A Great Movie That Makes A Fatal Mistake.

Rating: 8/10 (18 June 2017)

DC's movies have not been great. I'd even go so far as to say they haven't been good. Fortunately for Warner Brothers, Wonder Woman is far better than their latest crop of movies and actually rivals the recent clutch of Marvel films. For once, DC didn't screw this up.
Gal Godot is Wonder Woman as Margot Robbie was Harley Quinn. I am hard pressed to think of any actress that could do the role better. But unlike Suicide Squad, the writing wasn't an abomination of cringe worthy dialogue and very short sighted plot development. There are moments of cringe, I'll get to that later, but by and large the movie is simple in focus and coherent in practice. She has a single goal, defeat Ares and end WWI, and a character of someone would understand and somewhat expect from someone of her up bringing. She was raised as royalty on a secluded island, put through extreme training far exceeding her peers, and had been constantly fed the same story. When she grows up and is exposed to the world at large, she is headstrong, a little stupid, but strong enough to brute force her way through any situation. She charges into no man's land without a second thought, tries to assassinate a German general in the middle of a gala surrounded by soldiers, and is so dead set on killing Ares that she is easily fooled into suspecting the wrong man to be him. And she does all this because she doesn't know any better. On all accounts she is her own worst enemy, she knows the pointy end of a sword from the not the pointy end in a time where bolt action rifles have replaced swords, but like a good baby face she still muscles up the fortitude to persevere.
The effects are good with a couple exceptions here and there but they are a little overused. Seeing her block bullets is cosmetically pleasing, they use slowdown well so that you can see the bullet pancake, the first few times. Then they keep doing it. Again and again, just enough to kill the impact of the effect but not enough to frustrate the audience. They merely get numb to it. Still, the no man's land scene was very well done, with tracer bullets exploding against her shield and slapping a mortar out of the air. There are times where the CGI is terrible however and they usually involve hitting guns. They crumple under her fist in a way that looks like a cinematic from a PS2 game. You know they aren't real things in the environment.
As I said, there are a few gaffes here and there. When the Germans try to capture Steve Trevor, you can see gun boats in the distance but they didn't play any role in the battle with the Amazons. You'd think they'd at least try to bombard the island after learning the inhabitants are hostile, or at least clear the cliffs so their ground troops could land safely. Mustard gas has no effect on Diana, she charges in to find an entire town dead and while Trevor can't get near the cloud, she walks out as right as rain. Furthermore, the movie takes place at the closing of the war but mustard gas has not been used yet nor is it ever used on enemy soldiers. They even ignore the fatal flaw of such a weapon, the threat of the wind blowing it back at your own troops. Theoretically, the Hitler in their universe would be even worse than the Hitler of ours. Not witnessing the horrible effects of poison gas first hand, he would not have detested such a weapon so much not to use it on the front lines. But these are relatively minor gripes, and they don't really mount to much.
The one terrible thing about this movie I can ascribe, it failed to live up to its purpose. This movie was a set up for the upcoming Justice League movie. I don't want to see the Justice League movie, I want Wonder Woman 2. This movie out hyped the headliner which can be bad news for WB. That being said, while I want a sequel, I know it cannot live up to the expectations of this one. And that is because of the choice of villain, Ares. There is no one in her villain menagerie that can follow him. She went from zero to the second coming of Jesus and smite the devil in one movie. I'm not saying Blue Snowman should have got top billing but had they started with a major villain like Barrenness Paula von Gunther, they could have built for him to star in a sequel or even a third movie. After this, who is going to believe a regular human NAZI is going to pose any threat to a killer of gods? No one, because WB wanted to churn a quick set up for a movie that already looks like a dumpster fire. All this universe garbage killed any chance of a good sequel.