Wonder

Wonder (2017) uses the story of a boy with facial deformities attending a new school to promote judging people on their appearance and solving conflict with violence.

The motif of space runs through Wonder to support these themes.

How does space relate to these themes? Not sure yet. This movie is deep.

Wonder is divided into four chapters.

Chapter I. Auggie

It starts with Auggie as an astronaut jumping up and down on his bed. It takes a while for him to take off the helmet. This choice is definitely an homage to A Private World of Darkness (1961)

At supper, his mother (Julia Roberts) says “Earth to Auggie” This further reinforces the space motif.

His mom is trying to her thesis off of an old floppy disk.  His sister is named Via,

A flashback to his birth and people looking horrified.

Auggie is going to prep school for 5^th grade. This will be his first time in a mainstream school. He is scared about his face.

His mom reassures him that: “we all have wrinkles” and that she has wrinkles from stress about his surgeries.

Auggie goes on a tour of the school to meet students. This scene is a perfect example of this movie’s motto: “tell, don’t show.” Auggie has an internal monologue about everything in the beginning of the movie.

This is also the first time the movie hints towards its message: “Judge others by their appearance”

Auggie stares at the three kid’s shoes and Judges their character,

Charlotte, the blonde, rich, snooty girl, has expensive shoes.

Julian, the bully, has scruffy sneakers

Jack Will, his eventual friend, has neat shoes.

Mr. Browne is that cool teacher nobody actually has in real life but shows up in movies. He has precepts which hint at major themes in the book.

“Courage is what it takes to sit down and what it takes to stand up”

“Is it better to be right or be kind”

Mr. Browne has everyone tell the class two things about themselves. Which is really easy character 

building.

 Auggie says he likes Star Wars and he has a sister. His interest in Star Wars indicates that he has a fantastically idea about space which reinforces the main themes of this movie somehow.

Julian asks about face, because Julian is a bully.

Auggie (short for August) has a crush on a black girl named Summer. This is interesting because Autumn and Summer are the result of the earth revolving around the sun in space. Everything connects to space.

I scribbled down “August/Summer relationship sounds hot.” But then I remembered that these are 5^th graders.

In science, the teacher talks about Newton’s first law. Then it cuts to gym, he gets hit by dodge-ball and called hideous. The school photographer talks town to Auggie. This movie is not subtle.

Then he imagines Chewbacca showing up in school. Again, not subtle. But Chewbacca demonstrates that Auggie uses outer-space to define his attitude towards his appearance, further supporting the themes of the movie.

In science class, the teacher puts a card with the word “Now” printed on it behind a glass. She fills the glass with water and the word now flips to “Won.” It would have been more effective if the card said “Red Now” or perhaps “Red Rum.”

There’s a pop quiz. Auggie lets Jack Will copy off his paper. Then he invites Jack to his house.

Kids, let people cheat to make friends.

Auggie tells Jack that he wants to be Chewbacca for Halloween. This choice is rather ingenious of the screenwriters. Firstly, it amplifies the connection to Chewbacca from merely a reference to the embodiment of Auggie’s relationship to his disfigurement. Secondly, it reinforces the space theme.

Chapter II. Via

Each chapter goes back to the beginning of the movie for a few minutes in the perspective of another character. So we get to see Auggie going to school for the first time again. Yay?

Via signs up for an audition for the school play: Our Town. She meets obvious love interest Jackson and flirts.

Both couples in the movie, August/Summer and Via/Jackson, are mixed-race.  This was also true in Everything, Everything. These are not the best movies for representation.

Via’s friend Miranda dyed hair darker, put on make-up, and stopped contacting her. Remember, the message of Wonder is “Judge people based on their appearance.”

It’s Halloween. We go back to Auggie, dressed as Scream.

Someone dresses like him. Auggie overhears Jack Will say “I’d kill myself if I looked like him.” He also calls Auggie “ghost-face”

Via and their mom are at home. Via is happy because her mom is spending time with her. Then her mom leaves for the school because Auggie is nauseous. Damn it, Auggie.

Via tells Auggie that they both lost friends. Miranda auditions. Their Mom gets a floppy disk with her thesis.

The movie is more “random tibdits” than “coherent narrative.”

I wish that I could have written down this exact line, because it was amazing. “Our parents are like 

planets. They orbit around the son, not the daughter.” 

Via tells Jackson that she’s an only child.

Chapter III. Jack will

We go back in time to before the tour with Auggie. Again, this movie plays with chronology in a really confusing way for a family movie.

Jack Will’s mom guilt-trips him into giving Auggie a tour of the school. She calls Auggie “the one from the ice-cream shop.” 

Then the movie jumps ahead. Through an internal monologue, Jack Will tells us that he learned that 

Auggie is smart and funny, he gets used to his face, and want to be friends

Then the movie goes back to Auggie.  Summer sits next to August. This sounds so ridiculous.

Miranda gets the part but Via gets to be her understudy. Jackson makes a joke about poisoning 

Miranda before the performance. Maybe then this movie will be interesting.

Why does the movie give each section the name of a character when that character is only in the first few minutes of each section?

Via and Jackson decide to practice lines. Every time the movie starts to get boring, another amazing line occurs:

Jackson: We can start rehearsing the kissing scene on page 110

If Via has already auditioned for the part, wouldn’t she know that there is no kissing scene?

