Surprisingly good, character drama

Rating: 7/10 (17 July 2016)

Snyder has a history of violence in his movies. Despite the PG rating, this movie is not suitable for younger children (pre teen) because the violence is extreme for a PG movie. I regret letting my 10 yr old watch this. Story line was confusing in some parts and I was left feeling like there was some comic history I missed. One scene played early in the movie where I was left wondering who the villains were, as an example. Most of the story was excellent. Motives of lead characters made sense. The depth shown to the heroes was great, except Wonder Woman as she went from elusive and obnoxious to reasonable as the movie progressed, most probably as she was a secondary character being set up to be a principal character. Acting was solid, mostly. Aflek stole the show. Amy Adams was solid, as was Gal Gadot, despite one or two unnecessary "girl power" lines to please simple minded and sexist audience members. Henry Cavill was good but not great, let down by weak dialog. Jesse Eisenberg took a risk that I respected, but, it was a bit too unhinged for someone so successful - a Steve Jobs clone may have worked better here. The final fight was most probably the weakest bit of the film. It didn't match the rest of the quality of the movie. The final fight had some laughable elements, eg, superman and batman were being hit and sent hundreds of metres, but Wonder Woman was able to stand her ground against a formidable foe almost constantly. I'm used to this sexism in Hollywood today, but, it stood out as one of the few really stupid aspects of the movie, just to please simple minded sexist people. Despite being long, the story was well paced and didn't bore me. I can't say the same for The Avengers. I really disliked many of The Avengers characters for their arrogance, which made the Avengers film drag. Overall, an excellent film, let down by a few missteps. I'm expecting the sequel to be far more sexist and to up the arrogance of the main characters to be more like The Avengers, we'll wait and see.