Wonder Woman

     Sigh. So I guess I'm the only person on the planet who wasn't wowed by the record-breaking blockbuster movie that has critics swooning and has knocked the socks off theater ticket sales world-wide.
     I saw "Wonder Woman" last Friday evening and, for the almost two-and-a-half hours I sat watching, I kept waiting for this movie that was supposed to be The Movie To End All Movies to engage me, pull me in, take me away, but it just didn't.
    Too often the characters' motivations for their actions were unclear to me.  And for all the action and special effects, I thought there was a lack of dramatic tension. Somehow it just didn't pop.
       Not that I didn't appreciate some of "Wonder Woman's" principle  motifs.
      I liked the mythological references, in theory, except that the whole mythological origins thing never did quite coalesce for me - how exactly was Wonder Woman created? Why exactly was her mother opposed to her becoming what she was created for?  Why didn't any of the Amazons let her  know what she was created for? In fact, what exactly were all the Amazons doing on that island, anyway?  None of the half-explanations of things were ever really clear to me, including the Ares, God of War thing.
      Though, again, I did in theory like  the Ares, God of War thing, as well as the World War I backdrop; I just found the connection between the two a bit confusing and not fully formed, like everything else in the movie.  Except, of course, Wonder Woman decked out in her battle fatigues.

    But the movie's subplot of  the God of War (maybe) being behind The War to End All Wars, as World War I was thought to be at the time,

     ...did make me think of the connection that musicologists have made between the the musical composition, "Mars, The Bringer of War," by Gustav Holst, written sometime between 1914 and 1916, and the terror of mechanized warfare that was unleashed on the world during World War I and evoked by Holst's music.
      In fact if you've never heard it, here's a link to a Youtube recording of Holst's "Mars, The Bringer of War."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0bcRCCg01I

    Does "Mars, The Bringer of War" not sound like  World War I?
​        Can't you just see the invading troops, looking like an army of monsters  in their gas masks with their bayonets and flame throwers?

      Too bad the director of "Wonder Woman" didn't use "Mars, The Bringer Of War," for the movie's soundtrack, it's such great war music.
         But I guess "Wonder Woman" didn't need Gustav Holst's music to break all theater attendance records its opening weekend when it had   a gorgeous, sexy, scantily-clad woman kicking butt,

​...while wearing kinky boots,

...which they're telling us is making women everywhere feel empowered.
     I don't know.  Watching "Wonder Woman" didn't make me feel particularly empowered. Just a little bored.
      

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