Things change when you have a daughter. That GIF of the cute, bouncy Olympic sprinter preparing to race would have been a turn-on a few years ago. Now it just pisses me off.
(Shut up Mudspike auto-warning, this post is in no way “similar” to “Would More RAM Matter?”)
Phew! Sorry. Trying to keep it together. OK so there’s this film out that’s yet another teat on the cash cow that is DC comics. Wonder Woman! She is a beautiful hear-girls-roar super-hero who doesn’t need a man. (But she obviously does as is hinted at by the off-story opening where the man Bruce Wayne sends her a memento that’s starts the story.) Oh and the movie is also directed by a woman so this should be a somewhat safe daughter-empowering daddy-date! Oh and Rotten Tomatoes loves it! Intelligent, action-packed, visually breathtaking, etc.! She and I have the dialog of most Star Wars films practically memorized so this will be a nice break from watching good guys constantly being shocked to discover the existence of Death Stars.
Within minutes we were transported to Amazon, a beautiful island hidden by the gods somewhere within Eindecker distance of Turkey. So far so good. Reportedly these ladies speak hundreds of languages but oddly none (except English to English speakers) accent-free. So if you’ve ever wanted to hear Robin Wright mix Russian and Greek, here’s your chance. Gorgeous women, great sword play, fancy horseback riding. Apparently that’s all these Amazonian’s do, raise goats and spar over the mellinia in preparation for the battle that will never come. Then the guy shows up. In the Eindecker. Roll the sexual tension.
Had the two just banged in out on the beach then and there I would have been much more comfortable. My daughter could close her eyes and laugh uncomfortably and the story could move on unhindered. Instead we get this long, uncomfortable bath-house scene which I guess is intended to avenge the countless times women have been made naked and vulnerable on film. And this would be a cute touch of irony accept that it instead became one long penis joke. And HE gets the last laugh as he explains that his is, ahem, “above average”. I’m no prude. And we haven’t raised our daughter prudishly. What pisses me off is that I allowed myself to buy into the hype that I was taking my daughter to see a film about a woman who is too bad-a** to need men. A film about a world where men ARE the problem. But WW needs men constantly in this film. How else would she get to the front to kill hundreds of Germans and finally sleep with her pilot friend, ending all that sexual tension at last?
Oh and the American Indian sidekick makes smoke signals!
Well that’s my rant. If you are Wondering, my daughter liked it. She laughed a lot. She isn’t quite old enough to see the bath-cave conversation as a penis joke. Her only fault with the film was that the violence was unrelentingly intense (her words). So my rant is mine alone. Rin had a great time and even managed to polish off a whole box of Swedish Fish without puking in the car on the way home.
WW was a WW1 film that happened to have WW in it. I thought it was a very good WW1 film. However, it is rated PG-13. That isn’t something to be dismissed as irrelevant, it is there to let you know they didn’t think the under-13 crowd was particularly suited to seeing it.
My wife and I went to see it without our 8 and 6 yr olds, they stayed home with the in-laws, and while they would’ve liked a scene here or there, it wasn’t a kids film at all.
If you want to know why 80% of films released today are PG-13, it’s because most adults and teens don’t go see PG or G films (because those are kid films), it has to be PG-13 or R. So a G or PG rating means your film won’t make enough money, and that’s all the studios care about. If they get critical acclaim or whatever while they make money, fine, but they’d rather make money than anything else. Likewise, R films exclude the younger teens which is another concerning issue that dictates budget and ROI expectations.
She will be 12 in October. She’s seen worse as I am not always the most appropriate father. The PG-13 rating was earned from the violence alone. The sexual stuff was there not to snag a rating but because Hollywood has no clue how to make a film without it. The guy needed his scripted virility because we are in the stone ages when it comes to telling a story. By being “above average” he became the worthy prince and she became the sexy princess as his reward. Oddly, the penis joke turned what could have been a smart super-hero film into little more than a Disney-style princess yarn.
Unfortunately, no.
Every single thing you said was your opinion backed by other opinions.
Hollywood makes plenty of films without sexual stuff, including the last two Star Wars films, Cars 1-3, the Hobbit films…I could go on but won’t. Your opinion of their respective quality is immaterial, but they do make them.
The official MPAA rating was “Rated PG-13 for sequences of violence and action, and some suggestive content”. I’d say that scene was pretty much defined by those last 4 words.
The scene was meant to be humorous. It was meant to make you laugh. It was also meant to show Diana questioning the propaganda she had been raised on about what men were. She was talking to him about his selflessness and courage and such, because that was contrary to what she thought she knew, and he merely misinterpreted it in a way meant to be humorous because he was naked.
In other words, you missed the entire point of the scene because you fixated on the wrong part of the scene. You cannot blame them when you complain about there not being any violins in it when they said it had sequences of violence. That is not what that scene was, yet you presumed it was and then proceeded to color the entire film with the brush you should never have picked up.
Oh, please list all the other Disney princess films with penis jokes, too, because going through my memory I’m hard pressed to remember a single one. Ariel calling Eric a big boy? Nope. Belle making a comment about bestiality? No. Was “Some Day My Prince Will Come” a song about him taking too long in bed? I don’t think so.
When it comes to being an appropriate father, the fundamental weakness I see here is how to make and support an opinion better than you just demonstrated. It reminds me of a saying my mother likes to use: “Why are apples better than oranges? Because ice cream has no bones.” Your talk of boneless ice cream has not supported your position that apples are superior at all.
Jedi, this seems a bit harsh. And it’s not the first time coming from you. I get the idea from this and other counters to my arguably poor opinions that you find little value in what I have to say. And that’s ok. I am not looking for fans or likes. I just found a highly regarded film to be vacuous and formulaic despite reviews praising it for being the opposite. Unless you wrote or produced the film it was no way intended to insult you or others who enjoyed it.
Anyway you’ve defended the film, and Hollywood in general, well. Touché.
