WONDER WOMAN REVIEW

I know, I know, my review is later than usual. Well I had to take my time with this one, there's just so much about Wonder Woman I wanted to talk about, but for the risk of overdoing it I had to back up a bit, there were just so many bases to cover and I honestly had a hard time deciding what I wanted to leave in or out. Wonder Woman is all the rave at the moment and I expect you to have seen it by now, so it is a no holds barred spoiler review (you've been warned).

The hype surrounding this movie has been simply astronomical (As you know by now)!  Poised to be the game changer for the DC Extended Universe (DCEU) after critical disdain (despite box office success) for its previous entries; Man of Steel, Batman vs Superman and Suicide Squad, at the point of my writing this piece, Wonder Woman has been nothing short of a success, smashing the box office opening day record with $102m while being critically acclaimed.

Unlike most folk, this was more a cause for worry for me than celebration, had DC sold out? You see for all the negative talk surrounding the DCEU’s previous releases I’m one of those that doesn’t consider them epic failures or catastrophic mishaps. Have they been 100% satisfying? No, but they have been enjoyable, and I was open minded to the gritty, realistic (some may argue that this is contradictory to the idea of a Superhero blah blah blah) re-imagining of Superman in Man of Steel and Batman’s jaded, manslaughtering iteration in BvS. So naturally the 360 degree switch from the same critics who bad mouthed the DCEU and believed nothing good would ever come from it suddenly heaping praise on the movie and its Director, had me wondering. Wonder Woman wasn’t without its naysayers while in production (at some point was even labelled a mess by a ‘disgruntled’ Warner Brother ex-employee) and I was afraid the Studio and Director had taken a cop out just to make an acceptable summer flick conforming to what passes for a good superhero movie nowadays.

Then I wondered if the critics were simply afraid to speak their minds, the obvious elephant in the room; THAT this was a movie about a female superhero with a female Director, meaning they (critics) may be labelled misogynist or retrogressive for not supporting a titular female superhero movie. Wonder Woman was always poised to be a hurrah for the feminists and millions of women everywhere, most critics would tread carefully, because you know what they say about a woman’s scorn. There was only one way to end these hypothetical theories, so on the opening day of the most anticipated movie of the summer I went to see for myself.

So when it was all said and done, did I enjoy Wonder Woman? Yes! Which was a tricky feat, considering that I was trying to manage the reality of my expectations with the highly positive reviews. It turned out to be a very balanced superhero movie, probably one of the best in that regard and worthy of the world’s most popular female super hero, Diana embodies the best qualities of womanhood; strong, compassionate, kind, gentle, yet fierce when necessary and let’s not forget full of love.

Now let’s talk about that word love, a recurring theme which the movie definitely pushed through and through, something Director Patty Jenkins holds dear to her heart,  for her Wonder Woman is an ambassador of love, she believes in the power of love and the movie was dripping wet from it, from Steve and Diana’s romance to the overall message - ‘Only love can save the World’. Wonder Woman was a good movie, but it’s far from being the definitive superhero movie as some have claimed, it comes close though, to fulfilling the potential of DC’s first lady, there’s just so much to discuss about this movie but I have enough trouble keeping it short already, so putting aside most of the comic book canon that was altered, displaced or just left out of this movie, let’s review Wonder Woman (WW).

Wonder Woman was certainly not as sombre as the DCEU’s earlier entries; Man of Steel  (MOS) and Batman vs Superman (BvS), seemingly closer to Suicide Squad in terms of levity, however this isn’t to say it’s a laugh fest, it had everything in the right doses, it was funny, romantic, campy at times, had great action scenes and managed to pull these off in a somewhat dystopian time setting, so as I said, balanced. This was probably one of the best origin stories I’ve seen, the opening act was really good, it didn’t dabble unnecessary and wasted little time explaining what didn’t need to be explained. Diana (played by the beautiful Gal Gadot) growing up on Paradise Island (Themyscira if you wanna be fancy) is surrounded by beautiful strong models, I mean Amazons, without the ugliness of the world-no hunger, no wars, no sickness, no death, no envy, she is living in a true paradise. She is raised oblivious of the true nature of man, she knows of him only in theory but is unaware of his fickle, fallible and easily corruptible nature, and most of what she has learned are from the pages of books and tales told by her mother, Hippolyta (Connie Nielsen) who paints man as a victim of Ares diabolical plans. So when Steve Trevor’s (Chris Pine) plane crashes on her peaceful island home shattering its tranquil ambiance with the sound of gunshots of his German pursuers, the Amazons led by Diana's aunt, General Antiope (Robin Wright) come to his and Diana's rescue (after she pulls him out of his sinking plane) and a short beautifully choreographed battle ensues, with a really delightful archery skill set from Antiope. After witnessing her first battle Diana gets a firsthand show of the true horrors of war and supposedly what the God of War is capable of. Upon hearing of the Great War happening outside their shores, she refuses to just sit on her hands and do nothing, believing that the God of War is solely responsible for these atrocities and that he must be stopped by the Amazon(s) as he is their responsibility.

