THE BLOCKBUSTER, THE INDIE AND THE WONDERFUL WOMEN

WONDER WOMAN (2017) - DIRECTED BY PATTY JENKINS 

PROFESSOR MARSTON AND THE WONDER WOMEN (2017) - DIRECTED BY ANGELA ROBINSON

Two movies that are about the same subject, but covering different aspects and styles.  

    Patty Jenkins' Blockbuster Wonder Woman from 2017 made a huge splash culturally and fiscally.  While Angela Robinson's The Professor and The Wonder Women is a much smaller intimate movie that follows the relationship between Wonder Woman creator William Moulton Marston and his inspirations that lead to to the Goddess's creation. One is a Blockbuster, a mammoth investment that was meant to be part of a huge D.C shared universe.  Professor Marston and the Wonder Women, while still distributed by Sony  (a smaller section of Sony, the section that likes awards) is a smaller and intimate movie, a single focus concerned with the inner emotions and desires of the characters.  One movie designed  to get the largest audience they can for that all important opening weekend.  While the other, is more intimate, a smaller select audience.  Because of the market place they belong in, each movie tends to follow it's own troupes and textures.

    And because of this in Wonder Woman and Professor Martson, the character of Wonder Woman herself is two completely different entities.  But, at the same time she is an entity larger than a mortal life, whether she is a fantasy or a symbol.  Both Jenkins and Johnston have two very different uses her her and treat her in different ways.  Jenkins cleans out the kink and wants the pure inspiring hero for the masses, while Johnston is all out the kinky, sexy fun sexy times.  Through this I've my particular kink is Rebecca Hall swearing like a sailor.  It's the sexiest thing in the movie

    Seeing yourself in the main stream is a big deal, as much as I want to foo foo it.  A Tent Pole Super Hero Blockbuster are large bombastic creatures, filled to the brim with CGI and quips, every inch of the screen is constantly buzzing, as for the umpteenth time you watch the hero's journey unfold, The hero's journey should be tired, and maybe it is, but it's still as popular and archetypal as ever.  I'm not going to lie, I got caught up in the Wonder Woman hype in 2017.  A female lead Superhero movie that promised to be good, not centered around face cream and directed by a woman was promising.  I was no the only woman sitting next in that crowded theater crying as Wonder Woman unveiled herself in No Man's Land.  

    Patty Jenkins' Wonder Woman doesn't feel like a common Super Hero Movie, until it has to.  Though it has all the structural bones of a typical Superhero movie, Wonder Woman feels more classic in it's tone, in it's editing and in it's performances from Gal Gadot and the very handsome Chris Pine.  The first two acts feel like the adventure movies of the past with pacing a little slower so you can take everything in. The center piece of Wonder Woman walking into No Man's Land on her own shows this perfectly.  We get sequence of shots that slow down the moment of alter ego Diana Prince climbing up the ladder, letting her hair down with her head piece.  Then the cloak falling to reveal the shield, the red boot on the ladder, her lasso on the hip, a leather covered hand as it presses on top of the ladder.  Diana Prince is now Wonder Woman, standing in full glory.  Jenkins wants you to take your time with this, to revel in the moment.  Even the bullet rushing toward her takes it's time as Wonder Woman stares at it merely as part of her surroundings before flicking it away.  I love this moment, Wonder Woman is the symbol of goodness and strength.  But this is of course a Comic Book movie from 2017, and a a God must fight a God.  On this watch I liked the two threads of Wonder Woman out to defeat the God of War, and Steve Trevor trying to stop the German Army from releasing a new poisonous gas.  But when the two threads separate at the end, there is too much happening, and it is where Jenkins really loses the geography of her action.  There's too much CGI noise and it all feels like a lot of Previsualization, and doesn't completely connect to the rest of the movie that came before it.

    What sexuality Patty Jenkins takes out of Wonder Woman, Angela Robinson puts back in to her Wonder Woman in Professor Marston and the Wonder Women.  William Moulton Marston, Wonder Woman's creator was a very horny man, and his perspective if sexuality, kink and self bleed into the pages of Wonder Woman's early years.  I liked Professor Marston a lot, if a lot of the specific Wonder Woman threads felt a little tacked on, like they had been pieced into the movie with tape.  What is really interesting is the Polyamorous relationship in the 1930s between Luke Evans, Rebecca Hall and Bella Heathcote.  The polite period era style contrasts nicely with the progressive couple.  Rebecca Hall who enters like a cursing tornado, owns this movie, she brings the energy and movement, it's her passion, love, reluctance and regret that move the plot forward.  Rebecca Hall is my personal Wonder Woman and I love her, she out shines her co-stars with what feels like very little effort.  It's one of those tour de force effortless performances that Rebecca Hall seems to do so well. 

    The emotional core of Professor Martson maybe the relationship between the character's, but Wonder Woman herself is connected to pure sex.  The first time, Evan's, Hall and Heathcote consummate their relationship, they dress up in play, Heathcote as the Greek Goddess, Evans' in an over-sized army uniform, al la Steve Trevor, while Hall wears a glorious leopard print coat, and that's it.  Hall is not the villain of the piece, but she's a great Cheetah.  Si it feels fitting that it is Bella Heathcote that appears as a vision of light as Wonder Woman.  Like Jenkins' movie, we see Heathcote put on the outfit piece by piece, the bracelet's of submission, the tiara.  But unlike Jenkins' Wonder Woman she is not taking on the world she is submitting, submitting to her desires, submitting to her lovers.  It's Hall that takes the Halo of Truth, or in the movie rope,  and binds her arms behind her back.  Professor Marston and the Wonder Women doesn't really deal with the complexity of the dominate and submissive relationship, it's more the emotional experience of it all.  What it means to be in committed intimate relationship with two other people and how you fit into the world with it.

    For conjuring Wonder Woman, it's the trappings and costumes that both Jenkins and Johnson use to create Wonder Woman.  It's how we identify our Superheros.   But the way each is used makes a completely creates a different creation and symbol.  Many different creators and hands that have had their turn with Wonder Woman, she has been multiple things at the same time.  A hero, a Feminist icon, a Pin Up, Inspiration.  Here are just two examples of what she can be.  Wonder Woman is what ever you want her to be.