Doom and Doomer: Wonder Woman

Doominator: So, Doom, we recently perfectly legally watched the direct to DVD Wonder Woman movie.

I find myself with a few words swimming in my head.

Doom DeLuise: Felony?

Doominator: None of them are “Oscar.”

Felony works, but this wasn’t quite a crime against humanity. It didn’t try hard enough. It didn’t try at all in any respect.

Doom DeLuise: I think this is the third direct to DVD PG-13 movie from DC, following Superman: Doomsday and Justice League: New Frontier. Have you seen either of those?

Doominator: No, but I skimmed the Doomkopf reviews.

Doom DeLuise: Ah, yes. Well, the problems that beset those movies haven’t been addressed at all in this thing. It’s still just overly violent with some stupid “mature” jokes thrown in to the mix to justify its PG-13 rating. There’s nothing mature about the way the movie is handled aside from decapitations, kicks to the nuts, and references to the size of Wonder Woman’s “rack.”

Doominator: Or Mary Marvel-esque near nudity. How many nut shots were there anyway? At least three.

Doom DeLuise: Yeah, if I had to guess, I’d say there were three.

Doominator: That’s the problem. This movie equated mature with crude, which in turn made it juvenile. And it offered a horribly hackneyed view of gender relations, as if by being a strong woman, Wonder Woman could only be a borderline lesbian, and it took a misogynist man to make her realize the error of her ways.

Doom DeLuise: I agree. The scenes where they actually tackled the issue of gender relations were just so incredibly painful to sit through, too. This movie, in its efforts to portray Wonder Woman as something more than the typical eye candy in a comic book set the feminist movement back a good decade, I’d say. It was outright pathetic.

Doominator: Dear god yes. There was mild empowerment in her being taken aback by the little girl’s attitude, but in the end, it went on to prove nothing – much like the rest of the movie. And Steve pilot guy still had to save her a few times.
So what was the lesson? All men aren’t totally bad?

Oh wait, I learned that in the 80s. You know, when I was five.

Doom DeLuise: At least they know their audience? Oh, wait, no, that’s the problem. The way the story’s handled would appeal only to people under 13 years old, but those youngsters can’t watch this thing because it has gross violence and some cussing. Well, I mean, unless they were to download it illegally, but I don’t think kids would do that.

Before we go too far overboard, though, was there anything about the movie that you found appealing?

Doominator: The animation itself was really well done. I think that, visually, the film was very fluid. This is in contrast to the recent Marvel animated adventures, which I’ve found to be kind of wooden. The battle scene in the beginning was pretty well done.

Doom DeLuise: I would agree with that. And, for me, the highlight of the movie was Nathan Filion’s voice work. Even though the dialogue was terrible and everything about his character was crap, his voice made the things he said tolerable, and, in several instances, pretty dang funny.

Doominator: There were a few laughs to be had, and I’d agree, the voice work wasn’t distracting, which is a common problem in most cartoons, Batman: The Animated Series somewhat excluded. I’m thinking back on the horrible voices of the original X-Men cartoon … I think I hated Jean Grey at first because of that show.

And it was Felicity doing the voice of Wonder Woman!

Doom DeLuise: Yeah, I’ve been really critical of the voice acting in previous DC direct to DVD movies, so I feel I should say that I thought the voice work here was pretty damn good, aside from that goddamn Rosario Dawson, who did the voice of Artemis. She can’t act in real life; what made anybody think that she could act in a cartoon?

Doominator: I agree on the voice in here, though personally, I like Rosario Dawson.
But anyway … What did you think of the plot itself? I haven’t read many Wonder Woman comics, but it seemed to be a simplistic, self contained view of that universe.

Doom DeLuise: Kind of. I haven’t read a whole lot of Wonder Woman cartoons, either, but I’m not sure what made them retell her original Golden Age origin story with her Invisible Jet and everything. I mean, that’s Wonder Woman from Earth-2, not the Wonder Woman in the current comics. Just makes me “wonder” why they made that choice.

Doominator: It’s probably nostalgia for the Wonder Woman of old – as if to get fans in, they have to give the older ones that familiarity.

Doom DeLuise: By the way, when I was thinking of how much I don’t like Rosario Dawson, I had Eva Mendes in my head. They’re totally different people, and I actually like Rosario Dawson.

Doominator: I’m glad we can agree on Rosario, and now I concur that Eva Mendes is a hack.

Now, are these movies connected by a common universe?

Doom DeLuise: I don’t think these movies share any sort of universe. New Frontier was kind of an origin for all the characters, but I’m not sure how it would sync up with this origin. Meanwhile, when Doomsday attacked Metropolis, Superman was all on his own, which seemed to be a deliberate choice on the part of the filmmakers, so who knows. The next two movies in this line of direct-to-DVD features will be Green Lantern’s origin and then an adaptation of the first story-arc of the Batman/Superman comic.

Doominator: So it’s a series of Elseworlds. That’s quite alright, though if they, say, do another Justice League movie, their version of Wonder Woman might confuse things.

Overall, if you had to grade or rate this movie, where does it stand?

Doom DeLuise: I’d say it’s probably about two out of five stars. The animation, like you said, was gorgeous, for the most part, and it was significantly more entertaining than any of the two previous DVD efforts (those were really, really bad), so I’m not too hard on this thing. It has a lot of flaws, and I won’t ever watch it again, but it’s not as offensively bad as the other flicks in the line so far.

Doominator: That’s about where I am. I find that I have virtually nothing to truly say about it. It had a lot of talent going into it – Oliver Platt and Alfred Molina doing the voices of Hades and Ares, and the really well done animation – but none of that talent formed a script worth much more than a passing glance and a minor footnote in DC’s movievverse, which seems entirely propelled by Batman and Superman. On that note, I think that they should take more cues from Batman: Mask of the Phantasm which managed to be dark and mature, but not feel the need to make it “mature” by pointing out that Wonder Woman has breasts.

Doom DeLuise: Couldn’t have said it better myself.

Doominator: Well, we should just stop saying things for now then, but reconvene at our next crappy movie viewing.

Doom DeLuise: Agreed. Hopefully the next one is crappier. This was just really, really average.

Doominator: 1994’s Fantastic Four it is …