After the critical failures of DC Films’ last two movies, it was beginning to feel as if “Wonder Woman” was becoming a make-or-break film for the DC Extended Universe (DCEU).
Negative press — and good yet still disappointing box office returns for “Batman versus Superman” and “Suicide Squad” — started to shake audience confidence and forced DC Films to make subtle changes to the construction of their films. As it turns out, those changes were for the better because “Wonder Woman” provided an enjoyable movie viewing experience.
“Wonder Woman” is the story of Diana Prince (Gal Gadot), the princess of the fictional island Themyscira, a magically protected, isolated and unknown island consisting only of women, known as Amazonians.
The film takes place during World War One and during the course of the war, Steve Trevor (Chris Pine), a spy working for the British government, crash lands on the beach of Themyscira and warns the Amazonians of a German plot to release a deadly toxin upon the world.
Diana decides she must leave her island paradise and journey into a world unknown to her in order to protect the world from the harmful and even mythical forces at play. While Trevor seeks to save the world from the toxin, Diana is on a quest to stop the force behind the attack: the Greek god of war Ares.
One of the unavoidable focuses of this film is the comparison to the other DCEU films. They all live in the same film universe and as the films have been particularly divisive, any film in the franchise is automatically going to be compared to the preceding films in the catalogue.
That said, “Wonder Woman” succeeds where the previous two DC Films failed because “Wonder Woman” is actually interested in telling a coherent story.
This is the first DC film since “Man of Steel” to have a plot that makes sense when viewed critically. While some may not have liked “Man of Steel” (I happen to be a big fan of it), those criticisms wouldn’t have been due to the lack of a story, rather it was the story the critics had a problem with. “Wonder Woman” finally brings back storytelling to DC Films, and the story is pretty decent.
The World War One setting might feel like it’s similar in plot to Marvel Studio’s “Captain America: The First Avenger,” which was set in World War Two, and those feelings are valid. The two stories are fairly similar when broken down into their basic plot points, but what differentiates “Wonder Woman” from “Captain America” and what prevents it from being a clone of it is that “Wonder Woman” is a pretty good fish-out-of-water tale.
The audience gets to see Diana experience the world for the first time in her life and for all of the joy, intrigue and wonder that brings her, she is almost immediately greeted with reality. She soon realizes the world is flawed and nothing close to what she believed it was. The people who occupy the world are just as flawed as it, and watching Diana try to reconcile what the world is versus what she thinks it should be is where the film is hitting its highest points.
The narrative of the film isn’t too complex, and in fact the story beats are fairly basic, but I appreciate that DC Films scaled this film back in terms of scope in comparison to its predecessors. The simplicity of the story prevented it from being bogged down by the over-influx of philosophical themes that plagued the previous films. Diana is a goddess. That’s not something that the film tries to hide, but the story is less interested in the fact she is a goddess and more interested in what she does as one.
The performances in the film are pretty good. Gal Gadot shines in the lead role, and what I appreciate is that the Amazonians were cast around Gadot’s Israeli accent. She doesn’t speak English with an American accent, so the writers and Director Patty Jenkins embraced that weakness and turned it into a strength.
All of the Amazonians spoke with an Israeli or foreign accent, which gave the Amazonians even more of a cultured and exotic feel to their race. I feel the decision benefited the film greatly and was a welcome departure from the animated versions of Wonder Woman, where all of the Amazonians spoke with an English accent.
This change allowed Diana to be juxtaposed against the rest of the characters in the film and further embodied this sense that she and the Amazonians were truly excluded from the rest of the world. It also gave Gal Gadot more freedom to act and not feel constrained to hold down an accent for an entire movie.
The best performance of the film, I felt, was Chris Pine’s take on Steve Trevor. Pine’s comedic timing was great, and he delivered the funniest lines of the film. That is also a change for DCEU films: “Wonder Woman” had some laughs. It was genuinely funny at parts, and most of that was due to Chris Pine’s strong and charming performance. He was strong, weak, stubborn and open. He displayed a range within his character that I don’t feel has been produced by other characters in the DCEU.
A few more highlights go out to the use of color and the action scenes. I loved that the film embraced the color spectrum unlike its DCEU counterparts. It wasn’t all desaturated, and the scenes on Themyscira felt vibrant.
The action scenes were also pretty great, as “Wonder Woman” delivered some pretty memorable moments by way of the fight scenes. The fight choreography was really well executed, and the scene at the “No Man’s Land” sells the movie itself.
The film does have its negative aspects, however. Just as the fight scenes are something I praise, I also have my issues with them, mainly that they use too much slow motion. Every fight scene has about two or three slow-motion pieces, and I feel that later in the film the slow-motion pieces were unnecessary.
It starts to bog down the action, and I’d rather watch Diana whoop some evil soldiers in real time and not have everything slowed down. I think the character and the film deserved a full-paced action scene.
I also have an issue with the third act of the film. I don’t think it lands as strongly as the creative team wanted it to. The pacing is a bit rushed, and a lot of the story progresses fairly quickly in the last 25 minutes. I feel another three minutes or so could have helped those pacing issues in the last part of the film.
“Wonder Woman” should been seen as a triumph for DC Films. Not because it was a successful comic book film that stars a female lead but because it’s a successful film. It tells a story that anyone of any gender, age or race can enjoy and stars a lead character that anyone could look up to. It delivers the best film starring a DC character in years, and for the first time Wonder Woman gets the story, exposure and due the character has deserved for more than 75 years.
I give “Wonder Woman” 8.25 / 10
