WONDER WOMAN: You Should Have Saved the World and Not Me

Wonder Woman (2009) – Directed by Lauren Montgomery – Starring Keri Russell, Nathan Fillion, Alfred Molina, Rosario Dawson, Marg Helgenberger, Oliver Platt, and Virginia Madsen.

WONDER WOMAN sits solidly in the Man Whore Meets Virgin, Man Whore Disgusts Virgin, Man Whore Conquers Virgin mode of storytelling.

I understand the point of stories like this, of course. They are fables that seek to acknowledge exaggerated, individualistic gender stereotypes and then collapse them into the safe, communal roles a society needs them to fill so that the society can maintain itself. So we have the exaggerated alpha male who drops seed all over the place meeting up with the super virginal woman who rejects all seed. He wants to conquer her, because that’s what he does, and she’s disgusted by him, because he represents the life she’s rejected. Societies can’t continue to exist in optimal working order, however, if the man doesn’t eventually allow his seed to turn to progeny, and the woman doesn’t eventually allow her body to be the vessel for the next generation.

And so we have Steve Trevor (Nathan Fillion), All-American male, military fighter pilot, and man whore extraordinaire, crashing his damaged fighter jet onto Paradise Island, populated solely by gorgeous Amazons, and focusing all of his energy on conquering Diana (Keri Russell), the virgin princess.

I have a pretty strong aversion to this plot, but not to the point where it automatically ruins a story for me. It just feels like a relic of a storytelling age better left in the past. I do find it particularly disturbing when storytellers (especially female storytellers, as are involved here with director Lauren Montgomery and co-writer Gail Simone) run strong women through this plot. Not all man whores are jerks, of course (just because you sleep around doesn’t make you a bad guy), but Steve Trevor is worse than a jerk, and it’s kinda disgusting that Diana would be willing to overlook Steve trying to get her drunk so he could sleep with her just because he’s also willing to risk the fate of the entire world just to save her life. What Steve does in the bar is, at best, attempt to loosen Diana’s morals and, at worst, date rape.

Great guy.

Because that’s the real turning point in their relationship. Steve and Diana are battling Ares (Alfred Molina), Persephone (Vicki Lewis), and some monsters and Steve decides to save Diana instead of stopping Ares. By failing to carry out Diana’s orders, Ares heads to Hades, gets the magical bonds on his wrists removed, and then brings Hell to Earth for a massive final battle.

At the end of all this killing, we’ve got a completely domesticated Steve carrying the groceries as Diana heads off to battle Cheetah.

The romance plot in WONDER WOMAN is completely bonkers and incredibly disappointing. If you’re going to redo an origin story, why not make some changes to better reflect the 21st century? Or why not spend a bit more time exploring gender roles and personal responsibility?

Oh, because that would take time away from the punching and kicking? Fine, then maybe not including it would have been the better choice. As it is, we’ve got this whole “men are evil” stance from the Amazons because Queen Hippolyta (Virgina Madsen) got freaky with Ares back in the day and it turned out the God of War wasn’t perfect boyfriend material. Then Diana is like, “Maybe men aren’t so bad,” and then Steve is that bad, but then he reveals (under the power of the magic lasso) that he’s just afraid of getting hurt, so it’s totally okay that he tried to get her drunk to sleep with her because, you know, it’s okay to hurt someone else if you’re afraid of getting hurt yourself.

It’s disappointing that WONDER WOMAN took the simplistic, exaggerated route. It wouldn’t have hurt the movie if Steve had been a less skuzzy guy, or in a move that would have made him a better philosophical opposite of the Amazonian way, a scientist or a pacifist, but no … he’s the man whore and she’s the virgin and it’s of-so-cute that at the end of the movie, Steve has now taken the traditional female role (cooking dinner) and Diana the traditional male role (being the warrior).

And this is the key – if this was presented as a female fantasy, it might very well work with a few tweaks, but this is a straight-up male fantasy. Steve’s reward for being a misogynist man whore is that he ends up dating Wonder Woman, while Diana leaves her culture back on Themyscira, forgets about the alcohol-fueled seduction, and enters man’s world as an emissary to the United States of … Steve, apparently. What does Steve give up? Sleeping around? If the female fantasy here is supposed to be the “good girl can change the bad boy” angle, it’s weakly executed because Steve goes from trying to get her drunk to choosing her life over that of the rest of the world in a matter of cinematic minutes.

