Wonder Woman - An aspiring, relevant film that needs to be seen

Rating: 8/10 (3 June 2017)

The DCEU has been a difficult film franchise for me to get invested. Man of Steel I actually enjoyed as a standalone film despite having flaws. However BVS suffered from missing the point of having two superheroes fight each other and then Suicide Squid becoming a disappointment in every possible way. Wonder Woman is for the first time a DC film since the Dark Knight I can talk more about it's strength then its faults.
Unlike these past two DCEU films, Wonder Woman doesn't have a plot that is unnecessarily complex but is still able to show the physical, political and emotional blockades that stand in the way of Diana's simple goal of killing Ares, the god of war. The film starts as this beautiful fantasy epic where we see Diana grow up on her island home Themyscira and once Steve Trevor arrives it makes a natural transition into this gritty war story. While the dark aspect of the WW1 setting isn't sugarcoated, it is well balanced with strong light-hearted moments. The movie's story never tries to be just black and white and shows through Diana's perspective, a warrior woman who lived a sheltered life and believes a supernatural force is behind the war, that humans are complex beings who are capable of doing both the worst and best deeds by their own intentions.
What truly is outstanding is the majority of the main cast. In BVS, Gal Gadot didn't blow me away as much as a lot of other people did because of how small and forced in her role was but that has changed now. Gadot has proved she is Wonder Woman. It is now impossible for me to seen this character being played by another actress. While there were a few lines where she struggled with her acting, Gadot overall brings a very emotionally strong and charming performance. The way she expresses can say so much about her character's mentality without having to say one word. Her performance shows that Diana is a woman who is confident enough to not be swayed by a man's advances nor undermined by orders but she still shows this innocent curiosity about the outside world. Chris Pine also was surprisingly great in a supporting role. In the beginning I almost thought he was going to be playing Captain Kirk again but he showed a lot more complexity then I was expecting. The squad of side characters played by Ewen Bremner, SaÃ¯d Taghmaoui and Eugene Brave Rock offered some fun banter while the film does give some time to understand their own reasons for the fighting in the war. Connie Nielson and Robin Wright as Diana's mother and aunt worked well to show the two parental figures that defined Diana's upbringing. I will say however I felt like there should have been more Robin Wright in this movie.
The real hero however is director Patty Jenkins. As someone who recently watched her previous feature film Monster which came out 14 years ago, it is shocking to me that it has taken this long for her to get a directing gig like this. Jenkins shoots action like it is a beautiful piece of artwork. Just like Zack Snyder, she shoots slow-motion sequences but they never feel like they are being overused or just trying to look cool. The scenes feel like a Greek painting coming to life from the first action sequence on the beaches of Themyscira to the moment Diana enters the battlefield on No Man's Land. But Jenkins never gets lost in the action. She knows that this is Wonder Woman's origin so she puts the perfect amount of time and effort to build up Diana's growth as a character. And this helps to make the romance with Steve Trevor feel natural instead of being obligatory. When they meet it's not love as first sight but they eventually connect through their belief and faith in humanity. When there is no action, she uses light humor to explore how these characters function with one another and doesn't just play it for laughs to defuse the tension.
The one major flaw from previous superhero movies that Wonder Woman does not surpass is the group of uninteresting villains. Danny Huston as the German general Ludindorf was nothing more then DC's attempt at making a carbon-copy version of Red Skull. It is especially the case when he gets super- human strength to fight Wonder Woman. And here is when I am about to go into spoilers. David Thewlis is a great actor and gives a good performance as the peace negotiator Sir Patrick Morgan but his reveal as the war god Ares comes to no surprise and I felt that more could have been done to explore that side of his character. It is particular disappointing when it doesn't match up to his other villain role in Fargo season 3. And the fight between him and Diana in the end felt detached from the first two major grounded and practical battles I described previously when it got a little too fantastical and cg-heavy. Luckily the final battle can be forgiven because it becomes motivated by Diana's evolution as a character.
Other then boring villains and a cg boss fight, Wonder Woman is pretty much a near flawless film. While it doesn't top the Dark Knight or this year's Logan, Wonder Woman is an aspiring film that can leave with you a lot of relevant and good things to talk about after seeing it.