After the kiss, Via tells Jackson that she is not an only child.

Jackson comes over with a case. He tells Auggie that it’s a fiddle. Auggie jokes that he should have said it was a machine gun.

Is this really an appropriate joke in a family movie in this political climate?

Miranda calls Auggie about “Via’s boyfriend.”

Chapter IV. Miranda

I thought Miranda was a minor character, but she has her own chapter. Wonder truly is an expertly-crafted tapestry of interwoven character stories.

Miranda’s family is divorced. She spends most of her time at Via’s. She tells people at camp that she’s part of Auggie’s family. Miranda bought the astronaut helmet and views Auggie as a brother.

Okay, now the movie is connecting the theme of space with family.

That’s enough of Miranda for the section titled Miranda.

It’s Christmas and the soundtrack plays Santa Claus is Coming to Town. One could argue that this supports Wonder’s theme of being kind. 

But the song is still playing at New Years.

Mr. Browne has a new precept: “Your deeds are your monuments."

Summer talks to Jack Will and mentions “ghost-face”. Jack Will has an epiphany and realizes that Auggie overheard him saying “ghost-face.”

This is the most annoying part of the movie. A kid with a facial deformity should be like the dream target of fifth-grade bullies. And out of all the possible insults, Jack Will chooses “ghost-face.”

The science teacher announces that the science fair is coming up and their tablemates will be their partners.  Jack Will and Auggie are tablemates. Julian and the other bully try to tell the teacher that they and Jack Will had already planned to work together. The teacher seems to go along with this, but Jack Will says he wants to work with Auggie.

So was the teacher going to let the three people team up and leave Auggie alone? Is this supposed to be a sacrifice? Following the rules?

Jack Will punches Julian for calling Auggie a freak. He only gets suspended for 2 days

Kids, punch people you don’t like.

Via doesn’t tell parents about the play

The dog bites the mom and has to be put down. This has no relevance to the rest of the movie.

Via invites her parents and Auggie to the play.

Jack Will and Auggie play Minecraft.  Product placement? Auggie’s avatar is an astronaut. This further supports the space motif. Also, the dialogue explores the theme of judging people based on appearance.

Auggie: Would you really kill yourself if you looked like me?

Jack Will: no, but maybe if I looked like Julian.

All three family members go to the play. Jackson guilts Miranda into not going because Via will be there with her family. Miranda tells the director that she is sick and Via has to go on instead. Then she tells Via.

MAYBE DON’T TELL HER TWO MINUTES BEFORE SHE HAS TO GO ON.

Our Town turns out to have some perfectly on-the-nose lines like:

“I'd rather have my children healthy than bright.” Really

One line is about saying goodbye to her mom

Her mom has a flashback to Via blowing out a candle on a birthday cake and wishing for brother

There’s a Little Shop of Horrors poster in background.  If this were a less intelligent movie, the poster would be Phantom of the Opera to connect the mask and deformity. But Little Shop of Horrors is about outer-space, which further reinforces the themes of Wonder.

Jack Will and Auggie win the science fair with their camera obscura. This is clever because a camera obscura distorts images through a space. And space is the main theme of Wonder.

Julian and the other bully make a volcano but that blows up in their faces. Literally.

Auggie starts getting bullied. People slip notes of Freddy Krueger to him. This is towards the end of the movie. Honestly, if the final half-hour of this movie was a slasher, that would both be believable and make Wonder the greatest movie of 2017.

Julian photoshops Auggie out of the school photograph and writes “Do everyone a favor and die” on the back.

The headmaster suspends Julian. His mother comes and says Julian has “been having nightmares” about Auggie’s face. She pulls him out of school Implying that because Julian’s parents hate Auggie, the bullying was okay. Good job being a positive message movie, Wonder.

The entire school goes into a nature preserve for a field trip. They watch the Wizard of Oz.

Jack Will and Auggie walk out of the screening. Now, I have nothing against walking out of The Wizard of Oz (link to april fools), but does the school just let these fifth-graders wander out of school trips?

They go to woods, find bullies from other schools, and get into a fight. Jack Will and Auggie win the fight. They all laugh and there are no repercussions.

Auggie’s father is that proud he won fight. Good job being a positive message movie, Wonder.

Auggie’s father reveals that he hid the astronaut helmet because he didn’t want Auggie to hide his face all the time. I couldn’t remember that the helmet went missing. There’s no real narrative thread through all of this.

It’s graduation. Auggie sits next to his family. His mom delivers the titular line:

“You really are a split, Auggie”

The headmaster announces that the school gives an award called the Henry Ward Beecher Award (Two “wards” in the same phrase is not good) to someone who makes an impact or something like that. I wasn’t really paying attention to the movie at this point.

The headmaster gives the Henry Ward Beecher Award to…Miranda!

Sorry, it was Auggie. Got that confused.

Auggie stands up, takes his award, and everyone claps. The movie ends with another voice-over monologue with Auggie claiming “Everyone deserves a standing ovation.”

No, Auggie, they don’t. You know who doesn’t deserve a standing ovation? The director of Wonder.

Wonder is a decent movie.

I can’t even end with a joke implying that the movie is actually bad. I went into the movie expecting to hate it, but I couldn’t. It’s a decent movie.