by Athelassan » Sat Nov 18, 2017 11:06 pm
Wonder Woman
Finally got around to this after hearing a lot about it. It's certainly the best of the DCEU films I've seen so far, although that's such a desperately low bar to clear (Man of Steel being the only one among them with any merit) that would be to damn it with faint praise rather.
Overall it's engaging and entertaining and Gal Gadot is a charismatic and watchable lead, with a wit to the writing that wasn't there in earlier DCEU films.
But.
It suffered from many of the same problems as its DCEU predecessors: washed out visuals, overwrought and overlong CGI fight scenes (and too long in general). Many of the criticisms of Man of Steel in particular could be copy-pasted into a review of Wonder Woman, if we were so inclined.
Before the film was released I heard a bit of puff from those involved about how it was interesting to be doing this sort of film against the backdrop of a WW1 setting rather than the more familiar WW2. But the film didn't really engage with this in any meaningful way. You could replace Ludendorff with Hitler and nothing much would change. There was little attempt made to humanise the Germans, and they served almost entirely as default villains, faceless - often literally, with their gas masks - mooks to be mown down without mercy or guilt: again, something more associated with a WW2 setting than WW1. The iconic trench warfare of WW1 featured briefly, in what was possibly the best action scene in the movie, but then quickly reverted to the sort of skirmish-style combat that makes for good superhero shenanigans but was famously absent from that war.
There was also a strong sense of déja vu. Once we got the backstory and her upbringing and Legolas-training on Themoscyra (sp?) it hit so many of the same beats as Captain America in terms of plot and set pieces that it felt at times almost like watching a remake - right down to the oversized flying machine with a superweapon that's going to wipe out a major city and requires someone to sacrifice themselves to stop.
Unlike Ludendorff, Ares was an interesting character, but although the bait-and-switch did at least make the plot a little less predictable it meant that we got relatively little time with the main villain and the "temptation of Diana" managed to feel both as though it was both cramped and dragging, as there was nowhere to put it but in the climax. Even then, and while it was perhaps better at wrestling with the idea of moral ambiguity than its predecessors (and, again, acknowledging that that's a low bar to clear) there was still a relatively binary distinction between the good guys and the bad guys.
I know that it wasn't trying to do the same thing as Civil War, but comparing how deftly that film juggled its characters such that we were never quite sure who was in the right (and even Zemo had a point) and similarly with the Punisher in Daredevil, and even the X-men series on its better days, I don't think Wonder Woman managed much more than a valiant first attempt in terms of depth of character and theme.
Which is perhaps why people have been so willing to overlook its flaws, and why to an extent I am. We all know by now that, having done more than any other studio to turn superhero films into a genre to be taken critically seriously, DC/WB have been behind the 8-ball for the best part of a decade now and have a lot of catching up to do to compete with Disney and Fox, not least because we're seeing these characters often for the first time on screen now rather than having had multiple films with them.
And that's before getting into the obvious issue that this is the first major female-led superhero film since... Catwoman? you know, let's just go with "ever". People have been clamouring for Wonder Woman or indeed any female superhero lead for ages and everyone wanted this film to be good. That we have a Wonder Woman film and finally a DCEU film that isn't mind-bendingly boring and terrible and it's the same film feels like a triumph, which, to an extent, it is. I just can't shake the feeling that in five years' time we'll look at this and go "well, it's alright, but it's not as good as I remember".
Ath