Review of Wonder Woman (2017) by Scott G — 09 Jun 2017

Wonder Woman 3/5 Stars.

Wonder Woman is a good time at the movies. Gal Gadot and Chris Pine are great casting choices for our two leads. There is action and grandeur, humor, romance, and weird little artsy sections of exposition.

Things they got right:

-Focus on Wonder Woman and her story without getting preachy or political about all the Female Hero hype. I could see any superhero fitting into this narrative structure. (and we kind of have, but ill get to that later).

-For a sizable percentage of the runtime the camera shots are focused squarely on Gal's gorgeous well-lit face. That's a good call, director.

- Wonder Woman's character gets an exceptional fleshing-out. We get to see many different sides of her personality and how she reacts to a wide range of people and situations, and her overarching sense of duty and love and I wanted to say "justice" here but that is a) Batman's thing, b) kind of a bad pun and c) doesn't really fit. That word is too formal for what she is doing, it is more like righteous wrath.

Things they got wrong:

- The filmmakers did not take much risk. The overall tone of the film does not get too high or too low which can make for somewhat bland stretches of the story and few true surprises. I feel like a majority of the high praise for this movie is coming from two places-1. Critics on the girl power bandwagon. Many simply refuse to tear down any kind of "empowerment" movie even if they think its bad. 2. The film hits many of the tropes and scenes and plot points that I would describe as "testing well" with average mixed audiences. You know what i'm saying. There is absolutely some amount of pandering going on here, don't deny it.

-There is a tremendous amount of life loss in this film. No spoiler there, it takes place during and inside of world war I. The brutality and horror is all missing, however. This bloodless, sometimes cartoonish tone is all wrong for the setting. it's an odd mix of fantasy and realism. Maybe that is exactly what they were going for, but I found it didnt quite convince me. WW kicks so much ass in this movie- someone should do an edit where they add all the blood that would actually be spilled by the violence depicted, and she would be covered head to toe by the end of some scenes.

-CHEESE. seriously guys. the dialog. Some films have memorable, even inspirational qoutes. Some films ham it up like an afternoon soap opera. Guess which one this is? i'm going to lump the whole cast of villains in with the cheese complaint.