Diversity and Representation in Media

I think WW's similarities to T 1 A were being played up deliberately when it was first announced (you liked this? You might also like this), but that it could still overcome them. Aside from also taking place during a World War, it looks very different, especially when you start looking at Themiscyra and the scale of the battles being fought. This isn't commando warfare, this is Wonder Woman right in the thick of WWI's trenches. It would be great if this was the movie where DC finally nailed it. For more reasons than just Marvel and DC's protracted squabbling, too— instead, to show that a female superhero movie (and female action leads in general) can do the same kind of box office as boilerplate action movie starring Generic Blonde Male Australian Lead™, if you just put the effort in.

edited 26th May '17 1:31:21 PM by Unsung

Not surprising, considering that Patty Jenkins has said that she took a lot of inspiration from Richard Donnor's Superman film.

Wonder Woman is also connected to the story of the greater DCEU where she was beaten down by the grim realities of the world by the time of BVS, something she shared with Superman and Batman. Her movie is showing us that she started off with a heroic optimism that she can change the world, which we know has to be broken.

On thread topic, something I've appreciated about the WW advertising campaign is it's emphasis on her as a warrior. I always felt the best way to play a Wonder Woman movie is to make her badass, rather than a "Girls Rule" feminist and/or playing up her sex appeal. Female led movies in general are typically marketed on the novelty of hot girls kicking ass, like Halle Berry in leather and a whip, and often they pose as a stripper at some point.

With Wonder Woman all the emphasis is on these big battle scenes, they seem to be hinting towards feminist themes but it is just a part of the greater Fish out of Water motif, like the secretary/slavery line and Diana getting accustomed to concurrent women's fashion. She isn't out to change gender equality for the world, in part because she doesn't understand the imbalance there is between genders. I've always felt that kind of indirect approach was far better than making the story revolve around whatever social campaign the movie is aiming for.

Patty Jenkins herself said the focus was always on her as a hero in this world and the rest of the movie revolved around that.

edited 26th May '17 1:27:41 PM by KJMackley

Heroics and social issues are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Diana's been doing both for decades.

Still Star-Crossed Showrunner on Renaissance Europe: “This was not a white world, really”

https://www.themarysue.com/still-star-crossed-showrunner-renaissance-diversity/

While I agree that Europe wasn't quite as monochrome as modern media portrays it as, especially in merchant cities prior to the heyday of colonialism...

Was Giovanni de Medici actually biracial (with reputable sources) or is this one of those "Italians and any other non-Germanic Europeans aren't actually white" things that often get pushed by some social justice circles but which originates from white supremacist and social Darwinist propaganda?

What I do see is that it was believed that Alessandro de Medici, who came later, is often believed though unconfirmed to have Moorish ancestry on his mother's side (hence his nickname "Il Moro"), though at the time he was not seen as biracial per se due Values Dissonance on race in the post-social Darwinist era. So I'm not sure if it's a slip of the tongue or she just did Critical Research Failure.

edited 27th May '17 10:18:19 AM by AlleyOop

edit post

edited 29th May '17 9:51:38 AM by windleopard

So Wonder Woman is currently the second-highest rated superhero movie ever, right behind The Incredibles. Here's to it doing well on opening weekend, and for dumb folks to quit singling out Patty Jenkins and not her male colleagues for one's starting films.

Gente-Fied premiered at Sundance earlier this year, a series produced by America Ferrera, starring an all Latinx-cast, and set pretty close by to me in downtown LA. And it's got Lucio.

I mean, I'm excited too but prerelease Rotten Tomatoes scores mean absolutely nothing.

This. That beings aid, reception seems generally positive for the fourth installment in the DCU clusterfuck. As entertaining as it would be to see the gradual decline of the DCU slip further, I do want to see a lot of these properties take off, and I'm glad that Wonder Woman seems to be doing well for itself.

In terms of the overall critical response for a movie, it's a very strong indicator. While Rotten Tomatoes scores can trend down a bit after release, I honestly can't remember the last time I've seen one shift more then 10% opening weekend. Studios simply aren't going to cherry pick critics to invite to press screenings with that level of detail, and if they try to pull that it's going to be painfully obvious to the press what they are doing.

