Exceeding Expectations, but not Perfect

Rating: 7/10 (9 June 2017)

With the last DC film to come out being Suicide Squad, there was good reason to be concerned about Wonder Woman. Even after the initial wave of positive reviews for it started coming in I was extremely skeptical. With DC having been in a slump of critically unpopular movies and with superhero movie fatigue on the rise, I really thought there was almost no possible way this would be good or be received well. For the most part, I was wrong. That being said, it is by no means perfect. The fact that this movie is being lauded by many critics as some kind of masterpiece is strange. I was reasonably satisfied overall, but let's not get carried away.
First, the good news: The overall premise of Wonder Woman helping to bring about an end to WWI by finding and battling the god of war Ares, is a perfectly straightforward and compelling superhero plot. The characters mostly work well, even if some of the side characters that accompany her later on feel a bit pointless and underused. Tonally this is also substantially lighter fare than the other recent DC films, which are all pretty heavy and dark and grim.
Initially, I doubted Gal Gadot could pull off carrying an entire movie, but once again, I was (mostly) wrong. She embodies the role to the point where she is probably the best part of the movie and carries it with surprising competence. Part of my skepticism came from the fact that she is/was a model whose previous forays into the world of acting have more or less been as eye candy in the mind-numbing Fast and Furious franchise.
Thankfully, her model looks are not used as a cheap device to hijack the movie into the realm of fan service. That said, her looks do help her to believably pull off a character that is essentially a goddess. Her character is also very clearly a warrior, yet she still mostly plays the character as feminine, not as a male proxy. She also plays the character with an innocent earnestness that, along with her looks, help her to stand out like a beacon in the drab, dreary, and miserable setting of WWI era Europe. And even though she may not have the acting chops of a top tier actress (and it shows in a few scenes), her being cast here fits well enough that I would have a hard time seeing anyone else in the role now. Strong casting usually trumps raw acting experience.
Some of the scenes she is in with Chris Pine's character, who she has an appropriately awkward chemistry with, were allowed to be improvised, which sometimes leads to some very clunky interactions. It kind of works with the naiveté of the character, but perhaps a more clever scripted sequence could accomplish the same thing better. I also wasn't a fan of the early sequences of the movie where Diana is growing up and receiving lots of exposition about her homeland and history. It's a beautiful setting and it sets up the rationale for her leaving, but it drags on and the other characters there are mostly uninteresting. Once she leaves, the plot picks up, with a few rocky patches here and there.
The usage of slow motion during action sequences all the way until the ending is excessive, but not to the point where it's overly obnoxious. My thoughts on the ending and the accompanying battle are mixed. It works as a flashy and climactic way to resolve her motivations for entering the war, but it almost becomes a completely different movie at that point. I think this could've been executed differently so it didn't feel as out of place.
One other problem which personally bothers me the most is the body count. Superman, Batman, and now even Wonder Woman all kill tons of people (Marvel is occasionally guilty of this as well). With Wonder Woman it feels especially wrong, since not only is she against the idea of war to begin with, but the German soldiers she is so easily crushing with her incredible strength are to her merely innocent men being manipulated by Ares. Yes, this is a war, but at no point is subdual or allowing surrender even considered after demonstrating her immense power. I understand that an action movie needs action, but action doesn't need to mean killing everybody. The early fight on the beaches of her homeland is also strange, with both sides just immediately deciding to kill the other despite having no idea who they even are. If you were a WWI era German soldier who accidentally sailed up to an unknown island and saw a bunch of women riding horses on the beach wearing ancient Greek looking armor, would you immediately open fire on them? It just doesn't make much sense.
All in all, it's a good movie made better by the fact that it exceeded expectations, but I wouldn't overdo it with the praise. Let's hope DC movies can stay at this level or improve, and maybe Gal Gadot can counterbalance that dark pessimism in the DCEU with some refreshing hopeful optimism.