What's up YouTube Friends?
My name is Prince, and I am an Urban Acolyte.
This video is going to be my FULL review of the Wonder Woman movie which I have now seen
twice, and I have to admit that I am even more amazed after a second viewing than I
was the first time around when I said that I was blown away in my spoiler free review
that I posted yesterday.
So before I get into the meat of this review, I want to acknowledge a few people-- first
off, thank you to Allan Heinberg for writing an excellent screenplay.
Thank you to director, Patty Jenkins for bringing this vision to the big screen and making,
what I feel, to be one of THE BEST superhero origin stories I've ever seen.
Thank you to Gal Gadot for KILLING it as the Princess of Themyscira.
Your performance shut everyone up who didn't think you could play the part.
You rocked it, and I can't wait to see you in the Justice League.
I also want to acknowledge an acquaintance of mine, Mayling Ng.
She played an Amazon warrior named Orana.
I knew Mayling was in this movie when she suddenly went to Italy for a vacation last
year.
Seeing her on the big screen has been very inspiring for me and my own personal aspirations.
One of the things I'm going to talk about in this review is how Wonder Woman, like Superman,
is a symbol of hope, and Mayling, you might not know it, but you're also a symbol of hope
to those of us who have been following your career for the last 5 or 6 years.
Okay, let's jump into this review.
I'm going to start off by saying this...and it's going to come off as a bit of a surprise,
if you're new to this channel, and you don't know about the kinds of themes I point out
when I do my reviews--but for me, Wonder Woman's origin story had a lot of Buddhist elements
to it.
As a matter of fact, I would go so far as to say that Diana is a kind of bodhisattva
of compassion in the DC Extended Universe...or the movie universe.
So if you're not familiar with the story of the Buddha, he was born into the warrior caste,
and he was a Prince.
He's trained as a warrior from the moment he could hold a spear and the expectation
is that he will one day become King.
A wise man said that he would either become a great king or some kind of sage who will
save the world.
His father wanted him to become a warrior and a great king, so he sheltered him.
The only thing he would know is a life of pleasure, a life without suffering.
This is very much inline with Diana's upbringing when the movie flashes back from the present
to tell her origin story.
We see little Diana in Themysicira, and from day one, Diana wants to fight.
She wants to train.
She wants to hear the stories of this Amazon warrior culture that she is to one day rule
as the daughter of Queen Hippolyta.
The thing is, from the very beginning, Queen Hippolyta does everything she can to shelter
Diana from her true calling, her true destiny.
So this is where the story of Diana Prince mirrors Prince Siddartha.
I want you to store all of this stuff about the Buddha and Wonder Woman in your memory
banks, because I want to go over the plot in the movie--but I plan to come back to that
theme about Wonder Woman and her Buddhist path shortly.
Allright, so time shifts to the early 20th century when the events in the movie occur.
We see a now adult Diana questioning herself.
Who am I?
What is the truth about me?
Why does Antiope keep saying that I'm holding back?
In a sense, she's questioning herself.
She's trying to discover the self--it's the beginning of the hero's journey.
At this point, it's usually a supernatural event that jars the hero into action...and
that's exactly what happens.
She sees something like a bright and morning star falling from the heavens...if you didn't
know, that's a reference from the book of Isaiah in the Hebrew Bible.
Because Diana is already in a place created by the gods, her bright and morning star is
something from the modern world, from the human world.
It's Captain Steve Trevor crashing his plane after he tried evading the pursuing German
Forces.
Captain Trevor has been on a spy mission investigating the Central Powers' plans to sabotage the
Armistice Peace treaty signing with a new form of mustard gas created by Doctor Poison.
Steve managed to steal Doctor Poison's notebook documenting all of her work, and this brought
him some heat from the German's who pursued him.
They shot down his plane, and he was luckily rescued by Diana, BUT the Germans pursuing
Steve managed to pierce the veil and find their way into Themyscira.
