Movie Review: Wonder Woman

Wonder Woman

So, Batman v. Superman was a bit of a grimdark disaster with a couple of decent fight scenes interspaced between them despite the huge hype it had behind it, and Suicide Squad's inconsistent tone, scripting and general confusion about what kind of movie they were making ended up wasting a very wonderful cast. DC comics superhero movies end up being kind of the laughingstock of the geek community, especially considering how well-received most of the Marvel movies are, where bad, inconsistent movies (Age of Ultron and Thor: the Dark World being particular ones I'll point fingers to) are the exception rather than the norm. And with DC not really having any good movies under their belt since the Dark Knight, with the best movie that the DCEU giving us being Man of Steel (which was solid, but had its share of problems) the franchise was honestly in dire needs of a good movie to pull it out of its funk.

What, then, was the next movie in line? Wonder Woman. And it's not just DC's reputation that was on the line, too. As much as I don't want to discuss gender politics in this blog, Wonder Woman is the first female superhero movie in a couple of decades, and previous affairs into female superhero movies (Elektra, Catwoman) have been absolutely horse shit. It's also DC's first non-Batman, non-Superman standalone superhero movie since the likewise poorly-received Green Lantern. So, a lot of pressure is put behind Wonder Woman's back.

And... well, I loved it. It's amazing. It's not the best superhero movie ever, but it's a very, very solid superhero movie nonetheless, and as an unashamed DC fanboy, it's honestly the only other DC film other than Dark Knight and Man of Steel that I walked out of and went "holy crap, they did things right!" instead of a sense of "well, they didn't ruin everything and the fight scenes were cool I guess" which was the reaction I had walking out of BvS and Suicide Squad. Like, yeah, both of those movies are improved dramatically with their respective Extended Editions (which I'll make a point to review this month, because I'm going to rewatch the entire output of the DCEU) but a movie shouldn't have to rely solely on restored deleted scenes and rearranging scenes to be good.

So, the tl;dr version of my review and opinions of this movie? It's good. Easily one of the strongest superhero movies I've watched this year, and as a DC fan, is one that I'm happy with the directions they chose for the movie. It's a movie that worked both as a part of an ongoing series, one that worked as a standalone superhero movie, and one that worked as an origin story.

And honestly, it's absolutely refreshing because both the character of Wonder Woman herself and Gal Gadot's performance really sold that, yes, Wonder Woman is that much of a traditional hero. It sold the idea of a far more optimistic hero (which is something that the DC universe really lacks in its movies). And... well, as far as being a wartime movie it kind of sucks, simplifying things into London Good, German Bad, but that's not a problem that's exclusive to Wonder Woman.

One of the things that probably makes Wonder Woman work as a movie is just how... different her origin story is, and even for a DC fan, there are so many different variations of the Wonder Woman origin story that which one they would use (it's more or less 'all of them'), and whatever happens, it's still going to be an interesting ride. It's also so far away from the general sci-fi or vigilante stories that a majority of superhero movies are made up of that it doesn't quite feel like it's retreading old ground. Arguments could be made with the movies sharing beats with Captain America: the First Avenger (heroes involved in a world war, a band of colourful soldiers, super-weapon bombs, super-soldier drugs) and Thor (godlike being finds that he's stuck on this strange mortal realm) but the setting and the character of Wonder Woman herself makes things different enough that it doesn't feel like it's plagiarizing or retreading the same thing.

One of the less interesting things about DC's work is the rather... philosophical theme it sometimes takes towards superheroes. Movies like the Dark Knight Rises, Batman Begins, Man of Steel and Batman v. Superman explores various philosophical and ideological themes, to varying degrees of success... but at the same time, all the talk about ideology doesn't exactly add up to very interesting superheroism, and sometimes (like ghost daddy in the Superman stuff) it ends up feeling forcibly inserted in. That's not to say that ideological themes are bad, because Wonder Woman does its share of ideological questioning, with its main theme revolving around "can one single villain be blamed for all the badness in the world?" and "is humanity, at its heart, evil and irredeemable?" It doesn't go too far into either of those, but the discussion about it, and the overall optimistic tones that it ends up delivering, is pretty refreshing.

