Wonder Woman Review

Wonder Woman tells the origin story of Diana Prince, an amazonian warrior, who teams up with a crash landed spy, played by Chris Pine, to stop World War I. This is the second time we’ve seen this character in this DC Comics Extended Universe and I have to say she’s a lot better here than she was in Batman V Superman, which in my opinion was a cinematic dumpster fire.

I was skeptical going into this movie after how the other DC Comics movies turned out, but I am happy to say that it really surprised me. First off, the character of Diana Prince was so well realized. She is naive and light hearted while at the same time serious about her beliefs and motivated to complete her life’s mission. In Batman V Superman, she was just a typical badass heroine character, so I’m glad they actually crafted a more real character for this more personal story. That’s not to say she isn’t a badass here. The action scenes were really fun to watch with a lot of nice wide shots. Yes, there was a lot of noticeable CGI, but that’s expected at this point with these big budget DC blockbusters, especially with all the big action set pieces. Wonder Woman’s home world, Themyscira, looked beautiful, as well, with the use of lots of vibrant colors. It was nice how the film used Chris Pine’s character, Steve Trevor, to ask all the questions we would about that place (basically a fish out of water scenario). The movie parallels this by bringing Diana into London during WWI where she is then taught about our customs and what the real world is like. It’s more interesting to see her in this way because it shows that she isn’t a perfect heroine character and that she has flaws like any normal person would in a new situation like this.

Gal Gadot and Chris Pine did a great job portraying their characters and really had great chemistry here. Their conversations were actually interesting because the movie concentrates on our characters trying to reach the same goal but under different ideologies. That’s also what separates this movie from the other DC films. The characters here feel more human and less like stoic comic book characters like how Batman and Superman were portrayed in the last film. It feels like characters are actually making decisions based on their beliefs and emotions rather than just what needs to be done to move the plot forward. The plot, in general, is also a lot more focused because it’s set in an older time period. There’s no need for pointless scenes with cameos from other superheroes to set up for other films in this cinematic universe. The story keeps our attention on the characters at hand and features smaller yet meaningful moments between the big action scenes to help flesh them out. This works because when the action does start there’s more emotion attached to what’s going on and it got me to care more about what the characters were doing along the journey.

The tone is also less grim, which is good because some of the things brought up about Wonder Woman’s origin are very “comic book weird”, so not taking things like that too seriously led to some humorous dialogue.

My main problem with the film was the villain and resolution. The final act for me took this film down from being great to good. The villain just felt very out of place and there’s a twist that I thought did not pay off at all. The final fight is also this big CGI cluster f*** with a bunch of random powers that both our heroine and villain use that are never explained, so I didn’t really care for it. Overall, I still loved the majority of this film and even though it doesn’t break much new ground in the superhero genre, it was a nice surprise and I’m looking forward to the upcoming Justice League movie more now only because Wonder Woman is in it. Fingers crossed, the rest of the DCEU movies are as good or better than this one. I have more thoughts about the ending that I’ll leave in my spoiler section below so if you haven’t seen

the film, you can stop reading from this point.

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Honestly, I think the movie should have ended when Diana killed Ludendorff. She would then realize that Steve was right and that humans are more complicated than she thought they were. She would then vow to help stop the problems of the world from then on, knowing that there is no definitive line between good and evil and that killing one guy would not magically make everyone definitively good. Steve’s sacrifice would then be a great way to really dig that motivation into her, as she starts her new crusade as a superhero through time. I think that would have been a more profound ending and could’ve made this movie stick out more from other comic book films. As it stands now, the ending jumps from being this somewhat grounded war story to a generic heroine vs villain final battle with lots of crazy powers and CGI fireworks.

The twist of Ares being the dude who played Lupan from Harry Potter was so dumb too because there was no reason as to why he would be Ares. Ludendorff was the one going around killing people all the time and even enhanced himself with poisons to be able to fight Wonder Woman. Ludendorff even had a conversation with Diana about the history of Greek gods and the God of War. A good twist should make the accompanying story make more sense like an “all the pieces have finally come together” moment. The Lupan character was one of the only people in the film trying to ask for peace during the war, so why would he be Ares? Not to mention he’s only in like two scenes before the finale.

There are also some serious issues with his plan. He thinks that humans are flawed and that they should all be killed. He also says that he doesn’t directly start the wars like Diana thinks, but that he is just the whisper in people’s ears that gets things to lead to war (like a devil on the shoulder type thing). However, after he’s dead wars still happen so then what’s the point of him being there at all. He could literally sit somewhere and do nothing and wars between humans will still happen BECAUSE humans are flawed. So what exactly do his whispers do in the long run? World War II and every war after that still happens after Ares is killed. He just felt like a pointless twist of a bad guy that shouldn’t even have existed. Not to mention his costume design was also pretty bad, but that’s a different story. Also, they need to stop shoe horning Batman into every f***ing DC film, and ya I’m talking about the letter that f***ing starts and ends the movie.