Review of Wonder Woman (2017) by Obed G — 09 Dec 2017

Diana of Themyscira needed to be a more complex and eloquent character.

The movie Wonder Woman has brought the DC universe back to life, since the past movies that they filmed were a pitiful try of introducing new superheroes and villains to the big screen. However, I was not fully satisfied with the screenplay that Gal Gadot had for the role of Wonder Woman, it really made me feel that Diana was a too naïve of a character and could have been more complex than what we see in the movie.

At the beginning of the movie we see how Diana grows with a wish of becoming a great warrior since she was little; However, her mom Hyppolita (Connie Nielsen) the queen of the amazons doesn't like the idea of her trying to become a warrior, but with time she has to change her mind and let her daughter pursue her dreams. Hyppolita also decides to share with her daughter the story of how the amazonians became to exist and the great evil that they might have to fight in the future, who is Ares. Diana's core, or what bases her decisions on, is that Ares will come back in the future and in order to bring peace to the amazons and the human world Ares has to be eradicated. Later in the movie, Diana meets Steve Trevor (Chris Pine), a spy who works for the US government, who has been running from the Germans who are trying to catch him, after he stole the notes of Dr. Maru (Elena Anaya) who is working on creating a more powerful mustard gas. Steve's plane crashes on the ocean close to the island that has been kept secret up until that moment with some sort of magic veil. Diana, who sees the plane crashing and sinking in the water jumps to rescue whoever is in the plane. Not long after Trevor's arrival, he is interrogated and the amazonians hear from Trevor that a great war (WW1) is taking place in the world of humans. Diana rapidly assumes that this only can be the work of Ares, making her decide that someone has to save the world.

Throughout the movie, we see a too naïve Diana of Themyscira, who makes decisions based only on her one personal belief. For example, when Steve Trevor (Chris Pine) and Diana get to talk to Trevor's superiors, Diana is able to translate the notes of Dr. Maru (Elena Anaya) that Trevor steal from her. They figure out that the plan of the Germans is to throw a new mustard gas at the front line in order to kill thousands of men. Trevor, having a feeling of urgency to destroy that new gas mustard, advises his superiors to send more troops to try to destroy the new weapon; but his desires are shut down by the argument made by his commanders that a treaty between the countries is the only way to stop the war and that they have been looking to get it signed by the Germans. Trevor still persists on trying to change the decision of his superiors, but they censure Trevor and tell him that it's an order. Diana, mad at the leaders of Steve Trevor, starts yelling at them, saying that all of them are cowards because they do not support the soldiers in the battlefield as she wishes. After she leaves the room, she assumes that the treaty between the countries is something that Ares won't allow, as she says, "This is Ares! and he's not going to allow a negotiation or a surrender." In scenes like this throughout the movie, I wished that Diana would have been a little smarter and grown up, instead of pushing Trevor so many times to take her to Ares in order to kill him and save the world. Screenwriters Geoff Johns and Allan Heinberg, created a main character that was too simple-minded and naïve to me, I always saw that Diana was too predictable because she only based all of her decisions on one simple thing. The character of Diana didn't have any complexity, it was too easy to know what Diana was going to do in almost every scene due to her only belief.

Not only do I think that the character of wonder woman needed to be more mature but also, I conclude that the screenwriting didn't show a character with a lot of eloquence. Throughout the movie, I always felt that Gal Gadot's screenplay always fell too short in expressing things other than just "we need to kill Ares!" I got a little tired after hearing so many times that the only thing that she wanted to do was to kill the creator of all evil. I didn't count how many times throughout the movie Wonder Woman mentioned the name Ares but if you pay enough attention you might see that the character Diana says that name quite a few times, that it is clear that our main villain has to be him. I wonder if the writers of the movie decided that Gal Gadot needed to have shorter lines and that were not too complex due to the fact that English is not her first language and that would have been something difficult for the development of the movie.

Overall the movie Wonder Woman could have had a more complex main character. I really enjoyed the movie but because of the simplicity of Diana, I wouldn't say that this is the best movie of the year. It's true that this movie probably has been the one that puts the world of DC in a better position; however, I am hoping that in future movies they can show us a more complex and grown-up Wonder Woman with a better screenplay and more original ideas of what she stands for.