Review 412: Wonder Woman

 

I'm not the person to review this film. Maybe you'll enjoy Wonder Woman's feminist fantasy. Perhaps you will enjoy a review that endorses this films status as female led sueperhero film. Or maybe, you'll enjoy a review from someone who disqualifies himself at the outset, doesn't care much for the characters and has seen this type of superhero film before and done so much better.

 

Before she was Wonder Woman, she was Diana (Gal Gadot), princess of the Amazons, trained to be an unconquerable warrior. Raised on the hidden Island of Themyscira, Diana meets American pilot Steve Trevor (Chris Pine) who tells her about the massive conflict that is World War I which rages in the outside world. Convinced that the Olympian God Ares (David Thewlis) is behind the war and that she can stop it, Diana, against her mother, Queen Hoppolyta’s (Connie Nielsen) wishes, leaves Themyscira for the first time in centuries. Fighting alongside men in a war to end all wars, she finally discovers her full powers and her true destiny.

The plot is weird mishmash of plot point and tones that just don’t go together harnessed to a ludicrous and at times clichéd screenplay. The film is divided into three acts, the first takes place on Themyscira and showcases Diana's upbringing and training before the second and third shift to WWI.

The first act feels very immersed in Greek Mythology and historical fantasy but when Diana & Steve leave Themyscira, it turns into a by-the-numbers WWI film, one that never really attempts to explore the war as anything other than the setting. It serves as an asthetic and that's it.
They're like two pieces of a puzzle that just don't go together and these two elements clash.

Prior to Wonder Woman, it seemed that for a DC superhero film to be successful, it had to have the Batman or Superman brands attached to it. It just seems odd and coincidental that a film based on DC's most famous Superheroine is getting praise waxed on it by critics after a string of critical flops.

Then the film turns really goofy in the third act, with a villain reveal that’s both arbitrary and predictable and just left me feeling underwhelmed and empty. 
It feels as though this film has no idea what it wants to be or how to tell its story.

Wonder Woman being present in the male dominated WWI shows some promise but receives ziltch pay-off, it's quickly dealt with in a quick scene featuring Diana in Warroom and it all but vanishes from the film - how Wonder Woman impacts the people of the time - especially considering the role of women during that period is never addressed. The way it's handled is so routine and ends up feeling so empty.
Finally, the majority of the changes director Patty Jenkin's and the writers made to the original Wonder Woman origin story makes the films story overly simplistic and lacking in coherence.

The narrative never questions or challenges the Amazons isolationist ways, even when Diana insists that they leave and help end the war, Hoppolyta remains steadfast to their way of life even after Steve reveals the terrible things that are happening.

 

Overall, the film is clueless, tonally; There are times where this film is actually rather funny where Diana is a fish-out-of-water (even if it rips-off Thor), although I have to say that I did start rolling my eyes at some sex jokes earlier in the film. But then there are times when it want you take stuff like this Godkiller storyline and the desolation and bleakness of WWI and you can't because you're constantly distracted by lunacy of that storyline and because of that it just makes the film really uneven.
I can only assume the WW I setting is a homage to the WW II origins of the character when she was created by William Moutan Marston in 1941.

Ultimately Wonder Woman boils down to a lame, cliched "Chosen One" narrative. Writing like this is unimaginative and it's clear this wasn't thought through at all. The film's “child conceived by a god and born of a woman who’s promised to bring peace to the world" storyline is a tired trope , becomes so hokey, clichéd, ludicrous and nonsensical that it’s just not plausible.

Director Patty Jenkins' direction is astoundingly uninspired with her overuse of slow-mo in the action scenes to the point where it had me rolling my eyes and overall never bringing the films three acts (each having their own distinct tone and feeling like they're from three different movies) together in a cohesive way with a natural flow.

  the score by Rupert Gregson-Williams is merely passable, the special effects are amazingly, unconvincingly cartoonish.

 
Even the action scenes in this film are cartoonish, generic, unimaginative and ultimately quite dull. This is mainly due to the fact that the majority of the people Diana is fighting are Nazis and (unlike Hydra/Nazi soldiers with super-powered weapons) they never seem to pose much of a threat or challenge to her because she's an Amazon with super strength.

I actually found myself rolling my eyes and unable to enjoy and admire the spectacle or lack-thereof that was on screen. The fight scene choreography is astonishingly awkward, there's no grace, there's no visceral grit to them.

The slow-mo in this film somehow feels dull, lifeless, amateurish & emotionally detached from the audience. How does Jenkin's do that? It's like a DeLorean of mediocrity - it's nigh on impossible to tell wether a slow-mo sequence lasts for two minutes or two hours. 

Artistically this film looks fine. The production and costume departments did a nice job of bringing Themyscira & WW I to life
Themyscira in Wonder Woman just looks sort of nice but nothing truly stands out. When you actually look at it, there’s  nothing outlandish about the production and costume design of Wonder Woman. 

But if you actually look at it, it's not that outlandish. It's not dramatic, there no big spoilers sprouting out of it, there are no rotating guns, there aren't even any space thrusters there's not style for styles sake here.

