Lost it!

Wonder Woman @ WW84 (2020)

I remember my school teacher telling me this. Doing well at the first attempt does not ensure that things will pen nicely the second time around. In fact, it is more difficult to excel on the second occasion. There is mounting pressure to prove that the first win was no flash in the pan. These pearls of wisdom rang so clearly as I restless laboured through the two and a half-hour of scenes after scenes of a disjointed story whose plot did not make any sense. 

After an exciting outing with the first of the current franchise, I thought this would be like its predecessor. I expected a well-crafted story with visually pleasing cinematography ending with a message sprinkled with philosophy or meaning of life. It was a disappointment.

To the followers of the DC Cinematic Universe, the story might be confusing. According to Batman vs Superman, WW was supposed to be missing somewhere after World War 1, and Superman had to search high and low to trace her in the 1990s. She was doing so much stuff and damage in 1984, but the man in cape obviously missed it in his research. 

The story seems disjointed, and the scenes appear inserted in like an afterthought. The power that the maniacal villain is so vague and the premise of another Superhero manifestation is unwarranted. A wishing crystal as a weapon of mass destruction to control people, President of the USA and nuclear warheads is all too confusing.

As we saw over the recent years, we saw superhero movies develop complex stories where the heroes struggle with worldly and personal issues. It tends to leave with a public message and food for thought. But, not this one. It seems like this film was churned out just to con the audience to depart from their hard-earned moolah in the name of fandom.

Bruce Wayne got hold of this rare photograph to locate the whereabouts of WW.

Wonder Woman of another era.

Love will keep us together?

Wonder Woman (2017)

With dialogues like 'everyone has to fight his own wars', one can be forgiven to think that it is a feminist movie, highlighting the female species' struggle and the minorities. Furthermore, the male characters are most laughable and imperfect in every conceivable way. Men are needed only for procreation, not for emotional support, says one of the dialogues. Hey, were not women the objects of reproduction only in archaic societies?

Maybe the storyteller is trying to tell us in her own way (the director is a lady) how much the world has changed since the first World War. And a real paradise appears in the form of an all-Women mythical land of Amazon where women are sorceresses and men are non-existent.

Wonder Women's story starts with Princess Diana growing up in a guarded environment, forbidden to indulge with physical fighting. The society, the Land of Amazon, is reeling to build its defences after a war with the God of War himself, Ares. Ares had disappeared and is rumoured to return anytime. Diana, being the offspring of Zeus himself could not be restrained.

One day, an Allied spy infiltrates their 'force-protected' cocoon as he was ambushed by the German Navy. Thinking that it is Ares' dirty work, Diana leaves her paradise to defeat Ares. In her mind, she believes that peace can be attained by just beating the War God, that is all. Slowly she realises that life is not so straight forward.

Peace on Earth is not a simple matter. There is no one single hero and the other being the villain. It is not the question of one perpetrator and one victim. Sometimes one wonders whether mankind is inherently evil? They seem to be their own enemy. They orchestrate their own downfall. It is not the Gods that let catastrophe befall upon them, but it is their own doings.

Yes, people harm their kind and want to exert power over his neighbours, all the things forbidden by belief systems of the world. Every once in a while, despite all the nihilism that surrounds us, we do see a glimmer of hope. On the one hand, we fight, but on the contrary, we feel that Man has that one redeeming feature. We can love, they say.

The problem is 'love' that is shown is only directed towards their own kin, race, nationhood and of the same religions. Love stops short at the sight of someone who does not share our values or simply appear different. Without love extending to all of Nature's creations, animals, plants, landscape and all, peace on Earth will only remain a pipe dream.