Rhetorical Analysis Of 'Finally' By Nicole Sperling

In her article “Finally” published in Entertainment Weekly on May 26, 2017, Nicole Sperling is effective in convincing her audience, readers of all ages who are already interested in the new Wonder Woman movie, to go and see it through the use of ethos, pathos, and logos in describing the history of the heroine’s seventy-six-year long journey from the page to the big screen.

Sperling establishes ethos by naming all of her sources and stating the credits of everyone working on the movie. She builds her own credibility by proving herself to be passionate about the subject through the use of her words “iconic” and “adored” to describe the character Wonder Woman and by comparing the DC comics trinity – Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman – to

the faces of Mount Rushmore. She also makes sure to name all of the sources of her quotes, including the anecdote taken from the pages of The New York Times. Sperling gives credibility to Patty Jenkins, the director of Wonder Woman, by listing her previous award-winning movie Monster in 2003 and by portraying her as someone who loves the character of Wonder Woman, calling her a “Wonder Woman purist” and a “champion” for the character. She also describes the producer Zack Snyder, who had previously worked on Batman vs Superman: Dawn of Justice in 2016 and Man of Steel in 2013, and the screenwriter Allan Heinberg, who had authored many comics and worked on Grey’s Anatomy, as similarly accomplished in their respective fields of expertise.

Sperling establishes pathos through her use of anecdote, rhetorical questions and by showing that Wonder Woman is a relatable character.

She opens her article with a short story meant to hook the readers about two old women talking about how they hope they will live until the summer just so that they can finally see the character Wonder Woman on the big screen, a sentiment that is relatable to many but funny to all. Later on, Sperling poses the question. “Why? Why has it taken forty years and why – aside from good old-fashioned sexism - has Wonder Woman been denied her shot at the spotlight until now?” This is meant to provoke her readers, mainly women, and she calls attention to it by repeating “why” no less than three times. Lastly, Wonder Woman is portrayed as a character that viewers can connect to and is even compared with The Little Mermaid, a movie that is already beloved. Gal Godot, the actress the plays Wonder Woman in the film, describes her as someone who “goes through the same challenges we all go

through.”
Sperling establishes logos by stating the box office numbers for the superhero movie in the past and by providing a timeline of Wonder Woman through the years since her first appearance as evidence for her claims that this film was too long in the making.

In the past forty years, there have been fifteen movies in total that feature either Batman or Superman, grossing a total of $6 billion worldwide, while Wonder Woman has only appeared in the movie Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice. A Wonder Woman movie has been twenty-six years in the making and had gone through three different directors before 2005. Around that time, Elektra and Catwoman were released in theaters but did not perform very well, grossing only $57 million and $82 million worldwide, respectively. This lead Hollywood to believe that nobody wanted to see a female-lead action movie until the success of the Hunger Games films, while pulled in about $3 billion worldwide. After the success of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which had brought in $11 billion and still counting, Warner Brothers decided to do something similar with DC’s Justice League, which included the Wonder Woman film that we have waited seventy-six years

for.
In conclusion, Nicole Sperling successfully establishes ethos by stating both her credits and credits for the director, the screenwriter, and the producer, pathos through her funny anecdote, provocative questions, and comparisons of Wonder Woman to an already loved character, and finally, logos through her analysis of box office numbers of previous superhero movies and how they led to the first Wonder Woman movie.