Superhero 1st Runner Up

 

To learn about Wonder Woman while I was growing up and not reading comic books, I had to rely on a campy TV show (starring Linda Carter), or the Superfriends cartoon on Saturday morning. To be fair, this is all I had to get to know anything about Batman during the same time period. She didn’t get a major movie in the early 80s that made a splash like Superman did. 

Right or wrong, I viewed her as a character similar to Superman in many ways, but provided girls a hero of their own. Both characters wore similar colors and had similar power sets, but WW also had some unique things to distinguish her from being another Supergirl. 

I knew her origin was was based in Greek mythology but beyond that, I didn’t know what made her tick. Her origin story was ripe to be told using all the best available technological and writing talent. Now if you dear reader have read posts on this lovely blog in the order they were posted, you should be getting a sense by now that the Big Empty staff has difficulty trusting that this genre is in good hands. So it was with very pleasant surprise that the year 2017 delivered a cohesive, interesting superhero movie with strong characters, emotional appeal called Wonder Woman with pacing and length that respected people who are not comic fans with an insatiable appetite for moor bigger ‘splosionzzzzzz!  

Wonder Woman is a fantastic adventure filled with inner conflict and the loss of innocent idealism without the loss of hope. Though the goodness of humanity is always in question, Wonder Woman as a character remains very dynamic. The world that men inhabit outside of the island of Amazons she spent her entire young life with was like mythology to her. Men were people who were misled by a nefarious god of Greek mythology to make war on each other. Defeat the evil God, and humanity will be free from war. So she thought. As actual people continue to demonstrate that they are quite capable of being contemptible without any help from evil gods, she also encounters humans that want a better world as much as she does and are willing to lay down their lives in pursuit of it. She channels the love and hope she once held for all humanity into these special World War 1 era individuals and becomes their ally and eventually their legacy, as she is immortal and will outlive them. This is another reality that is part of the slow but real heartbreak she will continue to feel and carry forever. But it never makes her bitter.  The perseverance of her belief in finding and lifting up goodness in people is her greatest  super power  

This is a terrific and inspiring story that I was happy to enjoy with my young daughter.  And that’s all I need to be convinced to shell out my money for a ticket.