Wonder Woman: It's About Time They Got Something Right

I’m going to be honest with you, people: my expectations for Wonder Woman could not have been lower, and this has less to do with the movie itself and more to do with the movies that it’s attached to. For better or worse, franchise building is the name of the game in Hollywood now, so we were going to be stuck with Warner Bros’ ill-advised dick measuring contest with Marvel whether we liked it or not. But I don’t think I’m alone when I say that the DC Extended Universe has such a disastrous track record that it’s hard not to grade them on a curb. Man of Steel was a joyless slog. Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice was an unfocused, convoluted mess. Suicide Squad looked like everything that went wrong with the previous two movies would work in its favor, but they even managed to fuck that up. I was expecting this to be Man of Steel bad. I was expecting this to be Transformers 2 bad. I was expecting this to be the 2011 Wonder Woman pilot bad. Even on my best days when I wanted to give it the benefit of the doubt, I was well past the point of expecting it to be good and was willing to settle for watchable. Couple that with this movie basically being the torchbearer for all future female lead superhero movies in the public eye, and the odds were pretty much stacked against it from the very start. So how does a movie that has everything to lose and everything going against it fair?

Short answer: it’s pretty good. If I had the lasso of truth tied to me, I’d say the hype is a bit overstated and it’s not really deserving of its 92% Rotten Tomato rating, but then again, after you’ve been eating stale, moldy bread for so long, a fresh loaf will start to taste like a seven-layer chocolate cake in comparison. But it’s decent. Adequate. Serviceable. Good enough. It’s too early to say if this will be a revolutionary game-changer or not, but after what we’ve been getting, I’ll take what I can get.

Alright, I’ll stop bitching about other movies, now. Let’s talk about this one.

Our story follows Diana (Gal Gadot), princess of the Amazons, a society of warrior women created by Zeus in order to combat Ares, the god of war. They’ve spent the last thousand years on a hidden island paradise, training for the day that Ares may strike again. That day comes when Steve Trevor (Chris Pine), an Allied soldier who has just stolen secrets from the Germans for a new chemical weapon they’ve been working on, stumbles across the island and tells them about the Great War going on beyond the island’s barriers. Diana believes this war must be the creation of Ares, so she goes with Steve to join the fight, thinking that if she can find him and kill him, it will put an end to all war as we know it.

Like the previous DC movies, Wonder Woman does take a few tricks from the books of its competitors. But whereas Man of Steel and BvS wore the grim and gritty outfit of The Dark Knight while completely missing the point of The Dark Knight, and Suicide Squad spent most of its time dry humping the legs of Guardians of the Galaxy and Deadpool, Wonder Woman’s story marries elements of the first Captain America and Thor movies, in that it’s an old-fashioned style war movie about a sheltered being with a strong moral compass who joins the cause, rises to the challenge and emerges as a hero, but also a fish out of water story where the fish is a mighty deity who is equally amused and perplexed by the ways of us silly humans. The bulk of the film’s attempts at humor come from Diana’s detached interactions with the world around her (think Ariel’s time on the surface world in The Little Mermaid, but more judgmental), but Chris Pine manages to be both a good comic relief and earnest love interest, and there’s a trio of mercenaries who join their mission that bring a lot of heart to the story. What separates it from the rest of the flock, however, is that it’s gunning for an all-war-is-bad-and-there’s-grey-morality-on-both-sides theme, which is why it’s set in World War I instead of World War II because, let’s face it, unless we’re talking about Downfall, it’s really hard to pull that theme off when the other side is the Nazis.

However, the main focus of the movie is Wonder Woman herself. And for once, Warner Bros. has finally found a writer and director that actually understand its character. While I’ve never really read any Wonder Woman comics myself, even a pleb like me understands the fundamentals of her character (strength, courage, compassion, justice etc.), and the script definitely checks off all those boxes. Even though Gal Gadot’s performance was easily the best part of BvS and she’s equally as good in her first solo outing, I have a hard time telling if she’s a good actress or if her particular style just fits well with this specific character. Unfortunately, this does have a negative bearing on some parts of the story, mainly that the villains are pretty uninteresting (aside from a red herring twist about his true identity) and mostly serve as a punching bag for Diana to show her skills off on. For those worried that the plot distracts from her reputation as a feminist icon, it doesn’t. Even though this version isn’t really a vessel for creator William Moulton Marston theory that the female idea of strength being the cure for wars and violence perpetuated by men aren’t exactly front and center, they’re definitely there if you look for them. That said, she still serves as a great interpretation of the character and a much-needed role model for all the women and girls who have been waiting for decades for a heroine of their own who, before now, had yet to be the star of her own show.

Overall, while Wonder Woman isn’t a great movie by any measure, it’s still a good and a much-needed step in the right direction. While it’s way too soon to predict the kind of impact this movie will have on the cinematic landscape, but for now I’d put it in the mid-tier of the pantheon of superhero movies along the likes of Iron Man, Superman II and the first X-Men. Let’s just hope that Warner Bros. can learn the right lesson from this one.

7/10