Matt Reviews: Wonder Woman

WARNING: SPOILERS follow

I didn’t want to believe it.

The critics were saying it was great. My friends were saying it was great. Everyone was saying it was DC’s best movie since The Dark Knight.

But it didn’t make sense. DC had been making nothing but disappointments since starting their cinematic universe, with their movies usually having the same problems. How could they have suddenly turned it around like this? How could a cinematic universe that previously featured Lex Luthor’s pee in a jar crank out a movie with a 93% on Rotten Tomatoes? It wasn’t real. The whole world was playing a prank on me.

Well, I can proudly say I’m a skeptic no longer because WONDER WOMAN KICKED ASS!

On the hidden island of Themyscira, Diana (Gal Gadot) is the princess of the Amazons who desperately wants to be a warrior like the rest of her people, against the wishes of her queen mother Hippolyta (Connie Nielsen). But after training to become the fiercest Amazonian warrior, she is given the chance to prove herself when solider and spy Steve Trevor (Chris Pine) crashes on Themyscira, bringing with him grim tales of the Great War – what would later be known as World War I. Wielding the most powerful armor and weapons of her people, Diana accompanies Steve back to the world of man to stop the Germans from developing a devastating gas weapon, and to end the war by killing the war god Ares, whom Diana strongly believes is behind mankind’s evil.

So let’s talk about the character herself first. Diana is a great lead and a fantastic role model for girls. I know this sounds kind of redundant to say since Wonder Woman has been an icon for female empowerment for decades, but this movie in particular shows she’s headstrong and passionate, willing to do what’s right and believing in love over hate. Up until recent years, I had never really found Wonder Woman all that interesting of a character, but that’s probably due to the fact that I never had a good introduction to the character. But more recent portrayals like this movie showed me that in the right hands, Wonder Woman can be a very intriguing figure.

Diana’s main confidant through most of the film is her love interest Steve Trevor, though I feel calling him a love interest undermines what he really is. He’s a partner, working alongside Diana on the front lines of the war, and entirely competent in his own regard. Granted, Diana needs to save his skin from time to time, but not in a “damsel in distress” kind of way. Steve’s clearly in over his head after encountering Diana’s world, and he’s not too macho to ask for help from a lady.

And let me just say that Diana and Steve have the best chemistry. They joke with each other, help each other out, and nothing really feels forced. The romance doesn’t come right out of nowhere like some superhero movies. The movie’s not saying “And then Diana and Steve got together because they’re love interests in the comics.” They show their relationship expand to where we can actually feel the love between them. Diana and Steve are the best couple in DC’s cinematic universe thus far. This means that, yes, they have better chemistry than Superman and Lois Lane, the perennial superhero couple, who have about as much chemistry as wet cardboard.

"Captain's log: This new timeline just keeps getting weirder."

The characters in this movie are just all-around great. Diana and Steve are likeable protagonists – with faults, motivations, and plenty of quiet character moments – and you really grow to care about them and want to see them win by the end. When Steve sacrifices himself to dispose of Dr. Poison’s gas bombs, it is heartbreaking. Chris Pine provides an excellent performance where he perfectly captures Steve’s conflicting emotions towards sacrificing himself for the greater good, all without saying a single word. Gal Gadot is no slouch either. She captures Diana’s naivety and wide-eyed curiosity of the world very well, from praising the wonders of ice cream to not realizing that people don’t just carry swords around with them. But at the same time, she can easily switch into the badass fighting princess who can deflect bullets with her bracelets without batting an eye. Sometimes her line reads are a little flat, but it didn’t completely bother me.

The side characters, surprisingly, are memorable too. Steve’s soldier buddies (or spies, or mercenaries, or whatever they are) managed to grow on me more than I thought they would. They all have distinct personalities and backstories, and I genuinely feel for all of them. Lucy Davis plays Etta Candy, Steve’s secretary and comic relief of the film, and while she’s not in it a whole lot, I did not find her insufferable like I thought I would; she’s genuinely funny. Honestly, this is some of the best supporting cast in a superhero movie I’ve seen in a while.

Even the villains are memorable, which seems to be harder and harder to do with superhero movies. The main threats for a lot of the movie are the head of the German Army, General Luddendorff (played by Danny Huston), and his sadistic scientist Dr. Poison (Elena Anaya). Admittedly, they do come across as standard “take over the world” superhero movie bad guys – and Luddendorff’s insurrection within the German Army smells a bit too much like Red Skull in Captain America: The First Avenger – but I still found them enjoyable and compelling to watch. It’s kind of a stupid scene, but there’s a part where Ludendorff gasses a room full of high-ranking German officers and then throws a gas mask in as he locks the door. Dr. Poison tells him that because of the new strain of gas, the mask won’t help them. Says Ludendorff, “But they don’t know that.” And then the two giggle like sadistic school children. Goofy, yes, but I felt it added character and made them a little more enjoyable to watch.