There's also the odd disjoint of how, in order to tie in to Batman v. Superman, the World War I scenes seemed to end with Diana believing in humanity... only for her to, apparently, off-screen, decide to take a passive stance with a lost-my-faith-in-humanity deal until Batman reminds her of it. And maybe earlier drafts had it end with Diana being so emotionally fucked by Steve Trevor's death that she quits superheroing? That's hella depressing.

The movie is easily split into four arcs: Diana on Themyscira; Diana and Steve's hijinks in the world of man; wartime action; battle with Ares, all framed with present-day Diana deciding to become Wonder Woman on a more permanent basis, having found a new family in Batman (and the upcoming Justicce League).

And while there are some parts of the movie that felt relatively like padding, the charisma of both Diana and Steve Trevor, played by Gal Gadot and Chris Pine respectively, are both powerful enough to carry scenes like the boat scene where they talk about sexual pleasure, or the bath scene with the bait-and-switch regarding the watch, or the dancing scene in the village, all relatively work. Despite the long runtime, there really isn't much in lieu of filler, and the pacing is told relatively well.

The movie starts off relatively slow, of course, with the quick backstory about the Grecian legends, about Zeus and Ares and the Olympian gods, and a brief history of Themyscira and why it's invisible to the outside world. Little Diana and her desire to enter into the Amazonian's war-like life, as well as her mother forbidding it, gives us an easily relatable conflict. The stories told by Hippolyta about the backstory of the Amazons, and their destiny to wield the Godkiller sword to end the rogue war god Ares, is told well, and it's clear from the get-go that Hippolyta is hiding something from Diana, though it might just be a worried mother.

Diana ends up being trained, and we see that she's so much more different than the other Amazons. Her mother claims to have sculpted her from clay, but that doesn't explain why she's the only child and the only one who visibly ages, or that blocking a sword strike from her aunt-mentor Antiope unleashes a gigantic shockwave that fells the entire training field.

Of course, things go south quickly, as the World War ends up finding their way past Themyscira's invisible shield, when Steve Trevor's plane crash-lands on Themyscira's waters. Diana rescues this strange man, but is quickly thrust into an action scene as German warships arrive and start trading fire with the Amazons. It shows that, yes, bullets mean a one-shot kill against the Amazons, but their acrobatic skills in jumping around, using sand as cover, horseback riding and general badassery compensates for their slower weapons -- and in any case, an arrow to the neck is as much a death sentence as a bullet.


Diana's mentor, Antiope, falls under the Obi-Wan curse and takes a bullet while protecting Diana from a German shooter, dying and giving Diana some enigmatic words. The death scene was done well, because even if Antiope's personality is a simple 'kind but hard' drill sergeant, all the actresses involved have enough emotion and the scene doesn't linger for too long nor does it brush over the death. We then see the Lasso of Truth being used (a clever way to show Diana's toys before she uses them proper) to force Trevor to give us the backstory of the war -- basically, in the DCEU version of World War I, the Germans have access to a supervillain. Doctor Poison, who is a mad scientist developing, well, poisons. She actually doesn't do much in the movie, all things considered, but she's a colourful and memorable villain with a visually distinct appearance, what with that half-face plastic mask she's wearing to hide her disfigurement.

We then follow Diana as she befriends Steve Trevor, with the latter imparting some knowledge about the mortal world outside of Themyscira, and telling Diana that he doesn't want to be in this war, but he certainly can do something about it. Diana, meanwhile, is convinced that it is her destiny (or at least the Amazons' destiny) to slay Ares, the God of War, and ends up taking the Godkiller sword and her Wonder Woman costume and go out with Steve.

