Review: WONDER WOMAN

WONDER WOMAN

(ACTION-ADVENTURE/FANTASY)

★★★

Directed by Patty Jenkins

Screenplay by Allan Heinberg

Starring: Gal Gadot, Chris Pine, Connie Nielsen, Robin Wright, Danny Huston, David Thewlis, Said Taghmaoui, Ewen Bremner, Eugene Brave Rock, Lucy Davis, Elena Anaya, Lilly Aspell, Lisa Loven Kongsli, Ann Ogbomo

Rated PG-13 for sequences of violence and action, and some suggestive content.

141 minutes

Verdict: It runs long and doesn't exactly rewrite the superhero movie formula, but it's handsomely-crafted, epic and intimate, with two very likable leads; the DCEU can finally lay claim to a good movie.

YOU MAY BE INTERESTED IN WONDER WOMAN IF YOU LIKED:
CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER  (2011)
THOR  (2011)
BATMAN V SUPERMAN: DAWN OF JUSTICE  (2016)
MAN OF STEEL  (2013)
MONSTER  (2003)

If WONDER WOMAN were the best movie of the so-called "DC Extended Universe" or DCEU (Warner Brothers/DC Comics' response to the Marvel Cinematic Universe series of interconnected films), frankly, it wouldn't mean dick (or vagina, I guess, considering the material).  Of the three films that preceded it, MAN OF STEEL is the best by far, and MAN OF STEEL is not a good movie.  It's an okay-ish movie that runs way too long and devolves into a mind-numbing, utterly excessive fistfight in a second half that features far more rubble than heroism.  Last year, the DCEU attempted to shift into high gear with two productions, and the question is, which one was worse?  Was it BATMAN V SUPERMAN: DAWN OF JUSTICE, an infuriatingly long, aggressively self-important angst-fest about two horrible superhumans acting horrible before finally fighting each other and teaming up because their moms have the same name?  Or was it SUICIDE SQUAD, the mercifully shorter but no less smelly dumpster fire lacking in rhyme or reason where underdeveloped, over-styled and uninteresting bad guys (who aren't even explicitly much worse than the "heroes" we've seen in this universe) traverse an abandoned city and fight faceless rock people with baseball bats and guns?  But WONDER WOMAN is the best movie to come out of the DCEU so far, and even if it doesn't exactly rewrite the superhero genre in any way, it looks good and it's so refreshing to finally have a hero who doesn't act like a dick all the time.

There's been a lot of hype about this movie being a "win for feminism", but I think the argument that it's a win for feminism is an even bigger win for the marketing department at Warner Brothers/DC.  I mean, let's face it; this is still a corporate product designed to sell tickets, toys and anything else that can be branded, and it's simply bewildering that it took this long for them to branch out into the girl power demographic.  It's great that it's a major mainstream Hollywood blockbuster directed by a woman and that it's a female-driven superhero movie, and there should be a lot more of that (say, about half of them, maybe?), but come on, this is so much more about capitalism than it is about feminism.  Plus, there's a weird kink element to Wonder Woman that I'm not sure what to make of, with the sexy outfit, the cuffs and the lasso (not that being sexy and kinky can't be part of the feminist ideal).  I don't know, it just seems a little silly.  I mean, I'm all for feminism, equal rights, fair treatment, respect for others and all that, but sometimes these corporatized and hip social feminisms feel frustrating and off point, and maybe that's because I'm frustrating and off point.  But, you know, as Wonder Woman learns, we're all fighting our own personal battles as human beings.  Woman or not, it's good to have Patty Jenkins directing a movie like this, and it's been a while.  She was originally set to direct THOR: THE DARK WORLD before leaving due to that age-old reason, "creative differences", and she's directed a few episodes of television, but it's been fourteen years since her Academy Award-winning last feature film, MONSTER, and that was her directorial debut.  It's like the trend of picking up directors of small independent films to direct super-sized blockbusters (i.e. Colin Trevorrow going from SAFETY NOT GUARANTEED to JURASSIC WORLD, Marc Webb from (500) DAYS OF SUMMER to THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN, and Gareth Edwards from MONSTERS to GODZILLA (2014)), but on a much longer time frame.
The screenplay by DC Comics writer Allan Heinberg (who also shares story credit with Zack Snyder and PAN writer Jason Fuchs) benefits some from Marvel having already broken the ground on superheroes within an historical war setting (the first Captain America movie) and ancient mythology and swords & sorcery fantasy as part of the superhero genre (the Thor movies), but it's also a reasonably straightforward superhero hero's journey origin story.  Set near the end of World War I in 1918, Diana (Gal Gadot, who sort of resembles a young Angelina Jolie, who would likely have played the role if the movie were made 20 years ago) is the curious and innocent princess of Themiscyra, the hidden island kingdom of the Amazons, a tribe of warrior women who were charged with the responsibility of guarding the world of mankind from the machinations of the evil god of war, Ares, but who has not been seen in thousands of years.  When American spy pilot Steve Trevor (Chris Pine) crosses through the barrier that hides their island and crashes into the ocean, it's the first time Diana has ever seen anything of the world outside and when she rescues him and he tells her of the World War taking place out there, she concludes that it's the work of Ares and only she can kill him.  Against her mother's (Connie Nielsen) protestations and with the training of the Amazonian general Antiope (Robin Wright), Diana joins Steve in his mission to prevent the Germans, led by the sadistic General Ludendorff (Danny Huston) and his mad scientist associate Dr. Maru (Elena Anaya) from unleashing an extremely powerful form of poison gas that would prolong the war interminably. 

