil at anything that makes us sound uncouth, and "Guh-DOTT" definitely would do that. "Guh-DOH" saved us from that problem.

But, it's wrong.

The thing is, Gal Gadot is going to have to become a lot more of a household name before anyone will really believe it's wrong, in any widespread way. Our ingrained European snobbery will still make us want to say it with the French silent T, if only because it sounds right, and we want to avoid having to explain ourselves in sophisticated company, who won't yet have been confronted with its correct pronunciation and will assume we're saying it wrong. Either that or we will need to double down on the kind of wanky over-pronunciation of the Israeli accent, like people who try too hard to correctly say Spanish names and geographical locations, which, while wanky, will also make it clear we're not just saying it wrong because we're yokels.

At least puckering up your lips and saying it in the Israeli way, which sounds a bit like the sound a drop of water makes when it drips from the tap, will sound fancy.

Maybe we can just call her Gal, like Cher.

Wondering where to find my podcasts?

If you thought I just wanted another excuse to get a Wonder Woman poster on the front of my blog ... well, you're only half right. (Because I love the movie, not because I love Gal Gadot.)

I also wanted to put a pun in the subject of the post, and I also wanted to introduce a new gadget, as they call them, on the side of my blog, that gives you more places to check out my work. (So I guess you were only a third right.)

I've been a podcaster for nearly two years now, but so far, I have not spent much time pimping that part of my movie life on this blog.

But that's about to change.

As you will see if you look down to the right, below my "Most Recently Seen," "Most Recently Revisited" and "Most Recently Reviewed" lists, there is now "Most Recently Podcasted," which will contain links to the last three episodes of The ReelGood Podcast. That's the podcast I do with my mates -- to use the Australian term -- John Roebuck and Blake Curtis.

As it so happens, our most recent episode was on Wonder Woman, and it ends a string of discussions of movies I didn't like that all that much. (Spoiler alert, I guess, if you were planning to dig back into the archives.)

As each new one goes up, I will update the list.

Of course, even more preferable than this might be for you to subscribe on iTunes, where you could rate and review us if you felt so inclined. That's supposed to be good for us, or something.

So click, listen, and go see Wonder Woman goddammit.

Origins of greatness

We've seen the origin story of Batman enough times that people actively joke about the inevitable shot of Martha Wayne's pearls falling to the ground.

If you don't know what I'm talking about, you should. When young Bruce Wayne's parents get killed by that thug (a pre-accident version of the Joker) in an alley outside that theater, Martha Wayne is inevitably wearing pearls, and those pearls inevitably cascade to the ground after she is killed, as a kind chaste yet fairly indulgent signifier of her off-screen death. The most recent time this occurred was in Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice, when Zack Snyder actually has this punk (it may not always be the Joker) pull the pearls away from Martha's neck with the barrel of his gun before delivering the fatal shot (again, off screen). I'd almost say this was a case of winking at the famous Batman-specific trope if I thought Snyder had a sense of humor.

And maybe you knew that but hadn’t heard anybody joke about it. If so, you aren’t listening to The Next Picture Show podcast on the Panoply network, in which they joked extensively during the episode pairing Tim Burton’s Batman with The Lego Batman Movie that there were “no pearls harmed during the making of this movie,” and so forth. The book is out on Martha Wayne and her pearls, in any case.

I tell you all this to draw the following striking contrast: While a character like Batman can have his origin story told so many times that elements of it can actually become clichéd, I had to wait until the late date of 2017 to even know the broadest strokes about the origins of Wonder Woman.

I suppose I knew the broadest strokes, but most of those details were things I’ve forgotten. In fact, I’ve forgotten enough about the origins of Diana Prince that I thought of her more as a Batman (a superhero who has cool gadgets but no superpowers) than a Superman (a god). Well, gadgets like the lasso of truth and the invisible jet aside, Wonder Woman is not a Batman – she’s actually, literally, a god. In fact, in a fight between Wonder Woman and Superman – which we may get in the DCEU if we wait long enough – I don’t even know who would win.

And I tell you this because I’ve just seen Wonder Woman on Monday night, and it is quite simply one of my favorite superhero movies of all time.

The fact that this is a character whose origin story I didn’t even know is, frankly, shameful.

Not blaming myself here folks. Blaming Hollywood.

Given the outcome of Patty Jenkins’ movie, I might argue that it’s good we didn’t get a Wonder Woman movie before now, because then we wouldn’t have gotten this exact Wonder Woman movie, which I would never want replaced with another one. Even if getting an earlier WW movie would have meant that the studio bosses had been enlightened enough to give one of the world’s most famous superheroes a cinematic showcase before now.

