In short: Wonder Woman (2017)

Given the way DC’s movie universe has developed, I wasn’t as hopeful concerning Wonder Woman as some parts of the internet were. It is wonderful to finally have a superhero movie concentrating on a woman, but a female-lead film can of course be just as terrible as one featuring a man. However, only a fool would think a movie’s automatically terrible because it features a woman.

The first twenty to thirty minutes of the film are certainly not promising. They are slow going, with reams of exposition broken up by short action sequences and then even more exposition, with a bunch of fine actresses having basically nothing of interest to do – poor, awesome Robin Wright could as well have been replaced by a computer animation, for all the film does with her. The worst about this: much of the exposition is absolutely pointless, going into needless detail about things the audience could easily learn on the go later on. Most of the important stuff could have been condensed into five minutes.

However, once exposition time is finally over – when the main characters arrive in London, to be precise – Wonder Woman transforms from something deeply mediocre in the typically over explaining way today’s Hollywood is so fond of into a fantastic film that will from now on hardly do anything wrong (apart from some way too naive and on the nose dialogue during the final fight that says out loud what the film already told us in other ways and the random design of the Big Bad). Gal Gadot turns out to be a wonder, not just looking the part but much more importantly projecting it right, not just wearing the costume but embodying what (this interpretation of) the character is actually about - arguably the most important thing for superhero cinema. Compare with Ben Affleck’s Batman who never feels like anything but an overpaid actor in a silly costume striking poses, and you’ll feel the difference. The film’s feminism hits the spot where it is consistently part of the film’s meaning but never feels preachy – this one’s not telling us, it’s showing us, which is always more convincing. In general, the film’s politics are an organic part of it, and indeed of the story it tells.

The action is a wonderful cross of old pulp/serial style high adventure and modern cinematic superhero action, comparable to the first Captain America movie (which I still hold to be absolutely fantastic, sorry Inga) in all the best ways.

Apart from mostly doing a bang-up job with the action sequences, director Patty Jenkins is also great at evoking a sense of place and time. Now, obviously, this is not meant to be a realistic depiction of the Great War but the film’s version of it seems like a place its characters belong in (you could argue Chris Pine’s character would probably have been a lot more sexist in the real world, but then, who wants to see a contemporary version of Wonder Woman going through that sort of shit for the sake of “realism”?) and not just a series of CGI creations.


It’s rather a great film.