On June 2, film director Patty Jenkins blessed the world with the newest DC Comic to be depicted on the big screen — “Wonder Woman,” starring Gal Gadot and Chris Pine. It is the first action hero film to star a woman as its leading character and the top film at the box office on its opening weekend.
The film centers on protagonist Diana Prince, also known as female vigilante Wonder Woman. Prince is from the Greek island of Themyscira where her people, the Amazons, live in a realm protected from outsiders. The Amazons are trained female warriors and are fully self-sufficient.
Isolated from the world her entire life, Prince has never met a man. She only knows what her mother has told her, which is that mankind is inherently good. Throughout her journey, Prince questions what makes people human, as she herself has superhuman powers.
As a film minor, I often pick films apart, and I loved this one. Gadot’s acting, the fight sequences and costuming were on point. Overall, it was an incredible film.
However, this is America. We can’t have anything nice, and the film has been met with its fair share of controversy.
For starters, critics feel the film is not patriotic enough because Gadot is Israeli and her character is from a foreign island. However, the film doesn’t attempt to be patriotic. It only attempts to portray moral values that every person, regardless of nationality, can identify with.
Others, like the Lebanese government, banned the film’s release due to Gadot’s ethnicity. Lebanon and Israel have long been at odds since the start of a conflict over land about 60 years ago. Anyway, her nationality in no way affects the story or portrayal of the character. If anything, it makes her more believable in the role of being an outsider in a Western world.
In our nation’s current political climate, a character like Wonder Woman gives young women a role model to look up to. She promotes feminism and self-reliance. Not as someone who hates men or feels oppressed, but as someone who is trying to see the other side of the argument while fighting for what they believe in, in the interest of the common good.
The film is only controversial if you want it to be. You really have to think of a reason to say that it doesn’t deserve the positive fanfare it’s been getting because the story in itself is not controversial. It’s a comic book story. The social issues addressed aren’t blatant and in technical terms of a film, it’s well done.
No matter which way you look at it, films with strong female leads are here to stay and faring better than their male counterparts, like DC’s “The Green Lantern” 2011 box office flop, for example. Those who aren’t for the new direction the film industry is moving in should simply not attend the movies. With Wonder Woman earning $228.3 million in its opening weekend worldwide, it doesn’t need your $8 ticket stub.
Myia Hambrick is a 21-year-old mass communication senior from Temple, Georgia.
