#here is stuff

“Best in the DCEU” is faint praise, given that the other films so far have been more like scenes and characters and explosions and questionable musical cues that never really managed to come together as actual proper films. But this is an actual film, and clearly the best.

I was always gonna be disappointed, and since I went in knowing that, I think it was overall okay? Except that I kept thinking about The First Avenger, Thor, and Splash.

Oh my god the Splash -- the fish-out-of-water, man showing the woman how the world works plot of it? I realize everyone will have a different reaction to the Splash-ness of it all, but I got so tired of it? (Also, btw, I want to write a Coulson mermaid Splash AU more than ever.) I mean, Thor got a little of the ‘learning the ways of the humans’ treatment, and maybe I should rewatch that for comparison, but I feel really confident saying that Thor wasn’t quite as hopelessly naive as Diana and Jane didn’t get to be so heroic as Steve did? And basically it started to feel tedious and ridiculous. (And I’m a no-fun robot, I know.)

I also feel like Zach Snyder and his frustrating slow-down-then-speedup action sequences have cast a long shadow. Not that it’s an inherently bad move, like I’m sure it can be utilized well and I don’t even think Jenkins overdid it, just that Snyder has*so* overused it that I grit my teeth every time I see it, so it’s use in this was just…meh. That said, until the tedious final action sequence, it was overall well done?

But, ugh, can we move past 'ultimate boss battle’ as a climax?

(I’m really amused that my legit thought process was like, 'Hey, David Thewlis is having a good year, I guess, nice to see his face when he’s not playing an embodiment of evil…lol, nm.’)

I’m also frustrated at the oppressive heterosexuality of it all, and how when Diana wraps up about love, the film has set that up to be a really narrow version of heterosexual romantic/sexual love? And omg, if she had just had a slightly different line re: ‘the pleasures of the flesh,’ (as in, “The books tell us men are needed for procreation, but we know they are not needed for pleasure”???) it could have changed the implications of that so much? Because I would definitely argue that the implications are that her understanding of any kind of sexual pleasure is purely theoretical, all without actually naming anything about Amazons as queer in any way.