The whole relationship adds a sense of cheapness to the movie that hurts its overall effectiveness, which is a shame because the rest of what’s here is pretty darn great. The animation looks amazing and the story is compelling. Drawing on the Perez relaunch from the 1980s, WONDER WOMAN has more in common with films like Thor, with its concentration on mythology. If you’ve been hanging around the Anxiety for any length of time, you’ve heard me decry the continued use of origin stories in superhero movies, but WONDER WOMAN shows how to tell an origin story and yet still feel fresh. Wonder Woman isn’t a typical superhero and the film doesn’t try to make her something other than she is – an Amazon entering the rest of the world for the first time.

I’ve done one of those things I don’t love doing in reviews, which is to focus on the negative rather than the positive, but that romance angle irks me. I like the fact that this cartoon seems clearly aimed at an older audience (Steve and Diana both kill to make their mission easier, and not in self-defense), and I love the mythological angle. Unfortunately, I’d much rather spend time watching Diana interact with her fellow Amazons than Steve, but that’s not enough to derail this effort.

WONDER WOMAN is a pretty good animated movie, and of all the DC movies that I own, I’ve watched this one as much as any of them. The voice work is outstanding and the overall story of Diana attempting to stop Ares is a good one. It’s a fun watch with one very large, very disappointing subplot.

SPIDER-MAN 2: I Believe There’s a Hero in All of Us

Spider-Man 2 (2004) – Directed by Sam Raimi – Starring Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst, James Franco, Alfred Molina, Rosemary Harris, J.K. Simmons, Donna Murphy, Dylan Baker, Bill Nunn, Elizabeth Banks, Daniel Gillies, Cliff Robertson, Stan Lee, Emily Deschanel, Bruce Campbell, Aasif Mandvi, John Landis, Joel McHale, and Willem Dafoe.

SPIDER-MAN 2 is as good as superhero movies get.

I’m not a big fan of lists so you’re not going to hear me argue about the merits of SPIDER-MAN 2 vs. Avengers vs. The Dark Knight and finding the poorest parts of excellent movies to justify claiming one is better than the others. For me, I’ll take the fun of Avengers over the other two movies, but I don’t think that’s a matter of being better as much as it is simply being different. There’s enough room at the Round Table for superhero films that do different things and SPIDER-MAN 2 deserves a seat at that exclusive sit down.

Of all the superhero movies that I’ve seen (and I’ve seen just about all of them), none of them creates a more honest emotional reaction in me that SPIDER-MAN 2. There are multiple moments in this film that make me weepy, and there’s no film that better displays the downside of being a superhero than Sam Raimi’s masterpiece.

Of course, I really don’t want to watch movies or read stories about superheroes who don’t want to be superheroes, so it’s interesting that both SPIDER-MAN 2 and The Dark Knight cover this same ground. I’ll get around to Dark Knight later this month, but when it comes to SPIDER-MAN 2, what I like about the movie is that Raimi uses Peter’s woe-is-me attitude to eventually reaffirm the importance of what he’s doing. It’s crushing when, near the mid-point of the film, Peter fantasizes a conversation with Uncle Ben (Cliff Robertson) in which he rejects his uncle’s plea to “take my hand.” Symbolically, this is Peter rejecting the “with great power comes great responsibility” philosophy. It’s a gut-wrenching moment, but it does reaffirm that Peter’s a kid, and kids sometimes have to learn about things like duty and responsibility.

Much of SPIDER-MAN 2 is about people trying to find their place in the world. For Peter, it’s balancing being a superhero with being a bright college kid who’s in love with the girl of his dreams, Mary Jane Watson (Kirsten Dunst). He’s understandably bummed about having to give up both his intellectual and social development, and when you factor in the loss of his best friend, Harry Osborn (James Franco), the constant drubbing Spidey gets in the press from J. Jonah Jameson (J.K. Simmons) and The Daily Bugle, and the lingering guilt over his role in Ben’s death … it’s not hard to understand that when his powers start flaking, Peter doesn’t mind so much.

Mary Jane is having a successful go at being a working actress, but she still partly defines herself by the men in her life. She’s clearly in love with Peter but isn’t willing to wait for him (despite Harry’s assertions) as she’s fallen into a relationship with John Jameson (Daniel Gillies), son of J. Jonah and national astronaut hero.

It’s easy to bag on MJ, of course, for jumping from relationship to relationship (in two films, she’s dated Flash Thompson, Harry, and now John, all the while falling in love with Peter and Spider-Man), but for me it this need to validate herself in the arms of others speaks to the truly tragic nature of her character. MJ has been blessed with looks and cursed with a bad family situation, and I’m sure her looks helped fuel her popularity at school. When things get tough at home, her looks and personality have long provided an oasis for MJ, and now that she’s growing up (the film notes that it’s been two years since Ben’s death, so we’re talking about 20 year olds, here) and is having a bit of success, it’s not surprising that she wants to share that with someone. Blessedly, the film does not make John Jameson a jerk, so when MJ decides to leave him at the altar, it’s a conflicted moment. Yes, her heart belongs to Peter, but yes, it’s also a dick thing to do to wait until your wedding day to run to the man you’d rather be with.