Usually if a studio is hiding a movie they aren't confident in from critics, they will just put an embargo on reviews or not have press screenings until the day before the movie is out.

Now in terms of financial success that's another matter, but positive critical reception can only help a movie.

Bv S and SS plummeted pretty quick in the reviews from what I recall.

They had pretty middling reviews to begin with. A very high RT score or a very low one is pretty telling as far as critical response goes, but since it's only an average of how many positive or negative reviews there are, a score in the middle can mean anything: Love It or Hate It, just plain mediocre, ambitious but fell short, serviceable but nothing special, and on and on, and those are the scores that can really swing one way or the other after the movie gets its wide release. And none of those really guarantee whether any individual moviegover is going to like them. There are critical darlings in which the average viewer will have zero interest, and hot garbage like Suicide Squad which goes on to outgross pretty much all of its competition.

An RT score is a pretty solid indicator of critical response, and a high score will tell you if a movie is well-made, but whether or not a movie is good isn't an indication of whether or not you yourself will like it. Still gotta read the actual reviews, in other words, and know your own tastes.

edited 31st May '17 4:43:59 PM by Unsung

I don't think it'll stay this high (Deadpool opened with 100%, dropped to 84% when it premiered), but I don't think it'll drop any lower than 80-85%.

edited 31st May '17 4:43:43 PM by Gaon

Yeah I don't think Wonder Woman will be anything super special, just a really solid superhero flick, but the point is that it empirically flies in the face of executives who cling onto the belief that female-led superhero films won't do well with critics or general audiences, or that female directors can't do blockbusters action films, and that they've lost any ability to fall back on that excuse in the future for not getting with the times.

Also it's just sort of poetic in a meta sense that Wonder Woman is not only a savior figure for the in-universe characters but out of it too for the DCEU as a whole.

edited 1st Jun '17 1:59:41 AM by AlleyOop

Rotten Tomatoes is more than the percentage, there is also the review average. It does make a difference if a movie averages in the 7 something area or in the 8 something area. And when one averages in the 9 something area, than it is most likely well worth a watch even if it doesn't sound that interesting. But that high of a score is pretty rare.

Well at 7.6 it is identical to TWS so I am most definitely pumped. Given that TWS is the best MCU movie and all.

edited 1st Jun '17 3:19:03 AM by Julep

A Brief List of Male Directors Who Got the Big Break Wonder Woman's Patty Jenkins Finally Received

http://io9.gizmodo.com/a-brief-list-of-male-directors-who-got-the-big-break-wo-1795694183

What point was the author trying to make with that mansplaining of an article?

Not sure if I can find it, but there's an article going around which refers to the studio taking a risk on Patty Jenkins and describes her previous endeavor as an "indie film"- which prompted a lot of rebuttals about the large number of male directors with similar or less impressive backgrounds who were given big action/superhero films to direct, and how no one wrote articles about it being a risk in their cases. Further, the "indie move" Jenkins directed was Monster which won tons of awards and was pretty widely released/seen.

So, the io9 piece is reacting against that article.

edited 1st Jun '17 8:54:50 AM by Hodor2

8 million budget, an oscar and 60 mil in ticket sales. Then nobody gives her a movie to direct for over a decade. It is like hollywood does not like making money

Here's the article in question

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/features/complex-gender-politics-wonder-woman-movie-1008259

Thanks.

So the New Mutants movie found it's Sunspot.... in Henry Zaga of 13 Reasons Why fame.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BUzG4w9jJ52/

Naturally, this was not well received. Doesn't help that comics Robbie has been whitewashed in the comics even before this as well.

http://io9.gizmodo.com/the-new-mutants-movie-has-found-its-sunspot-but-why-ar-1795586698

sorry.

edited 1st Jun '17 4:14:50 PM by windleopard

Okay, windleopard, you really need to ease up on the whole "drop a link and walk away" thing. I know we've talked about this.

I'm glad they got an a proper Brazilian, but I thought the comics, while inconsistent as hell in their own way, generally suggest he's not a branco but a pardo or darker?