A Great Surprise from Struggling DC

Rating: 8/10 (25 January 2018)

Given how disastrous things had been going for DC prior to this film's release, with abysmal films such as Batman V Superman and Suicide Squad, expectations here were rock bottom. Imagine the surprise when the critics began raving over this one. I can honestly say this was one of the best surprises of 2017 in movies. While in the previous films Superman was turned into an emo and Batman into a murderer, Wonder Woman is exactly what we'd like out of a movie hero; determined, powerful, but always still learning. Gal Gadot's performance was great, establishing herself as one of the breakthrough stars of the year. The other performances by Robin Wright and Chris Pine were pretty good as well. One of the most surprising things was how it managed to be dark without going overboard. It's darker than most comic book movies, dealing with things like mass murder of civilians, but it doesn't try too hard like BvS did. Now, there are some downsides. If you know your comic book movies, you'll see that the climax and ending were ripped straight out of Captain America: First Avenger. They are essentially the same scenes. While Ares is definitely an improvement over Eisenberg's Luthor and Leto's Joker, DC still hasn't gotten the villains down yet. The idea behind him is cool, but the way he acts toward Wonder Woman is quite similar to how Joker acted toward Batman in The Dark Knight. Still, this is by far the best DCEU film so far, and one of the most surprising movies of the year. It also set plenty of records for women in filmmaking, including highest grossing movie directed by a woman. That's especially good because the more records that get taken away from 50 Shades of Gray, the better. In all seriousness, this was a massive step in the right direction for DC, and one of the best comic book movies in recent years.