A long overdue film

Rating: 8/10 (18 August 2017)

The DCEU is now 4 films deep and finally landed the first universally acclaimed entry. I liked all, the director's cut for BvS is even one of my favorite films (look up my review), yet WW comes "last" despite doing many thing rights. Let's start with the positives: Gal presented great potential for being a unique action actress in Fast 5 and Snyder showed pure genius in casting her. A more fitting actress for Wonder Woman might not exist! Chris Pine equally delivered the strongest performance of his career, despite being given a role that frequently leads to nothing in the comics. A lot of his charm comes due to his chemistry with Diana and I would make a case for him being the "real" hero of the story, due to his willingness to go above and beyond the call of duty and keeping a cool head throughout. His actions in the 3rd act especially put a key moment in BvS in a new perspective... The whole cast is very good, with Apache Chief and Etta Candy (literally the first time I like the character!) standing out but I will admit that Steve's band of agents could have used 1 member less. Let's go with the highly clichÃ©d sniper, not that I truly disliked him. Dr. Poison and the actual god form of Ares were great too but more about the way the film reaches him later.
The film is divided in 3 VERY different acts. The highly comic accurate first 40 minutes show Diana growing up on the hidden amazon island Themyscira. The way the film intermixes the 1987 Post Crisis comic reboot with the more violent New52 version is borderline perfect and i look forward to see the amazons again in JLA. The decision keep the Greek gods as actual gods is worthy of praise too, especially due to their universal recognition, but Suicide Squad and JLA also feature deities. I hope that a sequel can follow up on the mystical aspect of the film and Diana's heritage and form a connection to the New Gods in JLA. Not to derail into spoilers or complex comic canon. The 2nd act is a humorous fish out of water story, intermixed with social commentary and surface level insight into WW1 that is deep enough to work, without overtaxing an unfamiliar audience why the war was so complex. I suspect that this part of the film connected the most with audience but I like it the least. Much time is spend with Diana dressing up, attending war councils and setting up Steve's band of international men of mystery. Even the German side is shown a few times, to point out how bad the "enemy's" infantry has it. It also becomes easy to see why WW 1 was chosen over WW 2. It lacks true villains, while allowing the filmmakers to touch on the darker sides of war without going into bleak topics as concentration camps and how fascism swept Europe. Something The First Avenger completely sides-stepped by inventing a faceless enemy vaguely affiliated with the Nazis, to not offend international viewers. Sigh. This core portion of the film is undeniably an important step for the DCEU, as even I must admit that a truly lighthearted film needs to come sooner than later. We get glimpses of it here, yet i again found the 2nd act a bit unfocused. Especially if I consider how out of nowhere the 3rd act comes. This part is what seemingly connected least with audiences but it has the best scenes in the whole film, despite being a bit rough overall. I 100% get why the film handled the Ares reveal the way it did. The overall idea is clever but I don't think that the character of (the historic) Ludendorff was needed, not to go into spoilers. Dr. Poison should have been the single German villain, with proper glimpses of the actual God of War's machinations interspersed throughout the film to build him up, as he borderline comes out of nowhere. His proper confrontation with Diana and the fight are pure gold. Especially due to how dark the film is willing to go (WW sure kills a lot of poor grunts while going berserk). Imagine if Zod only showed up in the 3rd act of Man of Steel, with only talk about him before nearly the 2 hour mark. I love where the film ended up but the way there could have used a re-write, with a shorter 2nd act.
It's still quite an achievement that such a serious, and frankly child inappropriate, film near universally managed to connect with audiences. The 3rd act is as dark as BvS or TDK and the film resembles the somewhat divisive MoS more than it does Superman 78. The slightly anti-chronological structure, the muddy color pallet and the relentless action scenes quickly betray Zack Snyder's fingerprint, in the same way Christoper Nolan loomed larger over MoS. Director Patty Jenkins should get more control over the next film and I hope for a much different follow-up but this Snyder X Jenkins "cross-over" undeniably worked. The main reason for WW getting a better reception than MoS is likely due to fewer expectations from the audience, as her (often changing) comic characterization and canon are largely unknown to the public. The film is also easier to "digest" than previous DCEU films but I will note that the last WW feature, an animated movie from 2009, is neither better nor worse than this first cinematic solo outing. One of many more to come, so I look forward to Diana being the deuteragonist of JLA and the star if her solo franchise. I lastly recommend to rediscover her in the Ultimate Cut of BvS. The film may surprisingly grow on you on 2nd viewing.