It's also rather baffling that for a film that features an island isolated from the rest of the world, it has so little to say about Themyscira's Isolationist ways. It's introduced in the first act then is completely dropped from the second and third acts with practically no resolution.
  

The acting ranges from passable to poor; I can’t help but feel every single actor in this film was chosen at random or on a dare.

Compared to her debut in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, Gal Gadot gives a very lacklustre, bland performance.
Diana is someone who had lived a very sheltered life on Themyscira and has dreamed of leaving and exploring "Mans World" and therefore she's completely unprepared for what it has to offer when she finally gets her wish. The film places as lot of emphasis on showcasing her idealism and blind confidence  Unfortunately, her blind optimism came across as preachy and sanctimonious.

She thinks that because she's an Amazon, she can end the war through "the Power of Love" and make everything alright just like that. Over the course of the film she learns that humans are imperfect and that she can only   This arc is as basic and cliched as it sounds.  

Despite attempting to portray the character as someone with a lot of emotional intelligence and having loads of kindness, compassion and empthay, Gadot is so flat and charisma-free in the role that you get no sense of depth from the character.

As Steve Trevor, Chris Pine is passable even though he’s essentially playing an alternative version of James T. Kirk from the rebooted Star Trek films. It's the same character that Pine often plays, this cocky, courageous, Han Solo/James T. Kirk type character! Need I say more?

Regrettably Connie Nielsen & Robin Wright don't get a lot of screentime as Queen Hippolyta & General Antiope? After being featured prominatly in the first half set on Themyscira, they disappear from the rest of the film with little fanfare.

As depicted in a beautifully animated flashback, the Amazons were initially enslaved; Hippolyta became their queen when she led an uprising, freeing her people.

Yet after years of slavery, Hippolyta had no desire to take her people back into the outside world and no desire to train Diana either. She knows Zeus' goal and she's doing everything she can to prevent it.

She desire to defeat Ares; her only desire was to live in peace. Her isolationist views make her complicit in the evil that had swept the world of man.

Much like Gadot, Nielsen too lacked the presence, conviction and authority. The writers had an opportunity to craft a strong leader with a regal presence but instead she comes over as an overly-protective nagging pest.

As for Wright as Antiope, Wright essentially plays Claire Underwood on steroids acting

 

The Amazons have these really bizarre accents that I just found hard pin the origin of down and it became really distracting as a result. And don’t tell me it’s a Greek accent because I have been to Greece and I happen to know that their accents aren't Greek! It also sounds extremely pretentious. It sounds like the people who made this film reversed engineered Gal Gadot's Israeli accent or the Dornish accent from Game of Thrones and it just comes across as pretentious, bizarre and distracting punctured by cliched, listless lines of dialogue.

During their adventures, throughout Germany to prevent General Ludendorff diabolical schemes, Diana and Steve are joined by this trio of allies that Steve puts together including Charlie (Ewen Bremner) a heavy drinking sharpshooter suffering from PTSD, Sameer (Said Taghmaoui) a French Moroccan spy, master of disguise and an aspiring actor and Cheif Napi a Blackfoot Native American Smuggler who trades with both sides of the war and knows how to get people across the front lines.
They bear an unhealthy resemblance to the Howling Comandos from Captain America: The First Avenger and they're about as stock as you can get, we just know from the films setting and how Di shows up in Batman v Superman in modern day that they're not likely to last beyond this one film so their is no need to develop them beyond their defining characters traits.
  

The best character and actor in this film is quite possibly and surprisingly Lucy Davis as Steve Trevor’s trusty secretary Etta Candy, who’s actually pretty funny. She was nowhere near as annoying as I thought she was going to be and proved to be an excellent source of comic relief. Unfortunately 

this reasonable characterisation is undermined by how limited her role is compared to the comics where she played the part of Wonder Woman's sidekick and best friend.

Sadly the weakest link in the casting is the villains, the film casts David Thewlis, Danny Huston & Elena Anya (all very competent actors) as a trio of villains but ultimately wastes their talents on thinly crafted villains who are so boring and one-dimentional they boarder on being Bad Saturday Morning Cartoon villains. 

 

David Thewlis in particular feels particularly miscast and out-of-place as Ares.
His performance was truly bad and by that I mean cheesy, hammy, over-the-top and not at all menacing or intimidating in any way possible. There's just no dimension to him. The most that can be said about him is that when you boil down to it he's essentially an amalgamation of the MCU villains, Loki, Thanos & Red Skull - and they're far superior villains in general by the way.
And I'm sorry but with a comic book villain as iconic, powerful and imposing as Ares, you need an actor with a more commanding presence and David Thewlis just doesn't fit the bill.
Also according to the comics and the movie, Wonder Woman and Ares are supposed to be Half siblings, an intriguing concept that goes pretty much, inexcusably underdeveloped.

Danny Huston is mostly settled with the thankless task of playing the stereotypical German villain - That's it.

And the lovely Elena Anya is sadled with  Dcotor Poison goes shockingly underdeveloped, never really going beyond the point of the villains stereotypical brainy sidekick - That's It!  

I’m not seeing what’s so especially “Wonder”ful about Wonder Woman, 2/5.

The Anonymous Critic