Wonder Woman Review · 1:56am Jun 11th, 2017
Dr. Drake, we’re losing him! The DCCU is flatlining!
“Dammit! Hand me those paddles. We’re gonna shock it with a movie about a badass female protagonist who gets her world view shattered by the evils of men, anvlicious morals about feminism, morality, and war, and a bunch of vaguely-defined superpowers and magic items.”
That sounds like a terrible idea!
“Trust me! CLEAR!” *fwoomp*
Doctor, it’s a miracle! It’s working! The ideas are gelling! Will this save the DCCU?
“We’ve given it our best shot. Now we just pray and wait for Justice League. And air out the stink of the Superman movies, it’s starting to linger.”
You mean that torn red cape on the door with “Martha” scrawled on it?
“I told you to never speak of that scene again.”
On arrival, I should not like this movie. The messages about women and war being crappy and humanity being shitty but cool, are heavyhanded and beaten over your head. And the movie’s story is mostly about Wonder Woman’s idealism being broken down into benign hope. But you know what? They made it work. It just feels so real and involved and sincere, that I fell for it. I really liked this movie. This is the adrenaline boost the DCCU needs, and hopefully it lasts because this is a franchise that has been limping to get into a run up until now.
Gal Gadot does good as Wonder Woman, never called that or even alluded to, which I don’t mind, superhero movies rarely make the names work organically (remember how contrived “Suicide Squad” and “War Machine” were?). As I said above her superpowers are really vaguely defined, especially the bracelet stuff. Can all Amazons do that, is it the bracelets or just her, is the bulletproof thing the material or some magic in them? I don’t care, the bracelet stuff works. The lasso of truth works. And the sword and shield stuff is fine. Also the movie gets a couple “nudge nudge, wink wink” moments to Captain America, including a shield throw right out of his moveset at one point. But it isn’t distracting, it just makes for a quick snicker.
I like the movie’s themes. The movie in a word is “War is hell” and it shows that with Diana observing the injured and the homeless and the sick and so forth, and contrasting it with the peacetimes. This is a heroine who is going to have her worldview shattered. She thinks Ares is the cause of mankind’s sickness and if she kills him his influence will be gone and we can all sing and dance in the snow chugging booze. But, no. Humanity kind of sucks. But there’s good in us too. And that goodness is worth protecting and fighting for. I love it. So much.
My only criticism would be the villains. Ares is perfectly good as a villain, surprisingly deep for a villain built up as basically the Greek version of Lucifer. But the German villains are cardboard cutout evil, especially the scientist. The general at least has a twisted ideology influencing him, the scientist just seems to like creating poisons and chemical weapons for SCIENCE! It hurts the idea that there are no absolute good or bad guys when the bad guys are so thin. But again that’s offset with the other stuff.
This film also does something very important - establish its own style not like Marvel. I love the Marvel movies but I want to enjoy the DC movies too, yet I also don’t want DC to just copy Marvel’s style. This movie does its own thing and it’s a good thing. The movie is less about heroes punching bad guys to save the world, it’s a plot point that ending war isn’t as simple as killing the leader and the soldiers drop their guns. The movie is about a hero’s views and ideals being challenged and they rise to defend them. I still wanna go see Marvel movies to enjoy heroes overcoming the odds, fighting cool bad guys, and saving the day. But there’s a good place for movies about superheroes fighting for their beliefs, overcoming those that would try and subvert them, and proving themselves true. If that is indeed what the DCCU is going for, and I think it is. It’ll be fun in the coming years seeing Marvel and DC compete with these different styles that are both good in their own right. Presuming the DCCU can stay this good from now on, and I hope it does.
Overall, great movie, does its own thing and is very good at it.
I just saw it earlier today. It was a really good movie, and I'm in the same boat as you. I want DC movies to be good, but they keep trying to compete with Marvel. This one didn't feel like a competition, it felt like its own movie! Heck, I forgot I was watching a DC movie for a while! It's probably too late for Justice League to not feel like a rehash of the Avengers, but hopefully the movies that follow will take a page out of Wonder Woman's book.
I've seen analysis that says the Marvel movies tend to have bland villains (Loki aside) in order to promote their heroes more. I mean, who but a die-hard, long-time Marvel reader would know who Warmonger is? Ares is in the same bin, though I thought his motivation was pretty interesting, and he looks seriously badass when he armors up. :D
I still think the movie would have been stronger if Ares hadn't actually shown up. That the villains were just the general and scientist. Well, I would have preferred a less WW2 super-science set of villains but it would have made the message of humanity just kind of sucks even stronger if Ares hadn't been involved at all. Maybe even just a teaser at the end that he is out there way behind the scenes.
But it was very enjoyable, other than that and a few other nitpicks. First of the DC movies I've seen.
Best movie DC has done in a while