Just another dumb blockbuster

Rating: 4/10 (6 July 2017)

Wonder Woman (2017) was a very mediocre and over-hyped film. By all accounts not a terrible film, and it is somewhat of an improvement from other DC movies (for one thing the tone is actually very focused and appropriate), but it's really not good. First off, the movie is bland as hell. You've seen this before. A princess who wants to go and fight but her mother refuses to let her until the end of the first act when she lets her go just because. The first twenty minutes literally feels like a Disney princess movie (especially Moana) but incredibly rushed. After that it's mildly interesting with the whole WW1 aesthetic, but you can still predict every single story/character beat throughout the rest of the film. From a narrative perspective I have no issues with continuity and motivations (aside from some side characters and the villains being super simplistic), but there's a huge problem in the final act that I'll get to later. Now I could forgive that if everything else surrounding the film was great, which not much was. The best part of the movie was Chris Pine. I could relate to him, he was charming as hell, he had the best lines (and some not so great ones), and his chemistry with Gal Gadot was fantastic. He's easily the best written DCEU character. And also Gal Gadot was okay. She did a much better job here than in Batman v Superman (mainly since she had actual lines). But even though it's obvious that she's not the best actress, you can tell that she gave it her all and brought a fun, child-like innocence to her performance. And that's where the good performances stop, everyone else either over-acts like their in a cartoon *cough* the main villains *cough* or talks like they have a foot in their mouth. It was really distracting and even annoying. Not to mention that no other character is anywhere near as developed as the main two; everyone else is extremely flat and forgettable. Now this is a $100M summer blockbuster, so there are some things you'd assume would be good, like the CGi and other special effects. Not in this movie. The special effects in this movie are some of the worst I've seen in a long time. Nothing looks even close to real, and nothing looks stylized enough to be visually pleasing. There's even a scene where a young Wonder Woman jumps off a cliff and it has the worst green screen I've seen in years. This is the cheapest looking blockbuster I've seen since like Gods of Egypt. But hey, if the effects aren't good but the action and choreography are good then it doesn't matter. And the action in this movie is fine. The choreography is decent and it's not an eye sore like other movies, but every single action scene comprises of 75% slow-mo. Which I get what they were trying to do: make WW seem bigger than life and so her action scenes are supposed to be bigger than life and mesmerizing. In which it's cool at first, but Christ it gets old real quick. This all leads to the mess of a final act, which I'll give it this: it's not as bad as the other DCEU final acts. At the very least it's short. (SPOILERS) But Jesus it's still incredibly stupid and grossly overblown to the point where it ends like all the others: there's dust and lightning all-over the place while the hero(es) charges at the big bad and levels the entire area, BUT SOMEHOW ALL THE SIDE CHARACTERS ARE OKAY. Not to mention that the twist leading up to this is the one of the most insulting and frustrating out of a blockbuster I've ever seen. There's this general of the German forces that they show to be the big bad guy, and WW believes that he is Ares (the Greek god of war) and that killing him will end WW1. They build it up that she's naive about real-life war and human conflict, and that Chris Pine will have to tell her the truth. They get to the point where she kills the general but is confused as to why nobody has changed. Chris Pine then tells her that sometimes there is no bad guy; that humans are just flawed and some are just evil or will kill innocents without any sort of coercion. This is genius. Not only is it a great real-world message but it's also a great satire of superhero stories since it ends by revealing that the superhero didn't finish the job by killing one big bad guy and that they can't save everyone. Good thing that lasts about 5 minutes. Literally the next scene reveals that Ares does exist and it was this one guy who had like two lines in the first hour. And it turns out he does coerce people to do bad things. They tried to cover it up by saying that he "only gave them ideas to improve their battle tactics, they killed each other by their own conscience", but no, they already shot themselves in the foot with this twist. And then we get the terrible light show final battle and the movie ends.
In short; Gal Gadot and Chris Pine are the saving graces of a bland, stupid, ugly movie. Sadly one DCEU's best. 4/10.