all right look so much wait look at the camera look at camera that is wesley from princess bride say as you wish as you wish [Laughter] as you wish welcome to the wonderful world of cinema therapy i'm jonathan decker licensed therapist and would you say that you are an average representation of your sex i am alan searight and i am above average all right well today we're gonna talk about wonder woman what a wonderful woman she is a wonderful woman this is a cool movie and you know what i love about this this is a
movie with a strong female lead that so many guys latched on to not because like she's hot i mean a lot of guys did but because she is hot because it was a damn fine film it was very good and the action was like ah man i i hate that we have to have this discussion i hate that we have to have this discussion but women can direct action movies yes women can be action stars can we just stop talking about that now it's great this is like the action in this movie i would put
right on the same level as any marvel film [Music] it's solid it's top notch yeah it's great great film great characters and we're going to dive in today to talk about the concept of paradigm shifts and what diana experiences so a paradigm shift most of you know because our viewers are very educated but i'm just going to throw this out there paradigm shift is you have a fundamental change in your beliefs or your worldview you come across new information that shakes everything up and some people believe so deeply in their religious faith or in their
politics or in their social identity that when something comes along that challenges that and they're they're forced to re-evaluate they lose themselves forever and they never quite recover and they're just kind of a shell of a person but diana emerges from her paradigm shift even better because she doesn't abandon the values that made her who she is right but she does integrate the truth into like she doesn't like do this you can't triple stamp a double stamp you can't triple stand my double stamp you can't dribble stable double stamp she doesn't bury her head in
the sand right and she evolves through it and we all have this like unless we're just gonna stay exactly who we were as kids if you haven't had a paradigm shift at some point in your adult life you need to seek help right now because you didn't accurately comprehend the world when you were 17. sorry you did not so let's talk about diana what would you say what's her world view growing up yeah she grows up on the island of themyscira she's very sheltered uh you know purposefully and that's not necessarily a bad thing you
know you want to shelter your kids to some extent from the horrors and atrocities of the world but you know they also need to understand what life is and she believes that humans are inherently good yeah and that the cause of all evil is aries aries god of war so her mom tells her this bedtime story that is part made up hogwash and part the truth right when zeus led the gods to our defense aerys killed them one by one until only zeus himself remained and and she's trying to prepare her for life but she's
always she's really hoping that diana can just stay on the island i don't want aries ever to find her i'm going to protect her and i don't want her to ever have to rise to her calling whereas her is it her aunt is it her i think it's her aunt her aunt who's the general is saying no you were here for a reason which we discover later on is general buttercup i died that day you are the one who's gonna defeat aries so let's get you prepped i think diana's mother like she means well but
she her daughter's actually ill-prepared for her mission she's actually ill-prepared for what's out there and she's ill prepared for actually realizing what's going on uh because the fact is we can have we have paradigm shifts and they can be slight if we're if we're trained to seek for truth if we're trained to look for reality if that's how we're brought up then we will just be evolving but we won't have our paradigm shifts don't have to be cataclysmic and devastating because we're always open to truth we're always open to learning we're already open to having
our perspectives shifted and then when it happens it's not catastrophic you know but diana had such such a strong belief that she got from her mother that uh i think her mom aired too far on the side of caution yeah but one thing that is beautiful that she gets from her mom is this belief in the goodness of people and also this belief of stepping up and doing something when you can yeah right which she also gets from steve my father told me once he said if you see something wrong happening in the world you
can either do nothing or you can do something and i already tried nothing um and so for a while steve's kind of leading her through it until she's like all right i got it stand back [Music] or maybe not and here's like the exact moment she's like all right i got this because he's been leading her through this is how the world works this is what the war is and she's observing but then we get to this place this the trench warfare where the citizens are dying they're being bombed they're being starved out women and
children are suffering and he says we can't save everyone in this war i do have sympathy for them but our mission is to end the war which you know on a macro level makes sense and if you're a regular soldier absolutely makes sense but gianna prince is not a regular soldier but she has the power to do something and she decides i'm going to step up and do it so let's let's observe and we can talk while we're yes it's not what we came here to do i uh most of the dc movies follow the
