Wonder Woman

If you follow me on Twitter, you'll know how big of a deal Wonder Woman was the night I went to go see the midnight premiere. I am, or at least bare a resemblance to, an adult man with a job that requires me to get up at 6 in the morning. When I started this blog, I was in college and had the schedule to go off and see movies whenever I wanted to and all I had to do was schedule it on a day that I didn't have class or just skip class all together in order to catch up on sleep from a night like one you have after seeing a midnight show of a movie. I don't have that luxury anymore. But Wonder Woman is the exception to that frame of mind now and there's multiple reasons for that.

So there's this little thing called, The Justice League coming out later this year. This is the display of a pantheon of heroes that are very beloved by not only me but a lot of people. And so far, the reviews for the films that have taken place building up to The Justice League have ranged from mediocre, to just god awful. Of course my reviews differ a little bit as I absolutely love Man of Steel, but it doesn't negate the fact that historically, Man of Steel, Batman v Superman, and Suicide Squad have not been critically received well. And yet people keep going to these movies, even when they're not good. It's because we as fans want these movies to be good and we want to get a similar feeling with the Justice League as we did when we saw The Avengers team up all together for the first time. The heroes in The Justice League, I would argue, historically have been more revered heroes and they're the ones that we've wanted to see for such a long time. So when the reviews for the past few DCEU movies have not been great, we get a little bit worried for the future of the Justice League.

On top of all of that, Wonder Woman is significant because this is the first time this character has ever been given her own standalone film.

Wonder Woman is a beloved character and has been around for about 74 to 76 years (I'm not sure which one, she either just had her 75th birthday or is about to have it) and yet we have not had a standalone film about her.

Think about this. We've had 5 standalone Spider-man films (a character that has been rebooted and played by 3 different actors), 6 standalone Superman films (a character that has also been rebooted and played by 3 different actors) and a whopping 7 standalone Batman films (a character that has been rebooted multiple times and played by five different actors.)

Even the Hulk has had two standalone films and had three different actors play him and we just brought Wonder Woman onto the big screen last year with Batman v Superman. Needless to say this was a long time coming.

Now to be fair, the caliber of female led superhero films in the past has not been great or profitable (Catwoman, Elecktra, Barb Wire and Tank Girl are objectively horrible films) and I would say if you're going to do a Wonder Woman movie, you need to do it right. But in a time where one of the highest grossing film franchises, The Hunger Games, was led by a female lead and you have shows like Supergirl on the CW that are doing incredibly well, it's about damn time this movie happened.

So there's your background, how is Wonder Woman?

Wonder Woman follows the story of Diana (played by Gal Gadot), Princess of an island called Themyscara, a mystical island inhabited by the Amazons, a group of warrior women created by Zeus to bring love to the world of man but has been hidden away from the rest of the world for many years after man proved to be weak and prone to the influence of the god of war, Ares.

Right off the bat, I want to mention that the mythology was done really well in the beginning of this film. They basically say, "You know that Greek Mythology, yeah that's all real in this universe". It brings Wonder Woman in the category of not just being a superhero, but a goddess and I'll talk about that more in my spoilers commentary. I do think they kind of glance over that whole, Greek Gods are real thing and I hope it's explored in other movies, but I thought it was a great quick run down of the mythology done in the form of a story Diana hears as a child from her mother Hippolyta (played by Connie Nelson).

Diana is trained by her Aunt Claire Underwood or Antiope (played by Robin Wright who I will say was criminally under utilized in this film) until she becomes a fierce amazon warrior, ambitious in her desire to fight and bring good to the world.

Well she gets her chance when a pilot by the name of Steve Trevor (played by Chris Pine) crash lands on her island straight from the battlefield of World War 1. He tells Diana and the Amazons about the war happening and Diana believes it to be the work of Ares. She is convinced that if Ares is defeated, the war and the suffering will stop. So she goes with Trevor to Europe in the hopes of finding and defeating Ares.

The rest of the movie is pretty much a fish out of water story where Diana traverses the landscape of 1918 during World War 1, eventually displaying the full strength of Wonder Woman, while a villainess named Doctor Poison (played by Elena Anaya) develops a deadly poison that will bring the German armies back to primacy in the war.

