Sunday, May 27, 2018

Wonder Woman (2017)

Introduction:

It was inevitable that I would watch Wonder Woman. It has Amazons in it. How am I supposed to resist that? Well you also have the fact that the character has always been around since I was a kid. I used to watch Challenge of the Super Friends a lot. But I got the feeling from the trailer that this movie would be a lot less silly and lot less 70s.

Summary:

On the hidden isle of Themyscira Amazons from ancient Greece are still alive and doing well, thank you very much. Their queen Hippolyta (Connie Nielsen) tries to convince her spitfire of a daughter Diana (Gal Gadot) that she doesn’t need to be trained as a warrior. Even though the Amazons have been created by Zeus to battle Ares, the Gods were all destroyed many centuries ago.

Unfortunately it looks like Ares is also alive and doing well, thank you very much. Currently he has The Great War blazing across Europe and threatening to engulf the entire world. An American spy Steve Trevor (Chris Pine) brings this news to the Amazons after he crashes on their island in his biplane. It doesn’t take long for Diana to grab her Lasso of Truth, her sword and shield and join forces with Trevor to find Ares. She suspects the ancient god is somewhere in the thick of the war, and will stop at nothing to destroy him. But this Wonder Womanis going to find that the world is deadlier than she even imagined. Robin Wright, Danny Huston and David Thewlis round out the cast.

Good Points: 
  • The cast does a great job bringing these characters to life
  • Some excellent visuals and action scenes keep things interesting
  • The movie moves at a good pace, balancing well between action and drama 

Bad Points:
  • The story is pretty familiar, super hero origin stories are a dime a dozen
  • The bookend scenes tying this movie to the Justice Leaguefeel unnecessary
  • The final battle against the big bad is by the numbers and fairly uninteresting

Overall:

Yeah the movie got its share of hype when it came out, so it is hard to not to come at it with high expectations. What you get is a solid superhero origin story that doesn’t break new ground, but is well put together and paced. The engagement of the cast and the handling of most of the action scenes make the film work. Not quite a wonder, but still a fun time.

Scores(out of 5)
Visuals: 4
Sound: 4
Acting:  4
Script:  3
Music: 3
Direction: 4
Entertainment: 4
Total:  4

Curious about a full review, sent me an email and I’ll make additional thoughts to this review.

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4 comments:

  1. There are quite a lot of plot elements retained from the original 1941 and 1942 comics including the underlying conflict with Ares. Of course the movie is reset to WW1, presumably because that is a morally ambiguous conflict: Diana’s only reason to cooperate in a limited way with Allied troops is her suspicion that Ludendorff is Ares. I liked the film, too.

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    1. I think you are right about the shift to the WWI era. But I think it worked pretty well actually. By making the conflict murkier it contrasted the black and white thinking that Diana was raised with.

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  2. I've not seen this yet, although I might at some point in the future--it's in the queue.

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    1. Yeah it is worth checking out. Just ignore the "Justice League" bookends. :)

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