‘Wonder Woman’ Review: A More Traditional (And Very Good) DC Superhero Movie
By Karen Han/June 2, 2017 7:00 am EST
As two of the more diabolical figures involved in the war, General Ludendorff (Danny Huston) and Dr. Maru (Elena Anaya) are just villainous and hammy enough to make it clear that the movie is following a more traditional template than its predecessors in the DC extended universe. It feels like a classic in how simple and well meaning it is (at least for the large part), and it’s best when it plays to that strength.
Accordingly, the movie is weakest when it allows itself to start becoming something else. Much as Diana is pushed and pulled in different directions by men who think they know better from the moment she steps onto London soil, the movie feels like it’s been pushed and pulled in terms of creative direction. There are parts that resemble the other DC movies (the final act devolves into the worst kind of CGI mess that the franchise has to offer; the CGI is uniformly not great but is easier to ignore earlier in the film when it’s not being used for the obligatory climactic battle), and there are parts that feel like they’re being pushed to copy Marvel (specifically some of the more boilerplate “superhero” beats). It’s concerning given that the DC extended universe has shown itself to excel when it embraces the unique. The first two acts of Man of Steel were beautiful as a story simply about a person finding their place in the world, and for whatever flaws it had, Batman v Superman had ambition on a scale that would just as well have suited a biblical epic.
Wonder Woman is smaller in scale (it’d be hard not to be) but the issues that it brings up are more potent than anything that’s really been tackled in the superhero genre thus far. As if in accordance, there are beats that are touched upon very lightly by various members of Trevor’s crew. Sameer (Saïd Taghmaoui) mentions that he’d longed to be an actor, but was the wrong color for it. Chief (Eugene Brave Rock) refers briefly to the fraught nature of American history, noting that it was people like Steve Trevor who drove the Native Americans out of their homes and from their lands. Neither of these points reaches any real resolution as the story wraps up a little too neatly to be entirely palatable, but they’re still notable for having been brought up in the first place.
Similarly, Wonder Woman deserves credit as a movie that sheds some of the worst of its genre’s conventions, with its charms outweighing its flaws by virtue of a cast that’s pitch-perfect and a director who knows how to shoot women who know how to fight. Certainly, the illusion fades at times, but that’s a small price to pay for a vision that’s otherwise so lovely to behold.
/Film Rating: 7 out of 10
