Wondering About Professor Marston and the Wonder Women

The more biopics I see, the more I find myself wanting to classify them as "alternative history." Unfortunately, the 2017 movie Professor Marston and the Wonder Women was no exception.

Well, I liked it better than director Angela Robinson's D.E.B.S. -- which isn't saying much since D.E.B.S. was basically an one-joke comedy which proved to be surprisingly mediocre once it revealed its one big twist. Of course, compared to godawful movies like Rough Night, D.E.B.S. didn't seem that bad but that might just be nostalgia talking.

Anyway, Professor Marston... did give me some hope for the upcoming Strangers in Paradise film which is supposedly director Angela Robinson's next project. But as a movie, well...

I wanted to like it more than I did but given the fact that it basically glorified William Moulton Marston, a man who seemed to be more than a little bit of a schmuck -- and this from a guy who loved the recent Wonder Woman movie (yes, I'm aware of the irony) -- I was lucky that I liked it as much as I did. I did like the way it gave the Rebecca Hall character Elizabeth (Marston's wife) her due. Indeed, I felt more sympathy for her character than for any other character in the movie. And I was a bit amused by how much a movie about a polyamorous relationship seemed to make a better case for same-sex marriage than for polyamory.

However, the moment I was asked to take seriously sentiments like "you always hurt the one you love," it became obvious that this was never going to be my type of movie. Which is just as well since this movie obviously wasn't made for me.

I am not sure whom it was made for but I hope whomever it was enjoyed it more than me.

I did appreciate the irony of the movie showing a man who was all about submitting to strong female authority figures being confronted by -- you guessed it -- a strong female authority figure. But I can't help but wonder how much of that irony was intended.