The scenes in London are both the weakest yet most fun parts of the movie at the same time. Part of it is perhaps seeing a bit too much of it in trailers and teasers everywhere, but I did chuckle at scenes like Diana commenting incredulously about how a woman should fight in a skirt, or her going "you should be proud of yourself!" when she eats ice cream, or when she charges the rotating door, sword and shield in hand. We're also introduced to Steve's secretary, Etta Candy (with that one secretary/slavery joke you've all heard in the trailers) who is distinctive enough to be remembered without taking the attention away from Diana and Steve, the main characters of the movie.

Oh, and the funny little reversal from that iconic scene from Superman, with Diana Prince breaking out her vambraces and whacking German assassins, is pretty well-done.

What follows, though, might be undercut a little by the comedic undertones, but it's also hard not to cheer for Diana to basically call the general a coward because "from where I come from, generals don't hide in rooms, they fight and die alongside their soldiers". It's made poignant because of Antiope's death an act ago, but it also does the double duty of both showing Diana's naivety and her headstrong, unwavering moral compass. Diana's black-and-white concept of good versus evil is something that is contrasted very much with the grayer areas that Steve Trevor works in. Steve himself points out that their allies are all murderers and liars, himself included, and it's nice to show that while the black-and-white view on the world is ideal, it sometimes isn't applicable to all situations.

Diana and Steve recruit three random misfits -- Sameer, the multi-linguistic conman slash actor; Charlie, the sniper with PTSD; and Chief, a neutral party and is most assuredly a reference to Apache Chief. The introduction, again, is pretty great in pacing as we linger long enough with the characters to drill their gimmicks into our head but not long enough that they end up being insufferable. The four soldiers are used to dealing with gray areas and compromising in the name of the greater good... but not Diana, because, shit, she's freaking Wonder Woman.

As she witnesses the horrors of the war and is told to 'keep moving forward, we have a mission to complete' by her well-meaning allies, she decides that, just like in the parliament room, enough is enough. She drops her cloak and embraces her true self -- an Amazon warrior. And that uplifting tune as she walks up dressed in full superhero costume, deflecting bullets and mortar shells, inspiring first her four allies and later the entirety of the British trench soldiers to join the fray, is amazingly done.

And while the walk towards No Man's Land (I am so happy they avoided the obvious 'but I'm a woman' joke) might not be the best showing for Diana's prowess as Wonder Woman as she ultimately needed the help of Steve's squad to break through, the succeeding fight in the village is nothing short of thrilling as she unleashes the full brunt of her super-strength. Jumping from a building to the next, breaking down walls, taking on an entire room full of German soldiers single-handedly, swinging around that sword and shield, and later on lasso-ing people with her Lasso of Truth, running across buildings... and in what is my personal favourite scene, whacking aside a tank's shell, before proceeding to run and ram that motherfucking tank so hard that it leaves a dent, before picking the tank up and tossing it aside like a toy.

Of course, the big scene of Team Steve using the tank's door as a 'shield!' so Diana can jump up and demolish the sniper's nest is also amazing, but I liked the tank scene better.

It's arguably an inferior action sequence compared to Batman's one-man-army showing in Batman v. Superman, but say what you want, it's still freaking entertaining.

The village scene is a brief downtime of rewarding Diana for doing the right thing by showing that she not only inspires the faceless innocents, but also the loyalty of her formerly-profiteering allies. Diana is then convinced that General Ludendorff is Ares in mortal disguise, and goes with Steve to infiltrate the ball. And this is where the movie starts to fall apart, in my opinion. Neither Ludendorff nor dr. Poison are really developed enough to really talk about beyond 'evil war general' and 'psychotic mad scientist', so Steve trying to seduce dr. Poison kind of fell flat, and Ludendorff's rant about how war is a god and whatnot seemed out of place considering that he's not actually Ares.