So the first question I had to answer with this movie was, is Gal Gadot a strong enough actress and does she play the role well enough to carry this film? While for a lot of people she was one of the highlights of Batman v Superman, I couldn't help but feel like that was just because it was the first time we had seen Wonder Woman on screen and we were excited. She really only had about fifteen minutes of screen time and doesn't do much for the plot of that film besides set up for The Justice League.

The answer to the question is she the right for this part is unequivocally: yes.

Do I think Gal Gadot is a world class actress? No but I do think that she put a lot of work into this role and I think it really worked out for her. I loved Diana's naiveté and her misunderstanding of our world. But she is by no means stupid. Wonder Woman walking around stingy 1918 London is both a hilarious image and a commentary on where we used to be on our views of women and their role in the world. Like I said, she's not stupid and when all the stingy Army generals are talking about an Armistice and refusing to do the right thing, she goes full blast on them and minces no words on their lack of action to save lives.

 And then when you finally see her say F this and take matters into her own hand by walking into no man's land in her costume for the first time in the film, I have to say, even though I had seen that in the trailer, I had goosebumps.

On top of that, she's a very well developed character throughout.

It's very apparent now what they saw in Gal Gadot when they casted her as Wonder Woman, and while DC has had a lot of missteps and missed opportunities, Gal Gadot was not one of them.

Now I do think she has a lot of work to do and I hope she's as compelling of a character when she's fully integrated into the Justice League, but I get the feeling that the momentum of this movie is going to propel Wonder Woman into being a central figure of the Justice League if not the catalyst for the rest of the DCEU.

Then you've got Chris Pine as Steve Trevor and man I liked him in this movie. Steve Trevor has been fighting in this war for a long time as a spy and he also has an understanding of it that is complicated due to him living within a grey area of this war. He creates a perfect dynamic with Diana who is naïve and sees it as a simple conquest to root out evil.

The more I think about these two, the more I really enjoyed them. From the get go, I liked their chemistry and the duality of them. He's there to guide her through our world and the exchanges they have are both hilarious and genuine. Like I said before, Diana is a well developed character and so is Steve, but together they really do make a good arc that works well within the film.

I'm gonna put on my "feminist" hat for a second and analyze how Steve Trevor is a good male supporting character in a female driven story.

There's a point in the movie where he realizes, he's not as badass as Diana is. He knows she can kick ass and she doesn't need saving. But the element of the movie that I really liked was how well these two work together. Just because Diana is basically a god doesn't mean that Steve can't help her. He's okay taking second fiddle to a woman and that's not an issue at all in the film. He doesn't have any kind of small penis syndrome thinking that it's not a woman's place to be behind him, he is totally cool with taking the back seat when it comes to her kicking ass while still managing to do his job.

Now that does create conflict when the things that Steve believes are necessary to win the war conflict with Diana's views and goals to find Ares and end the war in her mind, but that has nothing to do with their sex. These are two smart individuals and they're on the same playing field the entire time. Nobody is above the other, they're just partners.

I'm going really in depth with this film and I'm gonna try and hold some of this back for my Spoilers review, but I think this was exactly the kind of film Wonder Woman needed to be and I think a lot of that is due to the performances of the two leads, and a lot of it is due to the direction of Patty Jenkins.

Dear Lord... Thank you for this woman.

If you don't know who Patty Jenkins is, she's obviously the director, but prior to this movie she was a pretty sought after name by big studios to direct some of their films after her direction on the movie Monster, and her work as director of the pilot episode of the show, The Killing. Both I have not seen but plan on it after this film.

Back in 2011, she was slotted to direct Thor: The Dark World but exited citing creative differences. Jenkins is one of the many directors who have cited creative differences as a grievance of working with Marvel and Jenkins in particular cited that she would have loved to make a Thor movie but Marvel wanted her to make their Thor movie not hers. (paraphrasing of course, she was very cordial about the exit so who knows, we could see Jenkins direct a Marvel movie in the future).

If I'm the executive at Marvel who stifled Patty Jenkin's creative ideas while working on Thor, I would be eating my heart out after watching Wonder Woman because you can tell this was the movie she wanted to make and I'm glad DC let her do it. I hope this is a wake up call to DC because if they try and control things the way Marvel does with their films, you stifle people like David Ayers and you get movies like Suicide Squad instead of Wonder Woman when you didn't stifle Patty Jenkins.

