La genesi di Wonder Woman

To all the people saying that this movie is inaccurate - DUH!! It's a feature film, NOT a documentary!! Do you know what a feature film is? It means it has a script writer - someone who writes the story... who comes up with the lines... based on their own imagination. Of course 90% of the stuff in that movie didn't happen. None of us were there at that time!! They have to make that stuff up. Otherwise, how else are they supposed to make an interesting movie?? If they don't come up with an interesting story you'll complain about how boring it was. If they come up with something interesting that's even slightly fictional the history police goes nuts with their crazy "the movie is inaccurate!!!" comments. Give it a break for once, will ya??

The movie was incredible. It was so tastefully done. The acting is superb. The cinematography is breathtaking. The pacing is spot on and moves the story along so well. Not a single dull moment in this movie. I was captivated from the first second to the last. I could watch movies like this non stop. It's brilliant. Yes, I understand it's not what actually happened. I don't care. For an hour and a half I lived in a beautiful fantasy world and watched an amazing story unfold in the most magnificent way possible. And if that isn't the real reason why people make and watch movies then you need to wake up and get real. This one is a MUST SEE!

When Wonder Woman made her live action big screen debut on opening weekend, a teaser for a movie based on the life of the creator and his relationship with his wife and her friends made the rounds causing lots of buzz. The thing is, the movie was better than the teaser. It's very accurate based on the time period and the casting is great. Unlike the wonder woman movie, this one is not for kids. It's rated R for sex and nudity and it shows. Luke Evans plays the lead role as Prof. Marston, who created the lie detector test and is on his way to create a game changing female super hero who would become the most famous of them all: Wonder Woman. I'm surprised that this movie didn't get any Oscar love (same for Wonder Woman 2017). Give this one a rental and see for yourself how wonderful this movie is.

First, I must confess that I am little acquainted with the Wonder Woman comic books. I loved the Wonder Woman series with Lynda Carter and I absolutely loved and am obsessed with the movie starring Gal Gadot. I watched this movie at once because I was curious about the background of the comic book author and because it stars two actors I really admire, Luke Evans and Rebecca Hall. I was pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed this movie. The pacing was right, I felt, for the story. I loved how the story was about him but the main focus was always, rightly so, on the two amazing and powerful women who shaped Wonder Woman as much as they influence and shaped the man who created the character from what he saw as the best of both women. The nudity/love scenes in this movie were not graphic and were done, again, my opinion, tastefully and with reverence to the story. I highly recommend this movie to everyone. I loved Wonder Woman before, I now understand why.

Grateful to have caught an early screening of this movie in NYC, in which the cast made a brief appearance at the movie theater. The first thing I want to say is that this is a movie I will watch more than once.

Professor Marston and the Wonder Women is a film about ideas. It explores polyamory ("the philosophy or state of being in love or romantically involved with more than one person at the same time") and touches on explorations of dominance/submission and role-play, along the lines of BDSM.

Having read Jill Lepore's excellent book, The Secret History of Wonder Woman, I knew a great deal about this story before going into the theater. As Lepore writes, "Wonder Woman's debt is to the fictional feminist utopia and the struggle for women's rights. Her origins lie in William Moulton Marston's past, and in the lives of the women he loved; they created Wonder Woman, too." It's this dynamic that sets the stage for this story, and the preview trailer for this film made it look erotic too. But those expecting to see a film along the lines of Henry & June may be disappointed.

I enjoyed this movie, but wished the romantic elements were explored more fully, particularly between the two women. The editing seemed at times overly efficient, too much in a hurry, far more concerned with propelling the narrative forward than in creating a relaxed, intimate atmosphere where the characters could indulge in the situation and be in the moment. I wish there were more "real time" scenes of foreplay, actually. Not sex, foreplay - as in flirting. Because I couldn't see the bond these people shared, and this was a movie about how these people connected.

My favorite character, by far, was Olive Byrne as played by Bella Heathcote, who is vulnerable and beautiful in the film. A real Gwendoline, to use fetish parlance. Least favorite would be Marston's wife as played by Rebecca Hall, who's an accomplished actress but seemed too uptight - and, worse, too contemporary - in this role. It always amazes me that costume and set design for period pieces like this are thoroughly researched and accurately reproduced, while almost no research goes into reproducing language use and speech patterns of the day (1925 - 1947). Did people actually use the f-word as much as Rebecca Hall uses it in this film? I think not. It made her character more grating than she needed to be. This is a fault of the script, and the f-word was used as a crutch far too often.

Marston was played adequately by the rugged-looking Luke Evans, who bears no resemblance to the overweight, dreamy-eyed real-life William Moulton Marston, but this was a concession to female audience members I suppose.

In real life, it's unknown how Marston developed an interest in BDSM. In the film, it's through Marston's encounter with the mythical pioneer of fetish history, Charles Guyette (the "G-string King"), a real historical figure. What I know of Guyette I learned through reading Charles Guyette: Godfather of American Fetish Art by Richard Perez Seves. As suavely played by JJ Field, he serves as mentor to Marston. Again, this is a bit of shorthand. Guyette is not mentioned in Lepore's history, but the audience is quickly introduced to this fetish underworld, which serves as a strong influence in the creation of Wonder Woman. No mention of Guyette being French in the Seves's book; in fact, he was born and raised in Massachusetts, according to Seves, but the people making this film may not have known this at the time as this brief book is more recent.

Overall, I'll wrap up this review by saying that despite these flaws, this is a film worth viewing. Maybe my own high expectations for it were impossible to meet. I enjoyed many scenes, with my favorite relying on the lie detector machine used in the first half of the movie; I truly loved those scenes. Again, I loved Bella Heathcote as Olive Byrne in this. So, in spite of all my nitpicking, I still give this movie a strong 7 out of 10. The ideas explored in this film make it worth watching. Maybe there's a director's cut of this film out there with additional scenes between the actors. One can only hope. But I would still see this movie again, as is, and certainly plan to.

After watching the movie my reaction was very positive. I liked the leads, liked the story and the production design was also very good. I only thought that their relationship was a bit too perfect and simple as I think in reality these kind of relationships are much more complex and nuanced which I think is really hard to translate to the screen. And then I started reading about their lives. And then I realized that almost everything I liked in the movie is totally innaccurate or just plain false. And then I started not liking this movie and all the decisions taken. In the movie's defense I think this is a very hard story to tell as very little is known about the girls relationship, but giving it the Hollywood treatment is not the way to go for me. So we end up with a movie that I enjoyed watching but hated reading about it afterwards, like almost all biopics... Maybe I should just stop reading after these kind of movies? I wonder...