Wonder Woman

Who would think that even in today’s modern media climate where things are allowed to be more diverse and experimental than ever before, Hollywood would be fearful of creating female-led superhero movies? While this argument spurned from most female superhero movies never doing financially well and being critically panned, that always came down to the handling of the film as opposed to the character of focus, yet the risk was seen as too great. There’s plenty of great female characters that could warrant their own movies, and female superheros are equally as prevalent, but even in modern time, it is still seen as a new daring chance for most big companies (in just recently, Sony was afraid of releasing one of their most successful games yet in Horizon Zero Dawn, because ‘’the lead was female’’) it’s such a bizarre thought-process. While thing’s have improved nowadays and female superheros are finally being given their time on the big-screen, clearly Hollywood needed that one kick in the right direction to show that they were profitable, and the 2017 film, Wonder Woman was that kick. Set on the colorful Greek island of Themyscira, an Amazonian woman named Diana (played by Gal Gadot) is slowly taught how to use her powers in battle after having to convince her mother, Hippolyta (played by Connie Nielsen) that she can also be a great Amazon. After training for several years to improve herself, she sees a plane crash within her beaches. After pulling the pilot to safety, she learns that he is British intelligence spy, Steve Trevor (played by Chris Pine) who reveals to Diana that the world outside of Themyscira is struggling through World War I and that he needs to return to British lands in order to stop German army general, Erich Ludendorff (played by Danny Huston) and an evil scientist named Isabel Maru otherwise known as ”Dr Poison” (played by Elena Anaya) from creating a gas that could wipe out every soldier on both sides. Believing the God of War, Ares, to be responsible for this war, Diana agrees to go to the real world and rid the world of his evil, only to discover that things aren’t quite as easily fixed as she would have hoped for. This movie was massive upon release, turning DC from a company was releasing constantly mixed movies from one that unveiled one of the popular and successful of that year. With great characters, effective storytelling, wonderfully balanced tone, and a story that while simple, managed to convey a great deal of importance around its subject matter and lead heroine, this film showed that these kind of movies could be profitable, entertaining, and good.

A lot of the film’s inspiration came samples of the comics created by Wonder Woman creator William Moulton Marston (mainly the stories he created in the 1940s) as well as examples from George Perez released in the 1980s stories and content from the New 52 incarnation of the character, combining multiple backstories and unique defining elements from each iteration to create a story and character that was not only unique, but full of possibilities that would take the best of all. The idea for a Wonder Woman movie began as early as 1996 where it was passed between several directors, several movie ideas, and several different actress choices and after settling with director Patty Jenkins who was tasked with integrated the character into the newly established DC Extended Universe, things work out surprisingly perfectly given the circumstances. The film managed to avoid the several flawed components that had plagued DC for several years now including overly complicated and moody stories, characters with no emotion who did nothing but brood and exude self-importance, no sense of color, soul, and humanity in any of their stories regardless of the subject matter, and more focus on setting up newer movies as opposed to its own. In this film, the movie does a great job at establishing this character in an environment and situation where it enforces who and what she becomes, with a story created by Zack Snyder, Allan Heinberg (who also served as the film’s screenwriter), and Jason Fuchs, that contains a very traditional outline and presentation (almost to the point of feeling cliched), yet an execution and delivery that is so perfect that it never once becomes an issue.  For a two-and-a-half-hour-long movie, it keeps you invested for the entire time, which comes the easily connectable story that does more than just spout exposition and doesn’t focus too heavily on the obvious cliches they’re using, cleverly integrates a time period like World War I into a story that could easily be black and white and shaping it into something far more intriguing, likeable characters that you want to follow and don’t feel like emotionless shells, and a situation that feels like a great mix between gritty realism and overblown superhero action. The screenplay for this film written by Heinberg carries with it several themes and homages to classic movies, several popular hero tales, and even classic fairy tales (you can feel a lot of Little Mermaid influence in this), to produce a film that feels timeless and effectively emotion-driven at its core, yet still delivers a sense of maturity and weight to its premise that helps it feel grounded, gritty and impactful. It breaks old negative trends of DC while creating something that is much more welcoming, but still very much in line with the original comic series and not just a knock-off Marvel movie. The only real problem the film has is the climax, where the movie gets overly talk-heavy, features a pretty lame climax and even a pretty rushed epilogue.

