Wonder Woman (2017)

Director:

Patty Jenkins

Starring:

Gal Gadot

Chris Pine

Robin Wright

Plot:

When a pilot crashes and tells of conflict in the outside world, Diana, an Amazonian warrior in training, leaves home to fight a war, discovering her full powers and true destiny.

Review:

So here’s the thing, I’m a fan of Wonder Woman. I’m not an uber fan, but I still love her. I have no faith in DC Movies, when I saw the first few trailers for this movie I was not impressed. They looked like the movie was going to be just like Man of Steel and not care about the character at all. When the last trailer came out, though, I got excited. It was bright and colorful and Gal Gadot kicked ass. Then when everyone started raving about how amazing it was I got even more excited. Maybe that just built up my expectations, I don’t know, but I ended up being disappointed by the film.

My main complaint was the CGI, there was too much of it and it was bad. Not quite SyFy movie bad, but close. It took me out of the movie every time it appeared, which was during all of the fight scenes. There’s a moment when WW is coming out of the trenches and you’re supposed to be excited because she’s about to show everyone just how amazing she is, but all of a sudden she’s on a green screen, her make up is heavier, her hair is blown out, and it just ruined the entire moment for me. I don’t understand why they had to do that, Gal Gadot should be able to do the action scenes, they shouldn’t have to resort to computers. It was sad.

Robin Wright was amazing, I wish there’d been more of her.

Chris Pine was fine, I’m glad his character died though. I also felt like their “love” just sort of came out of the blue. I could have done without them having sex, but whatever, I kind of got the vibe that she was just using him to test it out and I was fine with that. But then he’s heading off to do his thing and telling her about his feelings and then at the end of the movie she’s all moony about him and it annoyed me. They literally made her fall in love with the first man she’d ever seen. It was frustrating.

I wasn’t even going to mention her theme music, but I kind of feel like I have too. Her theme is fine, I don’t have a problem with it. What I do have a problem with is that it comes out of nowhere in the movie. The entire thing you’ve had boring unremarkable background music and then all of a sudden you’ve got electric guitars, or whatever that was, playing. It was jarring and took me out of the moment. The music should have boosted the emotional response I was feeling at the time, it shouldn’t have made me stop thinking about the movie and think about the music.

Wonder Woman was easily the best DC movie, but the bar was not high. Maybe if I’d gone in with my original expectations it would have been fine and I would have enjoyed it more, but after all the buildup I expected more. Renting these movies at Red Box and not buying them is going to be my continued stance.

2/5

Side Note: After reading my review I feel kind of bummed and want to end it on a high note. Gal Gadot was perfect as Wonder Woman. This was the first DC movie where I felt like they actually understood the character, Wonder Woman felt properly represented. However, my issue and the reason for the rating, is because of everything else. I hope these things are fixed in the sequel, but I’m not going to hold my breath because I have no confidence in DC.