zack snyder sort of excessive slow-mo rule uh uh i thought it was really effectively used in this one sometimes it's a little overdone i'm going to do yeah but it really serves to highlight you know character moments and the very comic book panel we got a mythical hero right yeah and and until now she's shown her powers but once they leave the island it's it's very rooted in world war one filmmaking right very much so and so here you have the the claiming the superhero moment and so yeah they indulge in a little slow-mo but
she's a mythical hero you know it's just like an iron man where they have like the conflict going on on the other side of the world and it feels very gritty and real and true to life and then they insert a superhero into it you know when he goes and saves the villagers i mean that's that's the power of the wish fulfillment is when we see iron man doing it it's like yeah i wish we could go over and do something and you think of the atrocities of world war one how amazing it would be
to drop someone like that this into it such a great shot of her she looks so powerful there it's just such a such a comic book panel shot that one i have one yeah but she's she's now inspired everyone to start coming out of the trenches well and i love that she still you know she looks over and sees okay i'm i'm helping these guys come across but she sees that they're going to kill you know what is ostensibly the enemy and her moral compass is still like no we're not here to kill right and
he notices throughout the film if you watch for it she does kill if if it's what she has there's no choice right but she will she'd much rather disable and there goes the gun right why why is this scene so powerful you know the filmmaking is beautiful the the action is really compelling but the thing that makes it work is it's all character driven you know action beats in an action movie or a musical number in a musical or something that isn't character driven and is just there for spectacle we even if you're not really
paying attention to that you feel it you start getting bored it just doesn't feel like it has very much weight and this has so much weight for the character of diana and for our side characters as well this is really where they catch on to her being a leader yeah that's true because before it's like no she's just with us and she can kick butt but yeah she conceives our leader she can kick butt steve's the leader she's kind of a spy she's maybe got some inside knowledge of something to help us languages and we
we saw her throw a guy across the bar so she's got skills right yeah but but then they see this and i this is where the the filmmaking clue is not subtle she becomes wonder woman when she takes off the coat the coat that's supposed to cover her up so she's more like a woman of the era instead of just her right and and it's this is her transformation from diana prince into wonder woman and what's great about having a female director is unlike some shots in justice league uh diana's not sexualized in this film
not at all and i mean the the costume is is you know fairly revealing uh-huh and gal gadot is obviously the most beautiful woman you've ever seen she looks like a superhero and it's not that that patty jenkins is shying away from diana's body is emblematic of her power both physical but also her moral power right it's a representation and so she's framed frankly a lot like stallone was in the 80s yeah right like stallone like in all his movies it's like all these muscle shots as he's like tying the bandana and stuff like and
and so diana she she's framed her body like when it when the when the camera emphasizes her body it's not sexual it's power it's powerful yeah like that silhouette where she's holding the shield and you see her stance as she's as she's blocking all the machine gun fire i mean that is a very body driven shot but it's not sexualized at all you know compare that to justice league where it's like here we're gonna pan down and frame it from underneath up at her behind as she's talking to someone and it's just like but diana
here is very much acting in accordance with her values and and on topic of the paradigm shift she's going to experience we may shift our beliefs or our world views may change with new information but there are certain core values that we don't need to give up and a lot of times people's core values are so intrinsically linked to their beliefs and and the very strict interpretation of whatever their world viewer beliefs are that when that worldview viewer belief are upset or shaken then they lose the values and they lose the morals and diana does
that here coming up so once again diana marching on that battlefield is in full accordance with her beliefs that people are good and i have to take action but we're gonna see what happens when those beliefs are strongly strongly challenged in the name of all that is good in this world i hereby complete the mission of the amazons by ridding this world of you forever she kills who she thinks is aries the god of war which he was inhaling some stuff that gave him superpowers so he seemed godlike yep then what happens well nothing changes