The way that they write Diana in this movie is about as perfect as you could for this character; she’s a complete mixture of being identifiable as a character and being a heroic icon. Superheros started off as larger-than-life role models who strove to create fictional stories of hero fantasy during a time when people needed them, then became more complex and tortured to feel more human and down-to-earth as times went on. This helped the characters in the long run, but that feeling of the iconic god-like hero standing tall to face evil for the little guy disappeared for a while, until this movie brought it back. There’s something wonderfully simple and pure about her portrayal in this movie, as despite having not a lot of depth, tragedy in her past or even complexity to her personality, the simple human desire to save people just to do the right thing is oddly refreshing at this moment and this movie makes that work so well. Even with this in mind, this is balanced out with the character also being emotionally vulnerable, naïve, hopefully, and incredibly likeable, she’s down-to-earth in nature, but God-like in her actions. That mixed with Gal Gadot’s wonderful performance that really makes you care, connect, and relate to her, makes her a fantastic role model AND a fantastic character. Thankfully, most of the supporting roles are handled pretty well too. Chris Pine does really good as Steve Trevor, providing a light-hearted yet still grounded contrast to Diana’s naive optimism, the side villains played by Danny Huston and Elena Anaya are a lot of fun to watch, the side characters that tag along on the trip played by Saïd Taghmaoui, Ewen Bremmer and Eugene Brave Rock are slightly pointless but are acted well enough and have a believable realism to them that doesn’t just make them come across as pieces in the larger universe being set up. Again, the problem stems when the villain, Ares (played by David Thewlis) shows up. While his reveal and plan are actually pretty brilliant and take the character in a much better direction than what they were setting up, the final confrontation feels pretty lazy and the design he has mixed with the actor’s look, makes it feel pretty laughable and not the least bit intimidating.

One of the bizarre things about the movie are that the effects are surprisingly terrible. In any of the action scenes or even just during the opening sequence, they look decades old and nowhere near up to the level that recent comic book movies have. The twist is that despite how awful they look, they don’t disrupt the action and, in some instances, make it look even cooler. The opening scene in Themyscira may look fake, but it looks beautiful at the same time with wonderful warm lighting and very vibrant colors, they don’t feel out of place in this world. They are bad in how obviously fake they are, but with the comic-book environment and stylish presentation the film has during some of the fight scenes, it honestly sucks the audience in as opposed to take them out. Because of this, the action is still a lot of fun to watch, with a lot of great moves, superhero weapons and antics, and climatic scale around some of the bigger set pieces. The climax as previously stated gets a little too much for the film and turns into something much more expected of the genre, but there are other moments that instantly iconic and will be remembered forever (the scene where Wonder Woman steps out onto No Man’s Land is one of the best moments in any comic book movie period). The music for the film is fairly good and the theme song created by Rupert Gregson-Williams is so good that it will make anybody jump out of the seat and cheer. It has such an incredible beat and energy to it, like it’s a signal to call an ancient warrior yet feels distinctly hard-core through the harsh electric guitar riff but in a good way.

Along with Richard Donner’s Superman, and Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight, Wonder Woman easily ranks as one of the best DC movies that the world has ever had. For so much fear surrounding the movie from the higher-ups worrying that the movie wouldn’t succeed if they had a female lead, this movie showed that it doesn’t matter what gender the lead is, if a movie and character is written well, they will be good and will make money, it’s that easy. The movie has a great story, clean directing, amazing actors, fun action sequences, a very well-balanced tone, and a great portrayal and character in Wonder Woman. It does have its minor flaws and the climax does prove to be the only real bad part of the movie, but even still, it doesn’t take away from everything else this movie did right. A start to a brand-new avenue of comic book movies and the revitalization that DC needed to get their groove back, this one is going to be remembered.