Wonder

You squirmed on your seat. The visuals depicted war: children crying as decapitated bodies decorate the background. Women trembling hugging their babies rushing to nowhere while debris exploding like ugly fireworks...The scenes were staged, filmed. But the surreal images played like a vision in your head. These images were real somewhere in Mindanao!

Then, a voice sliced the silence: I used to want to save the world. To end war and bring peace to mankind. But then, I glimpsed the darkness that lives within their light. I learned that inside every one of them, there will always be both... so quipped Diana Prince.

You continued to fidget on the cushioned seat. You realized the truth on her ideas. For how could one stage a war without enhancing his own darkness? There has always been a Cain in all of us! But then, the musings continued to deepen your thoughts: Why linger on the dark side when goodness could heal and evil begets evil?

For years now, you often juxtapose good and evil within. People could be the culprit or the hero; the predator or the prey; the black or the ethereal. You understand that it is difficult to carry out a life without anchoring oneself to something. This is when the self-understanding must be enhanced. What direction are you going to take? What is the mission of your being and becoming? Without these, there is always a longing, a danger to be taken over by the basic instincts of being an animal or the prevalence of egotism.

Daily, you see people battling their own wars. The parents become individual heroes as they toil hard for their families. The children also sweated out their best in their educational endeavors and the young adults contribute to the development of their communities. But there are also those who make their homes as dysfunctional as it could be. There are students who take their studies for granted....And instead of molding their communities, some young adults are the harbingers of destruction themselves!

But who are you to dictate people? They have the rights to live their lives. They have the freedom to chart the meaning of their existence. There could be a room for being righteous but what if your "right" is wrong to them? That is the reason why we as human beings must meet on a common ground. There must be a universal platform that connects us all.

On the technical side of the film, you sometimes feel that there are loopholes in the storytelling, You were not so familiar with the background of Diana Prince like that of many other super heroes... Her naivete and the quick movements that could be considered as a hybrid between technology and mythology could oftentimes become difficult to merge. But these technicalities seem to be clouded by the main theme of the story: war is anti-people.

Your mind has then gone astray. Probably the flick has its box-office success since the theme is meaningful to the people here. There is war being waged in Marawi and the viewers seem to hope that a hero would stop the killings and oppression. Her sincere concern to the women and children trapped in war reverberates in the hearts of many and her powers seem to be the only solution to stop the escalating side effects of the deaths and bombings.

Your eyes then became glazed. Like a zombie, you thirsted for what this woman of wonder is trying to infer in your mind: The choice to  be good or evil is in each of the persons to make for themselves.

And that was the time when you found that common ground you were thinking about when she said these lines:

It's about what you believe. And I believe in love. Only love will truly save the world...Something NO HERO will ever defeat.