Now this event introduced the state of the modern world to the Amazons, but it also served
another purpose in Diana's journey.
Her mentor, Antiope was killed in the battle on the beach.
For Diana, this was her Obi-Wan gets struck down by Darth Vader moment.
In Star Wars, up to that point, Luke Skywalker was just along for the ride because he didn't
really have anywhere else to go after Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru got barbecued by the Empire.
When Obi Wan became one with the Force, Luke had to act.
He had to run; he had to trust the Force to destroy the Death Star; and he had to begin
this deeper mission of self discovery which would culminate in him restoring his father's
honor and becoming the last Jedi.
For Diana, the death of Antiope was her push to discover her true self.
She became aware of the war and the suffering.
She was told that this is the time to act.
This is the time to go and get Ares.
He's the one behind this--fulfill the mission of the Amazons.
Take the Godkiller and destroy Ares for once and for all.
So this is what she set out to do--and the funny thing is when you go back and watch
a second time, ask yourself if Antiope was telling Diana to take the sword, if she was
telling her to discover who she really is--or if she were saying both.
This kind of made me think of the new King Arthur movie, which bombed in the box office--but
you have the magic sword, Excalibur.
The thing about Excalibur, in this movie, is that it's magic can only be unlocked by
someone of the Pendragon bloodline.
So even though you have this magic sword, it doesn't matter unless you discover who
you really are and how you are connected to the magic.
Does that make sense?
Well, in the case of Diana, we would later discover that the sword didn't matter at all.
That would come at the moment of her awakening, or the moment of her Enlightenment in the
final act of the movie.
Now the interaction between Diana and Steve as they return to the modern world highlites
just how naive Diana really is.
I loved Gal Gadot's acting in these parts.
She believes that all people are good at heart.
The Germans have been corrupted by this war machine created by Ares, the God of War.
All she has to do is defeat Ares and goodness will return to the whole wide world.
I was waiting for rainbows to appear in the clouds to match the twinkle in Diana's eyes.
I'm glad that didn't happen, but it was so cheesy to the point that you bought it because
think about it-- this woman has been completely sheltered her entire life.
She's read these books and been taught these lessons about the world by her tutors, but
she's never really experienced the world.
She's never seen suffering.
She's never seen war.
She's never seen human cruelty.
All she's known are the myths and stories that she was told--including the myth that
she was told about her own creation and how she came to be.
So the second act in this movie deals with two themes.
The first of them is the war.
Will the war end; how will this plan that Ludendorff is working on with Doctor Poison
turn out?
Will Steve and his team actually be able to stop them when the Triple Entente being led
by the British seem to be focused on the Armistice?
What's going to happen with this thing that we, as the audience, obviously know will happen.
We know that Ludendorff plans to use the Armistice to launch this mustard gas attack and give
the Germans a final victory.
We also are seeing Diana's identity being stripped away.
It's like she has to lose herself to find herself.
Who are you, what kind of warrior are you going to be?
In theology, there is a way of describing God called Apophatic theology, or negative
theology.
You talk about God by saying what God is not--and this via negativa is basically Diana's path
of self discovery.
Steve is constantly telling her what she won't do, what she can't do.
Everyone says no to her--this is not something we can do; we have THIS mission.
We have to do this mission THIS way, or it will fail.
We didn't set out to do THIS thing.
We can't help THAT animal, Diana.
We can't free THAT VILLAGE, Diana.
No, Diana.
We're not doing that...it's impossible.
NO MAN can do that, Diana, it's impossible.
It's at this point when Diana begins to believe in herself.
She begins to believe in her own strength, and she stops looking outward for acceptance
or for approval.
I don't think it's ironic that Diana makes her big stand at a place called "NO MAN'S
CROSSING."
It's like a knod to that line from Macbeth that says "none born of a woman shall harm
him."
MacDuff was delivered by C-section-- in this case, Diana crosses because she's NOT A MAN...and
that crossing, it felt like a moment out of the first Captain America movie.