This review is getting a little bit off track. There is always a spoilers review.

So what are the problems with this movie? Well... um... the beginning I guess is maybe strangely paced? The first half of this movie is just a fish out of water story where Diana is mosing around London with a sword and a shield trying to figure out how we as regular people live. I actually really liked the first half before all the action began because it gave us some time for Diana and Steve to get to know one another, it gave the opportunity for the villains to develop an evil plan that Diana would eventually foil, and it gave us some good build up for the awesome scene when Diana finally reveals herself as Wonder Woman.

I guess the villain of the film is not exactly the strongest, but at the same time I actually think that the villain(s) served a purpose and were pretty good in the context of the film. I'll talk about this a little bit more in the spoilers review as it is a little bit of a spoiler to talk about the villains in length, but DC seemed to be taking a page from the Marvel movies in this one to focus more on the development of the protagonists and the villains take a secondary role. If they're good, the movie only benefits, but as long as the protagonists are strong, we're good to go.

One thing I will mention and this of course will be paired with something of the film that I really enjoyed and that was the action. I thought the action in the film was exciting and pretty well done. I guess a criticism I had with the film is that it really liked their slow motion. There were a couple of scenes where I was watching the action and suddenly it goes into slow motion and it kind of took you out of the action for a quick second. Slow motion can be used in action sequences but it has to be for a purpose and I felt like they were really embellishing that slow motion button in this movie.

Honestly, the criticisms I have to the movie are criticisms I've heard from other critics since watching the movie. There are actually very few things I felt were wrong with this movie and I just had a really enjoyable experience with this film.

So is it a perfect movie? No. Is it a great movie? Honestly, the answer to that question is I don't know.

I think this goes into the reason why this movie is so hard to review. There was so much riding on this film and within the context of the DCEU and the other movies that have come out before it, this is such a breath of fresh air that it is hard to be objective and point out the flaws in this movie.

I will need to rewatch this movie to really gain the full breadth of how good it really is and I'll have to watch it with a clearer mind, setting it apart from it's predecessors. I'm sure there are flaws in the movie, I just think that I was blinded by the hope for a good DCEU and Wonder Woman movie that it's hard to really point out a lot of flaws.

But then there's the fact that you could watch this movie without watching Man of Steel, Batman v Superman, and Suicide Squad and be totally fine. I'm sure there are elements of this movie that might play into later films but for the most part it serves as a standalone Wonder Woman film that doesn't even really need to exist within a extended universe. The fact that it does is just a bonus but I honestly don't think this movie is going to have huge if any implications on the Justice League besides giving Diana a backstory.

I find it really interesting that despite a lot of people saying that we're sick of origin stories, out of the 3 superhero films I have really, really enjoyed the most within the last 2-3 years, this film, Logan, and Deadpool, two of those were origin stories.

That's not to say that origin stories should be the only superhero films we make now, if that were the case we wouldn't get films like The Avengers, Logan, and The Dark Knight.

But Wonder Woman is an example of giving momentum to a franchise without throwing everything comic book people love at the wall and hoping it sticks.

We've seen this happen twice with movies like The Amazing Spider-Man 2, Batman v Superman, and Suicide Squad. These movies want to throw as many recognizable characters are the audience, not really explain them at all and say, "I know you liked this character in the comics, well here they are!"

Wonder Woman is an example of a film that takes its time and just gives us a good story. I could count one reference to other films in the DCEU in this film. ONE! There wasn't even an after credits scene! This movie was focused on the here and now and it succeeded.

While I will need to watch the movie again without the initial awe I had blinding me to any real criticism, I will say that Wonder Woman is definitely a movie worth checking out and was able to yell "CLEAR", press the charge button, and bolt some life into the DC extended universe, something it badly, BADLY needed.

But what did you think of Wonder Woman? Was it a fluke? Is the DCEU still in trouble? Comment and Discuss below! You can also send me your thoughts on Twitter @cmhaugen24 as well as send me your requests for films I should review in the future. If you follow me on Twitter, you can get updates on future movie news and reviews coming out of this blog.

I'll leave you with this. One thing I forgot to mention is that Wonder Woman continues to have one of the most badass theme songs. And yeah, it's in this movie. Enjoy!