Then again, arguing in the abstract about the regrettable delay in bringing Wonder Woman to the big screen is not mutually exclusive with being glad that this exact moment in the history of cinema has delivered us this exact Wonder Woman movie.

For one, if they’d given it to us earlier or later, Gal Gadot would probably not be Wonder Woman. Five years ago, at age 27, we wouldn’t have really known who she was yet, and the casting directors who had seen her only as eye candy in Fast & Furious movies might not have envisioned her in an iconic role like Wonder Woman. Five years from now, at age 37, she’d be too old. So only because Wonder Woman was made in 2017 did we get the Wonder Woman we deserve. There’s a lot of talk about just desserts in this movie, and whether we actually deserve the iconic hero Gadot has given us, I’m so glad we got her.

The love I feel for both Wonder Woman and Wonder Woman is strong enough that I feel like I could splinter this post off into a dozen subheadings, each of which could touch on a different reason why this movie is great. Instead, to rein myself in a bit I’ll just try to jam the things into this one paragraph, and only some of the things. 1) I don’t know how Gadot managed to be both powerful and vulnerable, fierce yet unspeakably kind, mature yet disarmingly innocent, and at every point absolutely beautiful, but she pulled it off, and it’s a damn fine trick that results in one of the best heroes I’ve ever seen on screen. 2) Chris Pine is also trafficking in opposites here, displaying perfect comic timing but also gravitas, strength but also a traditionally female need to be saved, moral courage and yet bearing the guilt of a legacy of cowardice. 3) The action set pieces are as rousing as any I have seen in a superhero movie since the MCU was created. 4) The period setting is even more perfect than the similarly appealing period setting of Captain America: The First Avenger, and bless this movie for having the courage to stay in it. 5) I never full-on cried, but I did tear up twice in this movie.

As I said, I truncated that paragraph. Heavily.

One other origin of greatness I am wondering about (pun not intended) is that of Patty Jenkins.

While being overjoyed that I didn't end up being that male critic that did not like Wonder Woman, I'm complicating this gender politics win by having a hard time fully crediting Jenkins for its success. I'll try to explain why.

Jenkins has directed only one other feature, which is Monster back in 2003. There's no doubt Monster is a good movie -- not a great one, but probably a very good one. It won Charlize Theron an Oscar, after all. But it's completely different than Wonder Woman, as different as two movies could get, probably. Which certainly makes it fit right in with the strange directing choices particularly for movies in the MCU, most of which do end up working out. The choice of Jenkins has been possibly the most successful of all of these.

But why Jenkins? Why did it take her 14 more years to get another movie, and why was it this one? And more importantly, was it her influence as an auteur that made this movie great, or should we actually credit the creative vision of DC, finally getting something right after so many misfires?

If you prefer to look to the screenwriter, well that's a head-scratcher too. As much of a headscratcher as anything is that it's only one screenwriter. His name is Allan Heinberg, and though he has a history with DC comics, his only history writing for the screen is in television, on shows such as Party of Five, Grey's Anatomy and Scandal. He was also involved with the Wonder Woman pilot shot for the CW back in 2012, but that was not even picked up.

For the sake of simplicity let's set Heinberg aside and focus only on Jenkins. It would be tempting to say she was installed only because of her gender, and worse, that this particular woman was hired because she does not have a body of work that would cause her to demand greater creative control, and DC could easily manipulate her. That would also be following the MCU model of directors who are willing to toe the company line.

I, of course, want to give Jenkins all the credit but am just trying to find the path to doing so. If this movie looks and feels nothing like Monster, and if it in fact does resemble other DCEU movies in substance, style and approach -- the difference being that it does everything right with these choices rather than everything wrong -- and if Jenkins has not made another film in 14 years, are we really crediting the right person if we credit Jenkins? Or is DC really the auteur here? Or is it some perfect marriage of studio and individual sensibility?

Perhaps there is a third option: Jenkins is a great director with an incredible understanding of the nuance of how to make a great movie, and it's only because Hollywood is a horribly sexist institution that she is only just now getting her chance to make a second movie. (I'm reading now that she was actually hired by Marvel to direct the Thor sequel but was dismissed after less than two months for that eternally vague but extremely common reason: "creative differences." Is it possible that DC is actually less sexist than Marvel? Or maybe just less controlling.)

Whatever the reality is, I'm so thankful to the two women who seem to be most responsible for this -- yes, I'll say it -- masterpiece.

The timing was right for Gadot and Jenkins, and as a result, it's right for all of us.

Go see this movie.

The longest gestation

I remember sometime as long ago as the early 1990s, before superhero movies were literally a dime a dozen, thinking how incredibly weird it was that Hollywood had not figured out a way to put Spider-Man in a major motion picture. It doesn't feel that long ago in the grand scheme of things, but in terms of superhero movies, it's ancient history.

