(Note: This post includes spoilers for the new Wonder Woman movie, so proceed accordingly.)
Wonder Woman has been breaking glass ceilings at the box office, and much of that has been driven by a voracious appetite from women who are enthusiastically embracing a film portraying us as we see ourselves: warriors. Although other female superheroes exist, they are rarely given a central storyline and exist primarily as secondary characters in ensemble casts – until this film, Wonder Woman herself fit this description. However, compared with other female superheroes, Wonder Woman – Diana Prince – as a character is meaningful because she comes from a culture where her gender does not put her immediately outside the spheres of power. Unlike girls in our world, who already by age six have absorbed negative gender stereotypes, Diana Prince grew up without any sense of inferiority due to her sex. Given the Girl Power theme, I wanted – and expected! – to like the movie. Unfortunately, even with a female director at the helm, the movie slips into unnecessary gender stereotypes, and I left the theater still waiting for a female superhero who represents me.
It is a sign of how little we have come to expect from a male-dominated society that women are so eagerly welcoming a film that portrays us as uncomplicated bleeding hearts wrapped with serious fighting skills. There are themes that could have been explored more fully to add depth to Diana – as with Ironman, there could be a plethora of angst regarding parental relationships, and while the theme of gender inequality is teased, Diana’s impatience with it doesn’t seem to inform the central dilemma she faces. Even that central dilemma – whether humanity is worthy of her protection – is only superficially investigated. She spends approximately five minutes of the movie contemplating it.
Although several scenes early in the movie are included as a way to show how complicated humans are – the initial battle when Steve Trevor arrives on the island, the whipping of the horses to get them to move more quickly away from the WWI front, the explanation by Chief Napi that the good guys in this war were responsible for the loss of his people’s lands – Diana stands firm in her pursuit of Ares. It seems like a woman who has been educated well enough to understand Sumerian would take a more critical view of information presented to her, but the Diana Prince of this film is not the introspective sort.
Perhaps I am being unfair to her. Most women have rich inner lives that are invisible to those around us, concealed in order to conform. If Diana is struggling with the paradox of saving a brutal species, though, we only see evidence of that as she finally confronts Ares. Until that moment, the film would have us believe, she has attributed all of humanity’s faults to the interference of the God of War. This is perhaps the most glaring weakness of the film as a feminist manifesto: real strength doesn’t come from unquestioningly accepting the easiest version of the world. Real women grapple daily with contradictions and inconsistencies. A true female superhero should do the same.
My other primary problem with the film is actually more a problem with the character of Wonder Woman herself. Her creator William Moulton Marston wanted a superhero who won because of love, not war; his wife proclaimed that to be fine, as long as the superhero were a woman. So although I seethed as I watched Diana’s motivation for saving humanity go from duty and civic responsibility to the love of a single man and his ultimate sacrifice, I understand that it is true to the source material to make “love saves the day” the overarching mantra. In the end, I am asking too much of a single character, especially one with well-read source material containing controversies of its own.
Hopefully the success of this film will inspire filmmakers – and the people with money who back them – to bring richer, more complicated female heroes to the big screen. Instead of being disappointed that this portrayal of Diana Prince falls short of what I would wish, I should focus on the positive: a warrior saved humanity, and, for once, the women saving the day regularly all over the world got to see themselves reflected in that warrior.
I think that this movie probably accomplishes its goals, namely, to make money, to give the audience food for thought and to make it inevitable that a sequel is forthcoming. Perhaps the heroes will be given deeper feelings as the story becomes richer, like the Star Wars group of films. To make the characters more human, and therefore more heroic, several more hours of action and cinematic emotion will be necessary.