Harry is having struggles of a different kind. After his father’s death, he’s somehow gained a position of power at Oscorp. He’s determined to outstrip his father’s accomplishments, and he’s relying on Dr. Otto Octavius (Alfred Molina) to elevate the company to new heights. Harry still hates Spider-Man (blaming him for his father’s death) and a wedge has grown between him and Peter on the matter. Harry wants Peter’s help to track Spidey down, but Peter refuses.

SPIDER-MAN 2 does an outstanding job at showing the weight of a secret identity. Peter refuses to tell anyone he’s Spider-Man and that leads to all of his problems growing unchecked. During a fantastic conversation between Peter and Octavius, Otto tells him that he can’t keep something as powerful as love bottled up inside of him. It’s a really nice, heartfelt moment, and the film uses this speech as the symbolic stand-in for every emotion that we keep trapped inside of ourselves. It’s no surprise that by the end of the film, when Peter has embraced his role as Spider-Man, that his identity has been revealed to Mary Jane, Doc Ock, Harry, a train full of New Yorkers, and while it’s not outright stated, it’s pretty clear that Aunt May (Rosemary Harris) knows it, too.

Much like Cliff Robertson was the quiet MVP of SPIDER-MAN, Rosemary Harris is the rock on which SPIDER-MAN 2 is built. She’s phenomenal all over this film, gently offering praise for Harry, subtly pulling MJ into the kitchen so Peter and Harry can talk, refusing to let Peter get down about her house being foreclosed, and smashing Doc Ock upside the head after he’s kidnapped her to use against Spider-Man (a random act, not a personal one).

It’s Aunt May who delivers the film’s signature line: “I believe there’s a hero in all of us.” It comes when Peter has turned his back on Spider-Man and is finding a bit of happiness being a regular college kid. He’s even starting to make his move on MJ, even though she’s already engaged to John. Aunt May is having none of it, though, but she’s not the kind of woman who will confront Peter directly, so instead she plays along with the idea that Pete knows Spider-Man personally. She uses a neighborhood kid as the launching point for her monologue. With the bank foreclosure coming, May is already packing her things up to move into a small apartment. She’s got a local kid to help her out, and this kid just so happens to idolize Spider-Man, and tells Peter that he wants to see Spidey come back. When Peter wonders why, May tells him that kids need heroes to look up to. She adds that she believes there’s “a hero in all of us,” but she really means, “in you, Peter,” and this whole, wonderfully touching scene is May’s way of giving Peter her blessing to be Spider-Man, and quietly admonishing him for ever giving it up.

So Peter jumps back in. His first stop is to hit The Daily Bugle, where he steals back his Spider-Man outfit. When he’d decided to stop being Spidey, he tossed it in the garbage, and every comic book fan everywhere thrilled to see Amazing Spider-Man 50 recreated on the big screen.

SPIDER-MAN 2 has a lot going on, and the various subplots and quick sequences help to offset the rather dreary nature of the narrative. Peter, Harry, and MJ are taking their first steps into adulthood and all of them are experiencing some level of success, but they’ve also got stumbles to deal with, and how they deal with them speaks to how they bounce back.

The adults have to do a fair amount of bouncing back, too, as everyone sees their world slightly upturned. For May, it’s the double whammy of having her house foreclosed and Peter admitting that he was responsible for Ben’s death. For Octavius, it’s his failed experiment and the death of his wife when Otto’s experiment goes all wonky. For JJJ, it’s the realization that Spider-Man was a positive force in the city.

Alfred Molina’s performance as Doctor Octopus is every bit as good as any other actor’s turn in the villain’s chair. While not as flashy or memorable as Heath Ledger’s Joker or as coolly manipulative as Tom Hiddleston’s Loki, Molina’s Otto Octavius is a completely realized and unique character, the most human feeling of all villains. Where villains often feel like they’re in the film just to give the good guys something to punch, I feel as if this is every bit as much Otto’s movie as it is Peter’s from the moment Molina appears on the screen. Molina makes Octavius a brilliant, well-meaning scientist. He meets Peter when Harry forces him to give Peter some time to conduct an interview for a school project. Reluctant as he is, Otto is clearly taken by Peter’s intellect and interest in his project, and Peter’s brief stay is extended to him sharing a dinner with Otto and his wife. I can feel the love Otto and his wife (Donna Murphy) have for one another, and his enthusiasm for his work. He also clearly enjoys sharing his time with Peter, and after a day spent talking science, the conversation turns personal.