Her naivety and transparency make her very endearing, her moral compass only pointing right and wrong, It’s all really simple for her, she believes Ares death will bring everyone back to their senses, and it’s really great to see this play out in her interactions with Steve Trevor who in comparison, is a Spy, who knows far too well that there are more parallels in the world than black or white, and what this gives us is a very interesting protagonist perspective; unlike most heroes who know what the world is like when they decide to become heroes or who become heroes as a direct result of the injustices of the world, Diana is simply a pure soul.

The second act of the movie sees her leave her beloved Themyscira for Man’s world, and is still in tune with the first in terms of pacing and quality, here Diana is beginning to see that men aren’t all she thought they were and the culture clash makes for some very amusing scenes, here we meet the other support characters from Etta Candy to Steve’s band of rogues, and are also blessed with some of the most fantastic action scenes in the whole movie, (the aptly titled) No Man’s Land scene which served as a visual double entendre will definitely be one of the most iconic images of Patty Jenkins’s Wonder Woman for years to come, In spite of their contrasting but similar views Steve and Diana’s boy meets girl story organically grows into a budding well done romance. At this point you would be fair to say WW draws comparisons with Captain America: The First Avenger, they both want to do good, they both fight during a World War, they both assemble a motley crew of soldiers to help them fight, they both fall in love with someone who they will outlive etc. but Patty Jenkins makes it so much her own movie that you really don’t notice (well not until the end of it anyway).

The third act was a mess, that’s no secret, it’s the most disappointing aspect of the movie, it was rushed, underdeveloped and the final battle scene was such a letdown, even the animated movie finale does it a little better. Diana’s final showdown with Ares is far from engrossing and it looks like the writers suffered some bloc. Ares was a disappointment, for someone who’s called the God of War dude lacked serious throw down rudiments, and if Zeus and the whole pantheon couldn’t kill Ares (gods like Poseidon, Hades, Apollo, Artemis, Athena etc. were single-handedly killed by Ares; a feat which is already hard to believe) he certainly should have been more of a challenge for the Amazonian, also since we were all aware David Thewlis would be playing Ares alias, Sir Patrick Morgan, it wasn't unfounded to assume he would take a different form upon revealing himself transforming to something or someone a little more menacing (all that lip foliage was so distracting). Steve Trevor’s death however put some dignity to the finale, his death adding some stake to the movie, something most superhero movies (I’m looking at you Marvel) would conveniently avoid, and his death ultimately serves as the trigger in which Diana realizes her full powers and a restored hope in the good that still exists in humanity.

One thing I wondered after BvS and about this movie was if Diana’s powers would be watered down, her power of flight most especially was missing from her big screen debut in BvS and those horse riding scenes in the WW trailers definitely did nothing to dissuade those suspicions, I assumed that Zack Snyder and Patty Jenkins would perhaps write that part of her powers out of the movie to ground the character more and also to make her less like Superman, I didn’t hold my breath, and what a pleasant surprise that turned out to be, seeing her take to the skies at the closing scene was super, a result of her unlocking her full powers after her battle with Ares.

For all the criticism of the model turned actor- Gal Gadot's acting, I think she did a pretty decent job, there were moments where her acting wasn't quite at par with her more seasoned  counterparts but for most of the movie she did fine, even managing some really fantastic moments helped by her and Pine's onscreen chemistry. My only qualms really, would be that I would have loved to see her with blue eyes.

Big blue steely eyes

 Wonder Woman was put together quite okay, I found issues with the script and thought it could be a little bit better, but other than that, little else disappointed me; the cast was fantastic, the action scenes, save for the third act, were well put together and placed at the right moments, the CGI was shaky at times but not a total nightmare. 

For me WW raised a couple of questions that come to mind if you’ve been following the DCEU. Where was Diana when General Zodd and the Kryptonians wanted to terra-form the Earth? She comes out for Doomsday but not for an elite squad of Kryptonians who wanted the planet for themselves??? granted the DCEU had not been fully conceptualized at the point of making that movie so I guess that could be forgiven. But clearly at the end of this movie, Diana has a renewed hope in humanity so why is she so reluctant in BvS? perhaps these questions will be addressed in the WW sequel or JL or probably never, but I thought them worth noting down.

It would be interesting to see a return to Themyscira maybe in the Wonder Woman sequel or better yet in Justice League, since the Amazons are in possession of one of the mother boxes? Maybe the parademons storm the island to retrieve it? And Diana goes home to defend her kin with her new besties…a lot of buts and maybes so we’ll just have to wait and see.

Wonder Woman is not a flawless movie, but it has a beautiful message which was told in simple but beautiful moments that more than provide an entertaining watch, over-hyped maybe, but a good outing for the first lady of the DCEU.

Reject Rating: 7/10