which absolutely upsets her paradigm of people only do bad things because of aries and as soon as his power and influence is gone right they will stop hating they will stop fighting i just want to watch this part i killed him i killed him but nothing stopped you killed the god of war you stopped the war exactly what we have to do now we need to stop the gas come on no all of this should have stopped diana the fighting why are they doing it i don't know i don't know i i every single day
they can stop fighting now why are they still because i mean that's because maybe it's them maybe maybe people aren't always good aries or no aries maybe it's just it's who they are as a devastating blow yeah what do you think about her reaction there you know her her entire world view is being challenged not only challenging it's collapsing collapsing i mean she she cannot unless she has to like boldface lie to herself right it is it is collapsing and there's nothing to replace it the gal gadot does a great job in her performance in
this scene of of you know being a hero an incredibly strong heroic mythical character who's also having a total you know paradigm collapse and emotional collapse my mother was right she said the world of men do not deserve you they don't deserve our help it's not about deserve my mom lied to me yeah everything that i've been risking life and limb for is false and these people that i've been fighting alongside these men are monsters like they're part of the problem i mean this is looking when he says maybe it's them she looks at him
like with whole new eyes maybe it's also you but then he then he says to her but it's not about that it's about what you believe and that's the thing she doesn't know if she believes in ending this war right now she thinks she's seen the depravity she's seen the inhumanity and she's starting to think maybe they're not worth saving which aries comes along and exploits yes diana take them all he's like i don't make them bad they were already bad i gave them the weapons to destroy themselves because my father's creation was rotten from
the core mankind did this not me they are ugly filled with hatred weak just like your captain trevor gone and left you nothing he assumed because he hated that his dad that zeus created humanity he assumed people were all bad and he's never stopped seeing that and so he's actually it's called confirmation bias confirmation bias is where you see what you're looking for yeah he always assumed they were rotten so despite being surrounded by some pretty decent people how likely is he to respect my wishes not very likely i'll be honest especially like the the
other woman like she's lovely she's wonderful oh yeah and but he just sees rotten degenerate people and they all need to fry and he blinds himself to any other evidence to the contrary right and that's part of one that's one thing that keeps us locked into our paradigms is confirmation bias where we only see what we're looking to see diana and it's it's unhealthy right if diana had experienced the same thing you know she would have she would just ignore any evidence that people were capable of bad and she would just keep assuming this one
thing and that's why she's better than aries like straight up that's why she's better than aries is because she's open to change she's teachable she's humble but she had this bias that people were good and she assumed that was the case and so all evidence that to the contrary she pushed out because it's aries it's aries it's aries but that allowed her time to see and appreciate the beauty and humanity yeah like when she dances with steve like when she sees the the villagers celebrating and singing songs and she and steve have that lovely conversation
of is this what people do when there's no fighting you know and he says they they have breakfast they love a breakfast and um they love to wake up and read the paper go to work get married make some babies grow together it's this really beautiful idea that she's never really considered any of that because it hasn't been her life on the island she got a chance to see the good in people which allows her now that her paradigm is shattered to not latch on to what aries is holding out to her which is they're
rotten and they should be destroyed yeah she can build her own paradigm yeah exactly she she has to with or not she has to but she chooses to with all of the information before her so here's steve there's just been a bomb gone off and the plane's gonna take off and like drop the gas on everybody and kill millions of people right steve whatever it is i can do it no let me do it it has to be me it has to be me i can save today you could save the world he does a
great job of showing love in his face right there like real just love for her i wish we had more time what it turns out chris pine's a pretty good actor mm-hmm i love you [Music] and the love that he shows for her is not just romantic you know like it's the real beautiful just wrong about them [Music] so he wanted to squish that woman like a bug because they are all burdened they're everything you say but so much more just bless david thulas for having terrible lines written for him and he just delivers the
hell out of him it's strange because most of the lines in this movie aren't terrible yeah but his he's really poorly written at least in his big moments when he's like explaining the subtleties of his plan but these parts yeah yeah it's not about deserve it's about what you believe and i believe in love here's one here's one place where i really disagree with the critics a lot of critics said what a solid film until the last bit where it becomes an overblown superhero film and they have to have this giant special effect showdown i