I didn't know much about the Wonder Woman character going in, and I still feel like there's a lot about her and her world that don't quite make sense, but the character on screen and as played by Gadot is solid, and so is Pine.  As Marvel did with CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER, they also have a team of diverse characters as part of their squad who each bring interesting concepts to the mix and build on the "everyone is fighting their own battles" theme of the movie, but these are "sample size" characters.  Ewen Bremner is the hard-drinking, shell-shocked Scottish sniper Charlie, and Said Taghmaoui is the uncouth, unfiltered secret agent Sameer.  Eugene Brave Rock, who's apparently a stunt man/actor from the AMC series Hell on Wheels, plays the opportunistic smuggler Chief and is not very good at acting.
The pace is unusually moderate for today's action movies, and while a lot of the time it's nice and has plenty of room to breathe, a bit of fine tuning and careful trimming could have made it better (everyone is acting like it's such a great thing that there were no scenes deleted, but come on, usually scenes are deleted for a reason, and unless it's Harvey Weinstein blundering into the editing room like a bull in a china shop, a little judicious editing is a good thing), but at least in terms of Diana and Steve, the characters are given their due and their relationship is carefully constructed. 
It's typical on a movie of this size for a director to maintain focus on the character-centric scenes while second and third unit directors cover the action set-pieces, and in this movie, the difference is weirdly apparent.  The character scenes revolving around Diana and Steve are all great and really invest in those characters, and while most of the action is good, a lot of it feels like it's made for a different movie.  At least of what she's made, the Diana and Steve scenes feel like Patty Jenkins, but the action is pretty much straight-up Zack Snyder, and as long as it's only the action that feels like Zack Snyder, that's not a huge problem, but it is a little odd to jump from this classy, handsome-looking period fantasy movie and right into lots of slow motion, speed-ramping and the electric theme from BATMAN V SUPERMAN.  One exception however, and one of the best scenes in the movie (despite not entirely making logical sense, but shut up brain, you're being boring) is a scene when Wonder Woman leads a charge out of the trenches on the Western Front and right into No Man's Land, inspiring others to follow as she deflects a massive hail of bullets.  Meanwhile, scenes pertaining to the villainous General Ludendorff and Dr. Maru, aka "Dr. Poison", are weirdly campy, as if from a whole other comic book movie.

Whatever the politics of it all, the movie largely succeeds on the surprising strength of Gadot as a leading lady.  She can "kick ass" as the annoying cliché goes, coming from an unusually colorful background as both Miss Israel 2004 and a former combat trainer in the Israel Defense Forces during the 2006 Lebanon War, and she's also a pretty magnetic screen presence.  She was the favorite part of BATMAN V SUPERMAN for a lot of people, although I personally didn't care too much and didn't feel like she was a sufficient part of the story, that she was shoehorned in for marketing purposes and Zack Snyder used her for a few of his standard hero shots to make fanboys cream their jeans.  In WONDER WOMAN, she has a chance to do her thing, and yeah, she's really good.
With Marvel Studios currently dominating the all-powerful superhero genre, even while they have a pretty good batting record, they're also pretty consistent, and if they can do it at least as well as this, DC should be adding variety, but BATMAN V SUPERMAN and SUICIDE SQUAD suck so hard.  I'm not fully on board with the popular concept of Marvel movies not looking "cinematic", but I sort of understand where they're coming from in some cases, and WONDER WOMAN in contrast has a very handsomely-crafted visual style, and even without being as playful or "jokey" as most Marvel, it's fun and unburdened by the sagging self-importance of the Snyder films.  Where it most improves on the other DCEU movies though, is that it finally delivers a superhero who's actually heroic.  Now, if only it were about 15 minutes leaner.