– Serious spoiler alert –

Bored I gathered my 10 min dinner and browsed through the potential distraction material for the evening. Perhaps due to nothing else catching my eye, perhaps due to the general good reviews, or perhaps in need for some ‘time to be awesome’-inspiration I settled for Wonder Woman.

In truth, I’ve been really fed-up with all the superhero movies. I grew up loving Superman, Spiderman and on Sunday mornings I watched the old cartoon version of Batman. Maybe I grew old, but it just became too much: Spiderman, Batman, the Avengers (don’t get me started…), Captain America, Spiderman again, Ironman, X-men rebooted, Spiderman yet again, Batman Joker part rebooted, some superhero no one ever heard of, Spiderman… you get where I’m going with this. So I kind of boycotted the whole genre for a very long time.

Then today I pressed play on Wonder Woman. Two hours later I was crying my eyes out in desperate, passionate grief that she will never know what his final words to her were before he goes of and sacrifices himself. I mean honestly, that would have so been so cruel, to leave her incapable of ever moving on, never knowing what he wanted to say because of his lousy timing… There I was expecting some completely emotion deprived idiocy that would just keep me mindless for a couple of hours and instead, emotionally bipolar, I fought between two equally frustrating emotions: ‘even when noble, men are just selfish pieces of *ahem* – love is such bullsh*t’ (I’m sure men has a similar sentiment on women) and ‘nooo! She needs him!’

But I’m getting a head of myself… let’s turn back time a bit.

For a superhero movie it really feels kind of ‘unsilly’. To even touch the idea of ‘gas research’ in the second world war is a rather ballsy move, or simply inappropriate, or possibly both. To be honest, I was a bit uncomfortable about the references that could be made to events entirely removed from Hollywood glam. I think this was only possible by the ridiculous framing of the whole thing. A mad scientist the likes of Twoface or the Phantom of the Opera. A reborn Xena warrior princess now even hotter and significantly more naive. And some not-so-super team worthy of the wizard of Oz… But let’s face it, the movie was rather fabulous. Scenes were well shot, the scenery spectacularly beautiful and the only really good thing about Thor – the culture clash jokes – was once again a superhero movie highlight.

So I admit, there were plenty of elements that were silly. But once again it presents a villain that sadly kind of makes sense. A bit too much world-of-warcraft in terms of fashion sense but I really sympathized. Mankind does not deserve rescue, despite her ability to ‘love’. Which takes us back to the premature conclusion: me crying my eyes out. Now I should mention that Chris Pine is not an ‘above average’ looking man in my eyes. He looks to me like a very pretty 5 years old in a man’s body. I’m simply not a fan. Yet I really liked his character in the movie. He was sweet, on point, genuine (also very well dressed most of the time). Obviously he had to die, it was made clear from the very first moment as Diana is apparently immortal now living in the modern world (I mean Captain America much? Honestly Hollywood, you need to start writing new scripts at some point or people will figure you out…). But isn’t that a bit cheap? Playing on the whole love “money-cow” for five minutes and suddenly you have the strength to ‘save the world’. Love takes forever to grow and once again Hollywood sells us a five minute commercial. One dance, one kiss (and pg13 rating) and “now I know. Only love can save the world“. And just like always I felt a bit nauseous to how easily my emotions are played. I guess it should be interpreted in a bit wider sense.

Following the Christian tradition of the US, and much of Hollywood’s good-vs-evil success, you could of course choose to take a religious interpretation, where this conclusion makes more sense. Zeus (God) creates man. Zeus sons (aka angels) become jealous and make men violent. Zeus gives them (Amazon) women (Eve). Zeus’ son Ares (Lucifer) feels that man is a bad creature and should not be saved from themselves. Zeus fights the sons as he believes them worthy of saving (throwing out the angels from heaven). Zeus has a child with a(n Amazon) woman (Jesus analogy). Only a godchild can defeat Ares. As adult that godchild is tempted to join Ares (Jesus in the desert). They fight and good wins over ‘evil’. The godchild concludes that love (a synonym for God in the Christian tradition) is the only thing that can save the world, etc… make of it what you will, but in a western culture the concepts presented are deeply rotated into our social soul, whether we are religious or not.