But by the end of the movie, Ares it the main threat above all. He’s played by David Thewlis (Remus Lupin from the Harry Potter movies), though for most of the movie he’s masquerading as a British member of the Imperial War Cabinet. It’s only after Diana kills Ludendorff – believing him to be Ares in disguise – does the real Ares reveal himself. The God of War has an interesting motivation and plan. He believes that humanity is evil and unworthy of the gods’ protection, and the only way the world can be at peace again is if they are destroyed. But he is not the direct cause of the war. Rather than his mere presence inciting conflict and brainwashing humanity, he simply “whispers” suggestions into the minds of man, pushing them in the right direction. It is humanity’s choice then to choose war, proving Ares right about humanity’s ire.

I think the only real problem I have with Ares is the casting of David Thewlis. Don’t get me wrong, he’s a fine actor, and he portrays the role of the stuffy British gentleman in this movie well when he’s acting as “Sir Patrick.” He’s even fine upon revealing himself as Ares, still in human guise but providing a chilling performance as he monologues to Diana. It’s once he dons his full Ares persona that it starts to unravel. In the final battle, he wears armor much like how he looks in the comic, but you can still see Sir Patrick’s face underneath it all. And he still talks in Sir Patrick’s refined British voice, with very little voice modification. It doesn’t really feel like Ares, more like Sir Patrick dressed like Ares. It would have probably been better if they made him look more like his comics self, with the shadowed-out face, glowing red eyes, and maybe a voice filter that deepened his register and gave him an otherworldly echo.

She's here to kick ass and wear dresses. And she's all out of dresses.

The action scenes are mostly fine. The Amazons get to show off some cool techniques, and the way Diana incorporates her lasso into her fighting is very inventive and makes for some cool fight sequences. There’s a lot of slow motion thrown in here, but it didn’t really bother me too much. It made the fight scenes cooler in some aspect, but I was also very aware of just how much slo-mo was in the film. Not distracting enough to ruin the film for me, but distracting enough to where I took notice. It felt like 300 a bit at times. Not that that’s a bad thing.

I also didn’t think the final fight with Ares was an interesting as it could have been. It boils down to Ares and Diana using their god powers on each other, with Ares telekinetically throwing stuff at Diana and Diana using that shockwave technique from the beginning of the movie. There’s a lot of CGI and it’s kind of dimly lit. Honestly, I thought the fight between Diana and Ludendorff was more engaging. At least that one was a hand-to-hand fight for the most part. That I thought would have been cooler for a finale: Diana going toe-to-toe with the physically manifestation of war, rather than two people using vaguely defined god powers on each other.

There’s a few other minor plot holes here, like when Diana is leaving Themyscira and Hippolyta tells her that once she leaves, she may never come back. Um…why? Is this an Amazon thing? If an Amazon leaves the island she can’t return again? They never establish that in the movie. I don’t know, maybe that’s something from the comics, but if it is, they should explain it in this movie. Also, if Ares is killed by Diana at the end of World War I, does that mean he doesn’t get involved in World War II, or any of the other conflicts that spurned from that? For that matter, since Diana went into retirement after World War I, does she not participate in World War II? Innocent people were being slaughtered, and Diana just didn’t intervene because she had seen too much ugliness in World War I or something? I know the movie doesn’t show what happened between 1918 and the present day, but that’s the implication that it – as well as previous entries in the cinematic universe – gives off.

Wonder Woman is the kind of movie I wish DC had started its cinematic universe with. It’s a tale of heroism in a time of bleakness, a story of one person who stood up against evil when all seemed impossible. This is what superhero movies are supposed to be. I don’t want to sit through two and a half hours of superheroes moping around in movies that are too dark and depressing to be enjoyable. I want to feel uplifted. I want to care about these characters. I want their struggles to amount to something. I want heroes that people can look up to.

But you want to know the main reason I thought this movie was so good? It was focused. It was about Wonder Woman, and that’s it. No greater ties to a cinematic universe aside from a few brief references in the framing device. Batman V Superman and Suicide Squad were both overstuffed messes as a result of DC desperately trying to play catch-up with Marvel’s cinematic universe. There was no focus there. They were trying to do too much at one time and it blew up in their faces. There was no time to establish character when they were trying to match Marvel’s 8-year cinematic universe in two and a half hours. Man of Steel at least had the focus on Superman, but it was the wrong tone and didn’t get the character. Wonder Woman knows to put the focus on the main character and her story, with a tone that matched the character and balances the dark and the light so that it’s an enjoyable film-going experience.

DC and Warner Bros: take notes from Patty Jenkins and the rest of the people who worked on this film. This is the kind of care I want to see in future DC movies. These are the kinds of characters I want to see. These are the kinds of stories I want to enjoy. This is what I want DC movies to be like.

So basically, please please PLEASE don’t let Justice League suck.

Final verdict: 8/10.

Also, that theme song still kicks ass!