I loved Wonder Woman, and as importantly, so did Maria. This is not only a terrific superhero movie, it’s also a terrific movie.
It is the first superhero studio movie to be directed by a woman, Patty Jenkins, and her particular sensibility shines through from the very opening, even in a movie stuffed with the usual endless battles and explosions and bloodbaths.
This superhero is a proud, moral and very strong force.
Almost everyone in the film is dwarfed by her (by her acting and also by the depth of the character she plays.) She sets out bravely and at great risk to save humanity, and is far more ethical and worthy than any of the human beings she encounters, battles, or saves.
To me, Superman was like white bread, a total goody-goody but bland and uninspiring. Diana is all good, admirable, complex and deep.
Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot) is the only superhero story to spring directly from Greek Myth.
In the beginning, the movie goes back in time to Themyscira, the legendary island of the Amazons.
Diana, descended from Zeus, is the daughter of the Amazon Queen Hippolyta (Connie Nielsen), and begs to be trained in combat by her aunt, General Antiope (Robin Wright) over her mother’s strong objections. Even as a small child, Diana was drawn to her destiny while knowing little about her history.
Diana knows nothing of men or life in the outside world, their beautiful island, occupied by a powerful community of warriors, is protected by thick fog and a mystical force field. Out of the sky falls USAF Captain Steve Trevor (Chris Pine), piloting a burning German fighter plane he stole in a spying mission.
After a fierce battle between the Amazons and some German soldiers pursuing Trevor, Diana decides to leave the paradise of the Amazons and join him in the effort to stop the war and keep the Germans from developing fearsome new weapons that would kill millions.
The scenes on Themyscira are the most beautiful and haunting in the movie, the Amazons are fierce but also loving, a powerful community.
I think the movie was great.
I had some nits, of course. Pine was a strong co-lead, but the bad guy Germans and demented scientists seemed weak and out of focus to me. So did the sidekicks who joined Diana and the Captain in their effort to stop the Germans and end the war ( the movie is set in World War I). The primary villain and the evil scientists just didn’t do it for me.
It almost seemed as if the men in the movie shrank in Diana’s presence, she was so strong and compelling. That might not have been an accident, of course.
The movie is too long at two hours and 20 minutes, and the final battle scene was both too long and too loud, with a dozen false endings. I was getting dizzy and sore.
The film also speaks to the complexity of being a modern woman, and the ways in which women are always portrayed. Diana and the Amazons are drop-dead gorgeous, they all looked like…well, movie stars. Couldn’t one of them have a normal body, I wondered? Even this movie about powerful woman directed by a brilliant female director could not find a way around the unyielding Hollywood stereotype of women and what their bodies must look like.
The film is ultimately a movie about humanity, and it never loses that focus.
Jenkins chose to develop character over combat, although there is plenty of the latter. I thought it was odd for the first female-dominated superhero movie to end with a preachy short speech about the power of love when our hero had just left thousands of bodies bodies scattered and body-dropped all across the battlefields of Belgium.
Diana never loses her moral compass, even when given the opportunity for easy revenge. She is fiercely competent, yet at the same time an innocent.
I think it’s patronizing and tired now to judge movies only by how strong their female characters are. Even Disney gets it these days.
What is special about this film is the depth of Diana’s character, her resolve in the face of the usual bumbling and morally weak men around her and her ability to project decency even as she draws upon great reservoirs of strength and courage.
In an age of greed and dissembling and gutless politicians and their rationalizing – we can’t even agree on what truth is any longer – Wonder Woman never wavered, she never wobbled away from her convincing moral code. That was inspiring to me.
No man in the movie came close to her character or clarity, but at the same time Director Jenkins never forget that these movies, even with all of their endless chases and explosions and karate movies, are supposed to be fun.
This movie is fun.
And while I couldn’t begin to count the dead bodies in the film, Jenkins also mastered the Star Wars genius for presenting violence without much detail or graphic bloodshed. The movie is fine for young children.
I recommend it highly, and Maria loved it as well. This Diana is literally a goddess, and as such, she towered over all of the people she encountered, not only in terms of her superpowers – there were many beautiful scenes of bullets ricocheting off of her shield, but because of her unshakeable faith in good. She was the most convincing superhero I have yet seen.
Even though almost all of the human beings she met disappointed her, she never gave up on them, or on her duty to save them from themselves. I can’t wait for this sequel.