Steve stops Diana from killing Ludendorff in the middle of a crowd (and also because they need to actually find the facility where dr. Poison is creating the gas), accidentally resulting in the deaths of the villagers they just saved. Diana is pretty understandably overcome with grief and blames Steve being influenced by Ares, but it's honestly hard to tell whether Diana will really end up saving the villagers if he cuts down Ludendorff then and there.

Whatever the case, the movie quickly ramps up the final confrontation, splitting Steve's soldiers as they go and stop the poison in a more conventional style, while Diana jumps up to a watchtower to do battle with Ludendorff, who she thinks is Ares in disguise. Ludendorff, though, is enhanced with dr. Poison's inhaler steroids, allowing for a pretty decent beat-up. Diana gets some lines that are absolutely corny yet badass in the same breath, and ultimately slays Ludendorff... only to find out that, hey,  the Germans are still evil. She gets a brief moment of confusion -- are mankind that evil? Is what she learned from her mother all wrong? Did mankind, like what her mother said, not deserving of help or kindness?

It might be easy to criticize this as Diana being stupid or naive, but I dunno. I concur that this scene could've been framed in a better way, maybe with better scripting, but at the same time it's also not hard to buy that find-it-hard-to-fit-in Diana will be more than a little confused with what's going on considering what she knows.

Of course, Ares actually does exist, and he's actually Sir Patrick (played by David Thewlis, a.k.a. Remus Lupin from the Harry Potter movies) and it puts a lot of scenes where he pushes for the armistice -- in order to actually rile up the Germans even further -- into different perspective. The scenes where he's playing the mysterious untouchable boogeyman walking from window to window is amazingly done, but when he's transformed into an actual god of war... not so much. It's a good thing he rips off lots of metallic parts to fashion a crude approximation of a Greek armour in her final battle, but he still has that glorious mustache on every scene he has so it kind of ruins the illusion. There were also some lines that are delivered with too much ham than is necessary.

The ending of the conflict is pretty decent, if predictable and slightly cheesy, with Steve blowing himself up in a sacrifice, Diana going into a rage and almost murdering the German soldiers and falling into the trap of 'mankind is evil!' but when given the choice to murder dr. Poison... Diana stops herself, remembers Steve's last words, and instead takes the battle to Ares. She is the Godkiller, after all, and ends up murdering the fuck out of the god of war.

The transition to the end of war and her walking away from humanity feels a little odd, but adding a transcript about how humanity disappointed her and all that jazz would end up making Diana feel like an entitled bitch so I'm glad that the movie ended the way it did, with Diana fading into obscurity, and deciding to don the Wonder Woman costume again in the present day.

Overall, while it somewhat lacks a compelling villain (though all three of the big ones -- Ares, Ludendorff and Poison -- have memorable scenes if nothing else), and a slightly weak third act, it's a great Wonder Woman movie. I'm also glad that it's not a silly ultra-feministic 'women good men dumb' spiel through and through, but still features very strong female characters just being heroes and doing their thing. I'm also happy that Diana isn't a boring invincible hero but is shown to have her own flaws and problems, while still being ultimately an optimistic character.

So yeah, it's a great, triumphant interpretation of Wonder Woman from the comic book pages into the big screen, and as a big DC fan, I can give this movie two thumbs up .