These soldiers are pinned down in this bunker, and out of nowhere a superhero with a shield
gives them hope to make a push into enemy territory where they previously had no hope
of a victory.
As if that scene wasn't enough--what Diana does in the city of Verdt?
That scene, sorry to quote my earlier video, but this scene WAS AMAZING.
Diana jumps through windows fighting the German forces.
She running and jumping from building to building in pursuit of the soldiers.
There's the sequence when she lands on the ground and uses the Lasso of Truth as a whip
that is just beautiful.
I know people had issues with the use of slow motion during that entire battle, but in fight
sequences, there are these long cuts that I prefer to see during fight scenes as opposed
to the quick cuts and shaky cameras in a lot of movies.
Those techniques get used a lot because stunt people are actually doing the work as opposed
to the actual actors.
My personal thoughts are that those slow motion shots were all stuff done in post production
to keep the focus on Diana.
It didn't bother me-- personally, I would rather look at Wonder Woman kicking butt...besides,
focusing on Gal Gadot is a good, thing, right?
Anyway, getting back to the plot-- there's a conversation, on the way to the Gala, that
I felt was important.
Steve explains Diana's origin to the rest of the group.
Sameer and Chief's both immediately buy into her story.
"Look at what she just did back there...I believe her."
Charlie doesn't buy it, and he asks Steve, and Steve remains silent.
It's really funny because Steve and Diana are like on polar opposites.
She fully believes this thing she's been taught her entire life to believe.
Steve, in spite of everything he's seen on his adventure, has doubts about what Diana
believes--and this is important.
It's important because Diana does have her showdown with Ludendorff, who she believes
to be Ares.
I'll admit that I had my suspicions regarding a certain other character, but Ludendorff
seemed like he might be Ares.
I had questions about Doctor Poison creating that gas that was supposed to help him regain
his strength--like maybe Ares lost something after Zeus injured him.
Now I'm wondering if what Doctor Poison created was something similar to the venom formula
that Bane uses.
Either way-- I knew something was up with how easily Diana was able to dispatch him.
Initially, I thought he wasn't actually dead-- like no way could this guy die so easily,
but then we got our big reveal...or a confirmation if you look at Sir Patrick's response to Trevor
attending that Gala at the castle.
So we find out that Sir Patrick is actually Ares, and that he's been controlling both
sides of this war along with many others.
He attributes himself as the inspiration of humankind and their ability to discover technological
advances to hasten the progress of their demise.
We have this picture of a faithful son to Zeus who only wants to show that the humans
are unworthy of what they've been given.
Ares makes himself out to be this very Luciferian type character.
He's the light bearer or the bringer of Light-- but his true intent is to shine a light on
humanity so that they can see how to destroy each other.
He feels this is the only way to restore the world to the paradise it once was-- so it
made me think of something like "Paradise Lost."
In Paradise Lost, Lucifer is kind of a tragic hero.
He's not completely good or completely bad, but he has some serious flaws that bring about
his undoing.
Just like in Paradise Lost, Ares leads a one man revolt against Zeus He slays all of the
other gods and demigods of Olympus, as told by King Hyppolyta at the beginning of the
movie.
Ares is injured in a final battle with Zeus and he flees Olympus to recover from his injuries.
As Ares tells Diana, he's been influencing humanity's development since that time--and
it echoes a line from Paradise Lost that it is better to reign in Hell than to serve in
Heaven.
Ares also gives a big reveal to Diana in that she is actually the Godslayer, not her weapon.
The story that she's been told about how she was formed from clay and given life by Zeus
is a lie--she's actually the daughter of Zeus She is a god herself, and because only a god
can kill another god, she was to be raised by Queen Hyppolyta and trained by the Amazons
to kill Ares.
At this point, both Ares and Steve Trevor facilitate Diana's awakening.
Ares tells her the truth about herself, and Trevor tells her the truth about the world.