thought that too when i first saw it in theaters i did on re-watch i'm like this is the natural progression of she's fully stepping into her power once she integrates everything and creates a new worldview number one number two she's actually fighting a god so go big or go home yeah [Laughter] it's it's hard to have hey we're gonna have a great god but uh it's gonna be a conversation with keep it grounded yeah no let's throw lightning bolts man yeah absolutely it's not about deserve i love that that actually echoes we had our just
mercy episode uh you know one of the lines from just mercy which is we all need some measure of unmerited grace and so diana is is stepping into like what i see here and i love this i see good in people she says they are what you say they are they're awful they're they commit atrocities there's hatred and bias and prejudice there's so much more their capacity for love and for compassion when we give people not what they deserve but what they need we bring out the best in them yep and that's something she says
towards the end but then i glimpsed the darkness that lives within their light and learn that inside every one of them there will always be both a choice each must make for themselves something no hero will ever defeat like she can go and fight the bad guys day in day out and do these super heroic things but diana's true power is as a beacon to inspire goodness yeah which is what they should have done with superman my yeah we don't have superpowers we can all inspire we can all give not what people deserve but we
can give that unmerited grace we can give that kindness the second thing is diana steps on into the no man's land because she has the power to do so without just taking a bullet and people being like well that was dumb you know right um we all have some sort of power our sphere of influence our ability to spread information are our like the reach that we have the resources that we have it varies from person to person but we all in some area or another have more power to do than somebody else and so
what do we do with that right and that and that's what that metaphorically is what i take from this what do you think about how diana handles her paradigm shift like how does she thread that all together she handles it incredibly well uh you know she she does exactly what you would want right she takes in as much information as she can after you know her her paradigm crumbles instead of just reflexively going to the exact opposite or an extreme or reflexively just you know holding on and and um you know using whatever confirmation bias
to stay because i'm so afraid of losing it i don't know who i am without this so i just have to cling to it exactly instead of doing either one of those things you know she she constructs a new identity and a new paradigm that you know we've seen from the other films in the in the dceu makes her arguably the the best most well-balanced superhero in the entire in that and that's dc in that dc universe yeah but diana's paradigm shift is so powerful because what it ends up doing is making her more loving
she started with a love that was based on um ignorance it was based on a fairy tale and it was based on her being the most powerful force for good in the fairy tale right and everyone else is like below me but not in a condescending way but in a benign like i'm the god killer you are the poor people under the control of this evil god being easily corrupted i will go handle once i save you right and what i really love about about diana's story my like my favorite moment to blink and you
miss it is when she's contemplating what aries is telling her give up diana and she looks over and she sees the men who are now out of bullets and they're just huddled together waiting for death [Music] oh it's my turn you got me on this one and she realizes in that moment i have something to learn from them about how to love even when people aren't inherently good that she sees that and that is beautiful to her none of us have all the answers right i you know i'm the therapist i'm he's got most of
them i'm the i'm the supposed expert i learned a lot from alan there are things he says on the show that blow me away that are incredibly profound we learn frankly like sometimes you guys leave comments we learn a lot from you guys we do we're like man we should have included that in the episode i wish we thought of that right this whole life is meant for us to learn from each other to grow from each other and to love each other and if we're not doing that then we need a paradigm shift because
we're screwing everything up that's what i got to say what i have to say is thank you for watching cinema therapy rent or by wonder woman using the link below most of all we're trying to start a revolution to help people have healthy relationships and happy lives in a really cool fun way so please tell your friends please follow us on social media on facebook twitter and instagram and no matter what show strength love and grace and to any bigots or a-holes who may be watching in the name of all that is good your reign
on this earth is at an end watch movies yes candy the whole point was to make her look less distracting yeah really specs suddenly she's not the most beautiful woman you've ever seen