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• The photograph of Diana and Steve's squad of misfits is, of course, the very same photograph in the file that Bruce sent to Diana in Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice. In the present-day portions of this movie, Wayne Enterprises (though Bruce himself doesn't show) apparently was successful in recovering the physical copy and sent it to Diana.
• Diana's origin story is a nice combination of various different versions of Wonder Woman's backstory:
• Being made out of clay created by Hippolyta, and blessed by the gods, is her traditional, Golden Age and Post-Crisis origin story.
• The actual story, that Diana is the demigoddess son of Hippolyta and Zeus, is an adaptation of the New 52 origin story for Wonder Woman, which itself seemed to be inspired by the cartoon series Justice League Unlimited's own origin story, where it was Hades and Hippolyta that sculpted Diana together out of clay.
• In the comics, Wonder Woman fought in World War II, although here the timeline is moved so she fights in World War I instead. 
• The Greek backstory that Hippolyta tells Diana is a very truncated version of the Amazons' history, but the images show important beats in the DC Amazons' history if not the details. They were shown to rise up of the ocean, and in the comics the Olympian Gods did create them out of clay from the sea infused with souls of women who died unjustly by man's hand. It also showed the Amazons briefly enslaved, before breaking free from their shackles -- and while it's not stated explicitly in the movie, it was this act that caused the deep-seated hatred towards men. The person responsible for this act of enslavement (and rape, in the comics) was Hercules. Yes, that Hercules from the Greek legends, albeit he's influenced by Ares at that point.
• Diana Prince does use glasses in her civilian guise, especially in the 70's TV show.
• The ambush in the alley, with Wonder Woman deflecting a bullet meant for Steve Trevor, is a loving tribute to a similar scene from Superman, where it's Clark Kent that catches the bullet meant for Lois Lane. In the scene, Diana is even wearing her glasses!
• Diana discovering ice cream and being absolutely ecstatic about is is a relatively recent scene, originating from the New 52 reboot, and recreated in the animated movie Justice League: War.
• While Diana's home island is always called Themyscira by its inhabitants, a nod to its Golden Age era name, Paradise Island, is made when Steve off-handedly refers to Themyscira by that name.
• While Diana being able to channel Ares's lightning against him seemed to be an evolution of her gauntlets' reflective powers, in the comics, Wonder Woman relatively recently found out that she can actually channel Zeus's lightning by slamming her gauntlets together due to them being forged from Zeus's shield, the Aegis.
• I don't think Diana was ever meant to be the Godkiller in the comics, but the Godkiller sword does exist in the comics continuity -- created by the Greek God Hephaesthus, and loaned to Deathstroke to kill the rogue titan Lapetus.  
• While not named in the movie proper, the German lady who Diana stole her clothes from for the gala is credited as 'Fausta Grables', who was a Nazi villain masquerading as Wonder Woman from the 70's Wonder Woman TV show. 
• In the comics, Ares' (alternatively, Mars) first appearance does also involve him manipulating German forces to unleash the horrors of World War II, and he also frequently employed astral projections in the comics. Ares's armour is a pretty spot-on version of his comic counterparts' armour, though with more emphasis on the horns and getting rid of the feathered crest. 
• Also, in the comics, Ares never killed any of the Olympian gods -- none of which ever actually died to my knowledge -- and his motivations tended to be to fuel more war, because he derives his power from mankind's war. While he still causes more war to happen, it's for a completely different reason this time around.
• In the comics, Antiope, while still being Hippolyta's sister, was far more detached from Diana and I don't believe they actually met -- she certainly didn't train her, at any rate. Antiope would break off from Themyscira and found the Amazon sister-nation of Bana-Mighall.
• Etta Candy was a secretary in the comics too, although she also moonlights as Wonder Woman's sidekick in the Golden Age comics. In the comics she had an obsession with eating candy and basically, well, using candy-related stuff as a gimmick -- all of which are wisely dropped for the movie.
• Likewise, in the comics, Dr. Poison was a Japanese member of the Nazis that embodied various Japanese stereotypes, but has been race-lifted in order to fit with the setting better. In the comics, she was a lot more gonk-y and disguised herself as a man.
• Sameer, Charlie and Chief are all brand-new characters created for the movie, although Chief seems to be inspired somewhat by the Challenge of the Superfriends superhero Apache Chief (though beyond the name and someone calling him 'big guy' at one point, it's a bit of a stretch) whereas Sameer is implied by the production crew to be an adaptation of a member of the Blackhawks, though no such reference or hint is alluded to anywhere in the movie.