I really like it and I wanted to do this quick little sort of

mini video essay to talk about

one aspect of it

the colour

and yes, I know, it's me talking about colour and

superhero movies again but as positively as

"Wonder Woman" has been received, I have seen a lot of people talking about

it as having the same dull muted look as the

other DC movies which I think is inaccurate.

See this movie uses colour better and

more deliberately than, not just the other DC movies, but

than any other superhero movie in years.

So let's talk about that.

As I've said before, I think the

Zack Snyder DC movies objectively

look good since he's a brilliant visual stylist

but for movies about Superman,

a character who is supposed to represent hope,

I think the desaturated, sombre colour pallet

is a poor choice

but that's Snyder's aesthetic and it's going to be applied

to any movie he makes.

"Suicide squad", I think actually has good

cinematography and bathing the visuals

in sickly, yellowish hues works well for a

movie about supervillains,

but let's look at what "Wonder Woman" does.

And the spoilers are going to be very light here, so like

Spoiler Alert, she's alive at the end of the movie.

The whole first act is set on Themyscira

and the colours there are richer and more vibrant

than anything we've seen in the other DC films

it's full of warm skin tones, deep blues of the

ocean and sky and lush green everywhere.

It's beautiful and full of colour.

Then she accompanies Steve Trevor

to England and encounters 'Man's World' for the first time

and the whole look changes.

Everything is bleak and grey

and shown in cold bluish hues

and immediately upon arriving Diana remarks

"It's hideous."

So now we're seeing a look similar to the Snyder movies,

except this time it's motivated, providing a sharp

contrast between the Amazonian paradise and

the shitty world men have made.

In an interview last week with Elvis Mitchell

on "The Treatment" here's what director Patty Jenkins

had to say about the colour

"In the opening it's all colour,

right, it's every colour, and that is life

and that is beauty and if we were living a balanced life,

and that is always what I loved about Themyscira,

and so I loved that about that world, and then what was

interesting is when we got into, em, 'Man's World',

I didn't want there to be an overwhelming array of

colour, 'Man's World' is much more

limited, controlled, it's, it's within a smaller

pocket, so there's actually a lot of colour but the colour

is only blue, grey, not green."

But it gets more interesting when we get to the

already iconic 'No man's land' scene.

This is the classic moment in any

superhero origin movie where the hero

makes their public debut, making the choice to

step forward and help people.

All of 'No man's land' is portrayed as bleak and miserable

and cold.

Even the clothes the men wear are drab

blending into the environment.

So look at Diana as she steps out onto the battlefield,

her skin tones are warm,

the red of her costume is vibrant.

She's a beacon of hope and warmth

standing out against the cold misery of this wasteland.

Compare this to her visual presentation

in "Batman v Superman",

where all the colours were so muted that you

couldn't even tell her costume was red.

Everything is just a bunch of brown.

Now this continues through the action sequence,

especially, as she takes out the Lasso of Truth

which provides this bright beam of light

cutting through the darkness.

And after this battle ends, and the town has been saved,

the colour pallet changes, it's now shown in

warm yellows and oranges.

Diana has literally restored light to the town.

Okay, I'm jumping back in here because

there's no available footage to use for reference

for this next part, so in the next scene,

set the following morning, we now see the town

bathed in this warm sunlight.

And this same idea with the colour

shows up in the final scene of the movie,

set in the present day,

where we see Wonder Woman looking out over

Paris which is lit up

by this bright golden sunset.

The colours here, compared to the blues that had

previously covered the landscape, are telling us that

Diana's presence has brought hope and a

warmth to the world and there really was

a brighter tomorrow.

Look, this is not especially complicated

but it's effective.

Patty Jenkins is using colour as a storytelling device

which is something I wish I would

see in more comic book movies.

So don't complain that it's another

drab DC movie, when all the colours are

thematically motivated.

And as for the movie itself, because people keep asking

me, I really like it, and I am so happy to report

that it accomplished the main thing I was hoping for.

It gave us a hero with clear motivations and goals

who learned and made discoveries and grew and

had a clear arc over the course of the movie.

Of all the things the movie did well, the most important

was getting Diana right.

And now, I am excited to see more movies about her.

By the way, this week's regular video will be

coming in a couple of days. If you want to help us make

more of these things, check out the Patreon.

If you wanna get up into what we're working on and

yell at me about stuff, check out the

media links, and I will see you on

Wednesday,

probably.