He says look, this thing you believe about Ares and the world might not be true.
You're not to blame for what has happened and what may happen in the future.
There is a darkness in the heart of humanity that will still be there after Ares is gone,
and you can be the one to confront that bigger battle.
I can save the the world for today, but you can save the world for tomorrow.
It takes Diana's awakening to really understand that message--that she can save the world
tomorrow, and how she can save the world.
It's not by being the warrior that I thought of when I thought of Wonder Woman-- but it's
by being this symbol of Hope, of Love, and of Compassion...and I know that it might be
difficult to reconcile all these things with the fact that Wonder Woman is still a butt
kicking superhero, but if you look at Buddhist artwork, the bodhisattva are always depicted
as warriors.
The Buddha was a warrior.
He trained in a martial art called vajramukti, which means lightning style martial art.
You have Vajrayana Buddhism, which means the lightning path-- and here you have the daughter
of Zeus whose symbol is lightning...also the bull, which we saw when Diana stole the Godkiller
sword.
Another interesting bit-- Diana has to fight Ares, who she realizes to be her brother,
and it's like you've taken the masculine and feminine aspects of Zeus and pitted them against
one another-- see, the full name of Zeus is Dias-Zeus.
Ares representing the masculine part and Diana as Dias, the feminine aspect of Zeus.
In their fight, Ares first attempts to lure Diana to his side by appealing to her desire.
We can rebuild the world, restore it to what it once was.
He then turns to an all out attack, and notice how his attacks are mostly magic based attacks.
Diana is still focused on the physical, the body.
She's fighting with her hands and fists--and this is in part because she doesn't know how
to tap into her full abilities, but it's also because she's not fully awakened.
The moment of her awakening comes when Ares tries to throw all of the shrapnel at her,
and that part struck me as interesting because, again, this is similiar to the event at Bodh
Gaya during the Buddha's awakening.
He was confronted by the demon king, Lord Mara, at the moment of his awakening.
Lord Mara presented his beautiful daughters to the Buddha, but the Buddha rejected them.
Lord Mara then raised up an army of archers to kill the Buddha, but the Buddha touched
the ground.
The illusion went away, and the Buddha defeated Lord Mara.
Diana, in the same way, defeated Ares initial attack.
When Ares called down the lightning to destroy Diana, well-- it didn't work on her.
The lightning is a symbol of knowledge and knowing the inner self, the true self.
It's a symbol of awakening, and it's a symbol of Zeus.
Diana awoke to her true nature, her true self, as the daughter of Zeus, as the bodhisattva
of compassion.
This lightning attack could have no effect on her, and so she absorbed the lightning,
and she turned Ares intent back on him.
His intent was to destroy, to kill, to vanquish, and he became a recipient of what he wanted
to do to her.
It's like taking a package and marking,"return to sender," and this is a very Buddhist thing
to do.
There's a Buddhist saying that goes,"to insult a wise person is like spitting on the sky."
What happens if you try to spit on the sky?
The spit comes right back down at you.
So we return back to the modern world; after the events in Metropolis from Batman versus
Superman.
We see Diana don her Amazonian armor and fly off on an adventure in Paris, and I was left
with a few questions.
The first being, what happened to Diana between World War I and the fight with Doomsday.
What has she been doing all that time?
Who has she become since that time, and what personal challenges does she now face?
Also, will we be seeing any more of the Amazons or any more gods from the Greek pantheon?
I guess these are questions that will have to be answered when we get more stories from
the DC Extended Universe.
I've said a lot in this video, and now I would like to hear from you.
First off, what were your favorite scenes in the Wonder Woman movie?
Also, what are your thoughts on what I've shared in my review?
Has this movie changed the way you previously viewed the Wonder Woman character?
Let me know your thoughts in the comment section below, and I'll be checking back to see what
you all have to say.
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Y'all keep on breathing, and may the Force of others be with you.
Always.