A good conclusion to the grodd arc. Flash crossing the wires in his helmet was a clever move on his part.
[7.5/10] A much better outing than the first one. This one has its filler too -- especially the initial fight with Faust that feels pretty perfunctory -- but it really picks up once the team heads down to the chamber of the underworld or whatever, and never stops.
It’s also interesting to get some of the mythos/background on Wonder Woman and her mother. I don’t know how well the story of Hippolyta and Hades tracks with actual Greek myth (I suspect not well), but it still works as an interesting tale of love and betrayal that sets the stage for Wonder Woman’s relationship to her mom, adds shading to Hippolyta as someone who made a mistake and regrets it deeply, and gives Hades a really creepy fixation on the leader of Themyscira.
Business picks up when Faust opens the door to the underworld and, true to form, gets more than he bargained for. There’s a strong and tragic progression to him demanding his reward, suffering at the hands of Hades, only to turn the tables and then weaken the lord of darkness before succumbing to it himself. There’s cool visuals to the whole thing, and it makes Faust oddly sympathetic (again, true to the source material) for someone whose hubris caused all the trouble here.
That visual acuity is realized throughout. Hades's design is skin-crawl-worthy, with his beast-like head and multi-forked tongue. The undead soldiers of Themyscira’s past create a nice Night of the Living Dead vibe to everything. And the vortex into the underworld in particular provides a great excuse to not only show our heroes escaping from its pull, but imparts tension to Hades trying to drag Wonder Woman’s mother down into hell only for Wonder Woman to save her.
To that end, this is a real coming out party for Diana. We get to see her bravery, her forcefulness, but also her honor in all of this. Hades, “the mad god”, is a worthy adversary, and her going toe-to-toe with him, thwarting him by destroying the key, and saving her mother in the process, works as Diana coming into her own.
That’s tempered by the fact that her bringing her friends to the island results in her banishment, one she accepts willingly, but that provokes quite a bit of pain in her and her mother. Their rules are their rules, even if they’re broken to save the world. That’s just as tragic an irony, which ends this one on a bittersweet note.
Overall, “Paradise Lost” takes a little while to get going, but ends up being a rousing and suspenseful triumph for Wonder Woman.
(As an aside, when Batman was poking around Faust’s office, it made me think this would be the perfect time for him to consult his good friend Jason Blood, but it’s well within the usual realm of willing suspension of disbelief that folks outside of the team weren’t contacted.)
Shout by WardVIP 8BlockedParentSpoilers2024-03-05T12:27:49Z
Never underestimate the flash.
Because his morals are also more callous. He doesn't care if your mind, your very identity gets wiped out. He won, that's all. The other superheroes on the team would have thought about the implications of destroying Grodd's mind, and beat him a different way, and other heroes wouldn't have thought about doing that to Grodd in the first place. Not Flash though. While he is heroic and a superhero, his playful demeanor hides an extremely powerful and callous being towards his enemies.