When Otto’s experiment fails and his four “octopus arms” become a permanent part of him, Otto slowly succumbs to their influence and sets about setting up his experiment for a second try. This leads him to a life of crime, and eventually back to Harry to get some precious tridium. Harry makes a deal – bring me Spider-Man and you can have all the tridium you want.

The action sequences in SPIDER-MAN 2 are a huge improvement over the first movie, and represent some of the best superhero action committed to the screen. The battles between Spider-Man and Doc Ock up and down buildings across New York are just awesome to watch. If anything, they move so fast that you need to watch them a couple times just to see how much is going on between Spidey, Ock, and his four snapping tendrils. It’s good stuff.

The general realization – from Peter, from May, from Jameson, from the riders of the elevated train he saves – that Spider-Man is worth having around really makes all the woe-is-me melodrama pay off. Every time I’ve had it with Peter’s whining, the film delivers a counter punch that lifts the spirits of the film. If sitting through a bit of melodrama is the price we have to pay for May’s wonderful speech, or MJ’s wonderful “let me save you” monologue at the end, it’s well worth it.

There’s plenty of cameos all over SPIDER-MAN 2, as well: Bruce Campbell, Elizabeth Banks, Emily Deschanel, John Landis, Aasif Mandvi, Joel McHale, Dylan Baker, and, right at the end, the return of Willem Dafoe to haunt Harry one final time, and trick his son into finding the hidden Goblin materials, beautifully setting up the third film.

SPIDER-MAN 2 stands as one of the finest achievements of the cinematic superhero genre. It’s an outstanding film from start to finish, and it’s nice to see Raimi interject more of his personality into this film than the first film, where he seemed to play everything straight. Throughout SPIDER-MAN 2, there’s all sorts of nods to Raimi’s horror roots and dynamic camera work. Thankfully, the film even ends on a high note, as MJ chooses Peter and tells him, “Go get ‘em, Tiger,” when they hear police sirens in the distance. Peter’s webslinging becomes joyous at this point, and it is made clear that this was a movie about a boy becoming a man. Peter’s life might not turn out to be the one he dreamed of having, but he’s realizing that the life he will have has all sorts of opportunities, too.

Entertaining, engaging, satisfying, and emotional, SPIDER-MAN 2 is superhero cinema at its best.

SPECIES: And If I’m Here, I Think the Sh*t Has Definitely Hit the Fan

Species (1995) – Directed by Roger Donaldson – Starring Ben Kingsley, Michael Madsen, Alfred Molina, Forest Whitaker, Marg Helgenberger, Natasha Henstridge, and Michelle Williams.

When I watch a movie like SPECIES (or The Arrival or Mimic), I always end up wishing that this was the kind of movie SyFy would make instead of churning out those awfully schlocky uber-monster movies starring people who haven’t been famous for over a decade. Buying a quality script from an unknown writer is no more expensive than buying a bad script from an unknown writer, and there’s no reason SPECIES couldn’t be made for roughly the same cash it takes to make Sharktopus given the minimal effects shots in the film.

What does SPECIES have that makes it cost-prohibitive to make? Name actors? H.R. Giger’s creature? You could easily downgrade the production cost by using actors from TV shows not ready to make the cinematic jump, and Giger’s Sil, while neat looking, ultimately just looks like the Maschinenmensch mated with the Lizard. And if they’ve got money to make giant crocodiles, they’ve got money to make an alien lizard woman with tentacles that shoot out of her nipples. Heck, you don’t even need to see the alien Sil all that much because who’s gonna complain about seeing more of 1995 Natasha Henstridge?

SPECIES is just good solid sci-fi storytelling. There’s nothing spectacular here, either in script or performance, but SPECIES works because it keeps the narrative simple, the pacing brisk, the direction basic, and allows the actors to do their thing. That last part is critical because these characters, admittedly, are rather simply drawn. Largely one note, it’s the acting that makes them seem believable, and SPECIES has done a bang-up job assembling a team of professional actors to embody its characters: Ben Kingsley, Forest Whitaker, Alfred Molina, Marg Helgenberger, and Michael Madsen take what they’re given and deliver consistent, compelling performances.

