The idea of women warriors has been with us for thousands of years. Homer established this notion as part of the bedrock of Western civilization when he depicted the goddesses Hera and Aphrodite in The Iliad as taking active roles in the Trojan War. One of the greatest generals in ancient Israel, according to the Bible, was the prophet Deborah, whose military skill saved the 12 tribes from Canaanite domination. And in that same episode in the Book of Judges, it is a woman, Yael, who kills the Canaanite general. One of the greatest military heroes of the medieval era was the teenage heroine Joan of Arc, who saved the French from English domination during the 15th century and was rewarded for her efforts by being burned at the stake. In our era, it is commonplace for women to serve as soldiers alongside men.
In film, the concept of women warriors is certainly not new, either. From Sigourney Weaver in Alien (1979) to Eowyn in The Lord of the Rings and from Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) in The Terminator (1984) to Gal Gadot in Wonder Woman (2017), women are consistently depicted in film as fierce fighters.
There is thus nothing cinematically remarkable or culturally groundbreaking about The Woman King’s depiction of a society of female warriors. Wonder Woman had already done so half a decade ago in its portrayal of the legendary Amazons, from whom, according to DC Comics lore, Wonder Woman (aka Princess Diana) was reputed to have descended. The Amazons are not an invention of 20th-century DC Comics writers. They are a tribe of female warriors whose exploits are spoken of in any number of ancient Greek mythological accounts.
No, what is remarkable about The Woman King is how terrible of a movie it is and the extent of the historical liberties it takes in its presentation of a purportedly true story.
The Woman King — directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood, written by Dana Stevens and Maria Bello, and now available in theaters nationwide — is being offered to us as the cinematic dramatization of the true story of a band of women warriors, known as the Agojie, who saved the West African Kingdom of Dahomey from the wicked Oyo Empire and from many of the depredations of slave traders during the early 19th century. In the movie, the leader of the Agojie is Nanisca, played by a brooding Viola Davis, who is also one of the producers of the film. Nanisca is tasked with defending Dahomey from the evil Oyo while also training new Agojie recruits. One young girl, Nawi (Thuso Mbedu), is captivated by the power and prestige of the Agojie. When her parents want to give her to a man she does not want to marry, she insists on joining the Agojie instead. As an Agojie, she will not be allowed to marry, have children, or even flirt with men, and she will have to risk her life continually in battle, but at least her opinions will be heard, Nanisca tells her. And she may even be revered. It’s a better deal than her parents selling her virginity and dealing her away at the marriage bargaining table like a card in a shuffled deck.
Nanisca takes a special interest in Nawi. She may or may not share some kind of connection with this new recruit beyond the fact that Nawi wants to join her battalion. Once this relationship is established and Nawi is embedded in the Agojie camp, the movie can proceed along its tired course of training scenes, initial battle scenes, separation scenes, climactic battle scenes, and ultimate reunion scenes. How many times have we seen the trope of the hero/heroine who starts out as an awkward novice, gets laughed at by the varsity squad, starts working out and training more seriously than everyone else, becomes the star player on the team, and endures a temporary setback during one game/fight before finally emerging as the glorious winner in the final big game/battle? It’s a sports and war movie route so basic and so well-trodden that if we typed it into a movie version of Waze, the app would’ve told us, “You’re not seriously asking me for directions, are you? You really can’t figure out the way yourself by now?”
The producers’ claim to be telling even a fictionalized version of a true story is an affront. It is not the details but the story itself that is untrue. Outlets dedicated to historical accuracy, such as Smithsonian magazine and the American Historical Association, have noted that neither the character Nanisca nor Nawi ever existed, along with most of the other characters that appear in the film. More troubling: The manner in which the movie portrays Dahomey as a kingdom that fought to protect its inhabitants from the devastation of the slave trade is simply false. King Ghezo of the Dahomey, played in the movie by John Boyega, is one of the few characters in The Woman King who actually existed in real life. But neither he nor his band of warriors were opponents of the slave trade. As Smithsonian magazine has pointed out, Ghezo was one of the slave trade’s biggest beneficiaries, so much so that it was the British government — not the Agojie, nor his conscience — that compelled him to terminate his involvement in the slave trade in 1852. (The British had abolished slavery in their empire several decades earlier.)
Roger Ebert used to say we should not expect to learn history from movies. We should go to movies to be moved, entertained, and perhaps even inspired — but not educated. That is the job of documentaries, not movies on screen — or, better yet, journalism, and better yet still, books. But when a film claiming to be historically accurate is shown to be closer to fiction than even the needs of dramatic storytelling could require, this impedes the movie’s ability to move or inspire us.
Worse even than changing history to fit what certain camps may wish had happened but did not is the risible writing. Take, for example, lines like these: “Your tears mean nothing. To be a warrior, you must kill your tears.” “Sometimes, a mouse can take down an elephant.” “Too much change can be dangerous.” “Vision is seeing what others do not.” Do The Woman King’s creators really think that little of us that they expect us to be moved or inspired by a script that sounds like it came from a series of fortune cookie fortunes and #inspo Instagram posts assembled into something trying to pass itself off as an original screenplay for a major Hollywood motion picture?
In a famous sequence in Seinfeld, Jerry is bothered by the incessant run of bad Jewish jokes that his dentist Tim Whatley (Bryan Cranston), a recent convert to Judaism, keeps on telling him while scraping away at his teeth and gums. After the cleaning is over, he goes into a church confessional booth to confront Whatley’s old priest about his former congregant. “I wanted to talk to you about Dr. Whatley,” Jerry says to the priest. “I have a suspicion that he’s converted to Judaism purely for the jokes.” “And this offends you as a Jewish person?” the priest asks. “No,” Jerry replies. “It offends me as a comedian!” Speaking personally, The Woman King doesn’t offend me as a historian. It offends me as a writer and as a movie-lover. But take your pick.
Daniel Ross Goodman is a Washington Examiner contributing writer and the author, most recently, of Somewhere Over the Rainbow: Wonder and Religion in American Cinema.