I mean, it was really weird that one of the five most famous superheroes of all time, as determined by me, had yet to make a cinematic dive for our wallets.

Sure, the 1990s probably would have found special effects in an awkward no-man's land between the bad blue-screening of Christopher Reeve's Superman movies and the whiz-bang digital creations we yawn at today, making a believable rendering of Spider-Man's web-slinging and web-swinging difficult at best. But Hollywood has always found a way, and I found it strange that they hadn't yet with the erstwhile Peter Parker.

Now it's 2017, and since that time the character of Spider-Man has appeared in six different films. A month from now, it will be seven.

And Wonder Woman is only just finding her way into her own movie now.

Yeah, we saw the erstwhile Diana Prince in last year's Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice, and she was the best part of that movie, if an ill-conceived part. But she's only now headlining a movie, and it's kind of embarrassing for her that she had to be broken in to our climate of infinite shared superhero universes alongside these other two guys.

At long last, Diana Prince's time has come.

On the one hand I'm not surprised, as comic book geeks have hesitated to accept Wonder Woman on the Mount Rushmore of their heroes, a place she deserves to be. Even with 20 solid years in which Hollywood execs knew that they had to give us women who kick ass in movies -- and they have complied quite exhaustively in that regard -- there was still something about Wonder Woman that scared them. They just couldn't imagine her scaring up the bucks, and maybe they were right.

But on the other hand, it's a shock, as Wonder Woman is also one of the five most famous superheroes, I would argue, alongside the aforementioned Superman, Batman and Spider-Man. The fifth? I'm going with the Hulk, but you can feel free to argue that point. And your answer likely differs if you have a recency bias, in which case Iron Man would probably have the better case.

But it's also a shock because each of the other four have had no fewer than five big screen incarnations, each played by at least three different actors. (Has Hulk gotten to #5 yet? Is he in that second Thor movie that I haven't seen?) Superheroes far less famous than Wonder Woman have had their own multiple incarnations. In fact, characters who would be about the 30th or 40th most famous superhero have gotten their own movies before she has.

Maybe, though, the wait has been worth it. Maybe, just maybe, DC got it right this time.

Wonder Woman does come out here earlier than in the U.S., a whole day ahead on the calendar, which actually equals two days with the time change. But I haven't seen it yet. As I am writing this after midnight on June 1st, it comes out today, but I didn't go to a midnight screening tonight or anything.

However, I do have a bit of an advanced idea of how good this movie might be from an event I did attend tonight. One of the five podcasts in heavy rotation on my iPod is the Slate Culture Gabfest, hosted by Stephen Metcalf, Julia Turner and Dana Stevens. They are based in New York and do most of their shows from there, but lately -- or perhaps always, but I've only been listening for three years -- they've been doing live shows in different cities around the country. This past week they've done their most ambitious venture in that regard, a two-city trip to Australia. First they hit Sydney on Saturday night, and finished up here in Melbourne tonight.

Simply put, Dana and Julia loved Wonder Woman. They went on effusively, at length, about Patty Jenkins' movie, starring the perfectly cast Gal Gadot. (I've never been a huge fan of her acting, but she sure looks the part.) They both used the word "love" multiple times. This after the early buzz was that DC would just be digging itself a deeper creative hole from which to climb out.

Stephen was more measured in his praise, or perhaps did not praise it at all, though he seems to have taken the temperature of the room and tamped down what he might have wanted to say. And that does worry me a little bit, as some movies do divide viewers along gender lines, and it's certainly possible that a female viewer might excuse glaring flaws just because it's Wonder Woman, goddammit, finally getting her own damn movie.

But I don't think I'm likely to align myself with men just because I'm male. I loudly shot down the notion that Ghostbusters was a suspect property because it starred women rather than men, and truly, I welcome female superheroes in all their glory.

Perhaps the clearest promising sign about this movie, though, is that it tracks most closely with the Captain America movies in the Marvel universe. Both Cap and Wonder Woman seem to be anachronisms thrust into "modern" society, Cap actually moving forward in time from World War II to present day, Wonder Woman staying in the World War I era (at least for now) but born of some kind of god (I don't know the mythology) so must familiarize herself with the "modernities" of the nineteen teens. Both the first Captain America movie and this Wonder Woman movie have a period piece quotient to them, and that kind of thing really works for me.

But just to listen to Dana and Julia go on about why they liked this movie, even admitting that it made them cry at multiple points, I feel like there's something genuine here, something good, beyond creative choices made in production design and casting. Something worth discovering on my own. Something worth not writing off as just another bloated summer tentpole.

Hey, if I had time for Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales -- which I watched after the live Gabfest show -- then I certainly have time for a long-overdue dollop of possible true feminism in our superhero landscape

Long, long overdue.