SPECIES roots its story in classic sci-fi goodness: an alien response to the the SETI program’s broadcast results in a half-human, half-alien creature that looks just like a pre-Dawson’s Creek Michelle Williams. Sil is growing up too fast in her lab/prison so Xavier Finch (Kingsley) and his government cronies decide to kill her with cyanide gas. As you can imagine, Sil isn’t willing to go along with this plan, so she busts out of her glass cage and hightails it out of the facility, taking refuge in a train and disappearing for parts unknown.

Knowing they need help, Finch assembles a team of experts to track her down: mercenary Preston Lennox (Madsen), molecular biologist Laura Baker (Marg Helgenberger), anthropologist Stephen Arden (Alfred Molina), and empath Dan Smithson (Forest Whitaker). I don’t think we can quite call this an “all-star cast,” unless we’re comparing it to the final innings of Major League Baseball’s All-Star Game when the field is littered with many of the non-stars from out of contention teams that only make the game because Bud Selig still insists that every team be represented.

He does this, you know, for the kids.

Because kids in Baltimore will totally stay up past midnight to see Matt Weiters get an at bat.

While it may not qualify as an all-star cast it is a very solid one, full of actors you know earning their paycheck by turning in a good day’s work. The assembled team quickly gets to know one another and the most interesting part of this initial exchange is just how committed Forest Whitaker is to playing the goofiest character in the film to its fullest potential. Dan is an empath, which means he can share the feelings of those around him. Preston allows Madsen to do his squinty-eyes, low growl routing and he wants to know what he’s feeling. So Dan tells him that he wants to pretend like nothing gets to him but-

Is that how empathy works? Isn’t that offering more than feelings?

It really doesn’t matter because you know that Preston wants to act like nothing ever gets to him but secretly does because when we first met him we saw that he owns a cat and gives it to a sitter before leaving on his mission.

They don’t know each other or know why they’re here, but as Preston tells them, “If I’m here, I think the sh*t has definitely hit the fan.” The initial meeting is interesting simply to watch all of these actors play off one another. While they’re all quality actors and all (even back in ’95) have a little bit of cache, they’re not necessarily actors I’d envision working together. Ben Kingsley seems clearly above this material, and that actually works because Finch thinks he’s clearly above the rest of the people in this unit. (Which begs the question, of course, why the facility creating Sil from the alien instructions didn’t have some kind of similar group of assembled scientists already working for them.) The most interesting dynamic in the room is the Madsen/Whitaker relationship. Their performances are nearly the antithesis of each other, Madsen only offering as little evidence that he’s alive as possible while Whitaker constantly emotes and moves. What’s fascinating to watch about them is that both Preston and Dan are always thinking and both Madsen and Whitaker doing great work letting us see that the characters are always thinking, even if it manifests in different ways.

Blessedly, the group doesn’t act too overwhelmed by the fact that Finch was growing an alien/hybrid in his lab because SPECIES is a hunt movie and it’s time to get on to hunt.

Sil is growing rapidly, and so on a passenger train to Los Angeles she enters a chrysalis as Michelle Williams and exits as Natasha Henstridge. The rest of the film involves Sil trying to find a suitable mate to get her pregnant, which always seems to end up with rivals or lovers ending up dead, while the team shows up just in time to assess the damage and figure out what Sil is doing. Sil kills one woman in a bathroom because she caught the attention of the man Sil had her eye on, and then kills a potential lover because she recognizes he has diabetes.

Eventually, Sil successfully mates with Stephen; he’s not her first choice but, as the song goes, if you can’t be with the one you love, love the one you’re with. (I’m pretty sure Stephen Stills had alien mating rituals in mind when he wrote “Love the One You’re With.”) While Sil is riding Stephen, Preston and Laura are taking a post-coital nap next door, which leaves poor, awkward Dan caught in the middle. He recognizes that Sil is with Stephen but he needs Preston’s help to be the action guy. Once pregnant and discovered, Sil escapes down into the sewers for the final action sequence. It’s all competently executed but this isn’t an action movie and so the final battle isn’t some spectacular CGI/special effects blow-out. We get to see the tendrils coming out of Sil’s boobs, which is kinda disturbing in a gross way; more effective is her child shooting an alien tongue out of his mouth to eat a rat, illustrating in part how story can trump effects.

Ultimately, SPECIES is still a surprisingly compelling film. It’s nice to watch an adult sci-fi movie that doesn’t insult your intelligence or try to trick you with pyrotechnics. My published fiction puts me on the fringes, rather than the center, of the New Pulp movement, but SPECIES reminds me of the movement in a really positive way – when I read good New Pulp I’m not seeing writers trying to reinvent the wheel; what I see is people who love a genre of stories working in that tradition to provide good, smart, fun stories.

That’s what I see in SPECIES – a love for good, smart science fiction.