DC has been treading water for years, after the release of Man of Steel in 2013 (a film that I had very little time for) it took another three years for the Warner Brothers production studios to produce two team movies Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice and Suicide Squad in the moulds of The Avengers and The Guardians of the Galaxy. Each were so colossally awful that they shone a light on the aspects of their inspirations that made them work despite the broadness of their appeal. Wonder Woman was a minor addition to the testosterone fuelled punch-up of BvS but despite the character being portrayed as competent her characterisation was paper-thin. The promised Wonder Woman movie had many fans placed somewhere on the expectation scale between “indifferent” and “it is a shame the first contemporary, big-budget female superhero movie will be such a mess.”
Wonder Woman is not a staggering film but it is solid. Trained to be a warrior on a mysterious, ever-blue Amazonian island, young Diana saves an American World War I soldier from drowning when he crashes nearby. The two set off, allies of convenience, to prevent a destructive end to the War. Steve Trevor, played by Chris Pine, seeks to return a miraculously undamaged journal to his superiors which outlines plans for a dangerous new chemical weapon, and Diana, naive to the realities of the world aims to assassinate Ares, God of War. The two make a compelling double act as world-weary Steve is bewildered and charmed by Diana’s (justified) belief in good and evil, mythology and the tales her mother told her as a child.
Wonder Woman wears its influences on its wrist-guards taking a welcome break from the Dark Knight style of superhero storytelling which has been prevalent thus far in the DC Cinematic Universe and draws more on the early offerings of Marvel. The island paradise of the Amazonians is Greek in design and its white walls and multi-teired metropolis recall the majestic city Minas Tirith from The Lord of the Rings trilogy. As the council of Amazonian women talk of “the realms of men” they not only lean on the feminist - “girl-power” themes of the film (which mercifully are not over-egged as I’m sure they would have been if a man, like, Joss Whedon, had been in the director’s chair) but they recall discussions between the likes of Elrond and Gandalf in Fellowship. It’s a better Hollywood fantasy for the film to connect itself to than say, for example the Percy Jackson films which similarly pilfer from Greek mythology. The film also recalls the original Captain America and Thor movies mixing together the historical setting of First Avenger with the fish-out-of-water comedy in Thor. I’d say that as a period drama it surpasses First Avenger, taking the violence and terror of war more seriously than the cartoony Captain America. The gags do, however, fall short of the pithy brilliance of Thor (“Another!”).
The action in the film is probably the aspect which links most to the rest of the DC cinematic universe. The color palette is heavily muted and the editors have taken great delight in recreating the Zack Snyder slow-speed-up-moments. These can be rather invigorating when combined with the Junky XL Wonder Woman guitar-shred. For the most part however, even though the fighting style of the Amazonians is imaginative and distinct, the action scenes are the bits to doze through before the charming scenes of character interplay come back. One does wonder, during a viewing, whether there is a cut of the film where the full brutality of the violence was actually brought to screen. Despite sound being designed to fully enforce the impact of every punch and fall the mise-en-scene remains entirely bloodless, in spite of a man being mercilessly impaled by a sword at one point.
Overall, Wonder Woman does the job well. It’s quite nice to return to the days when an origins movie could just be a simple, entertaining affair without all of these cross-over characters to contend with. The history is imaginative, the fantasy feels historical and the adventure, like the characters, is good-old comic book fun. Lets not bother with The Justice League, shall we? Lets see more Dianna Prince adventuring her way through history instead.
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