There’s a lot to love in Patty Jenkins’ Wonder Woman, and I love the movie lots. But one of my favorite parts is when Diana’s mother, the Amazon Queen Hippolyta, tells her young daughter the history of their people (and that of the Gods and humanity) with the help of some magical moving artwork. All I wanted to do was watch it again and again. This gifset helps while we wait for the movie’s digital release.
If you adore Greek mythology like I adore Greek mythology, maybe you flinched a little at the complete liberty that Wonder Woman‘s mythos takes with that ancient canon. Basically, nothing that Hippolyta relates matches up with anything I learned all those years I used to read mythological dictionaries for fun (ask me about Asclepius!).
But Wonder Woman’s oeuvre has always been very loosely inspired by old Gods and monsters, not claiming to be a classical treatise, so it gets more of a pass from me than, say, Disney’s Hercules. What I admired most about Hippolyta’s story was the method in which Jenkins and her team chose to tell it: through scenes that show the action as beautifully stylized art that seems to come to life as Hippolyta speaks.
Talented Tumblr user asgrdians created a gorgeous gifset of the stunning scene, which means my desire to study the details herein can finally be satisfied.
Here’s the tale that Hippolyta tells young Diana:
Long ago, when time was new and all of history was still a dream, the gods ruled the Earth, Zeus king among them.
Zeus created beings over which the Gods would rule: beings born in his image. Fair and good, strong and passionate. He called his creation Man and mankind was good.
But Zeus’ son grew envious of mankind and sought to corrupt his father’s creation. This was Ares—the God of War.
Ares poisoned men’s hearts with jealousy and suspicion. He turned them against one another and war ravaged the Earth.
So the Gods created us, the Amazons, to influence men’s hearts with love and to restore peace to the Earth. And for a brief time, there was peace.
But it did not last. Your mother, the Amazon Queen, led a revolt that freed us all from enslavement.
[Editor’s note: as commenter Mari703 points out with this GIF, “I appreciate the inventive and artistic way that the history was recounted in the film, but let’s not overlook the problems with the art.”]
When Zeus led the Gods to our defense, Ares killed them one by one, until only Zeus himself remained.
Zeus used the last of his power to stop Ares—striking such a blow, the God of War was forced to retreat.
Pardon me while I stare at the GIF of Hippolyta and Antiope charging into battle side-by-side for the rest of the day.
(via asgrdians on Tumblr, images: Warner Bros./DC)
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