Wonder Woman: DC’s first good film

Photo courtesy of DC Films/Warner Bros Pictures/Atlas Entertainment/Cruel and Unusual Films/Tencent Pictures/Wanda Pictures

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DC’s recent attempts to transfer its plethora of iconic characters to live action film have at best been mediocre, and often downright bad. Consequently, when I began to hear good things about “Wonder Woman” I didn’t want to get my hopes up. But for the first time in a DC superhero flick, “Wonder Woman” delivers.  It’s got a lot of great action scenes, all of its castings work, and most importantly its plot isn’t a jumbled mess because it’s trying to develop a dozen characters at once.

One of the major things that “Wonder Woman” has going for it is that it’s a very focused film. The largest issue with both “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice” and “Suicide Squad” is that they tried to do way too much with way too little time and they ended up doing nothing well. “Wonder Woman” entirely avoids this pitfall, the film is an origin story and really nothing else. But the thing is it’s a great origin story. We get a fleshed out and engaging childhood for “Wonder Woman” and then the film spends the first half of its entire duration just developing her character as she acclimates to modern society. She’s never really not the focus of the film, so we get a satisfying character arc and meaningful character development.

I was worried that Gal Gadot wouldn’t be able to carry a film as the protagonist, but she proved to be more than adequate. She beefed up for the role, which in conjunction with being a flawless human being means she definitely looks the part. Now as far as acting goes, I don’t think that she brought anything to the table that no one else could’ve, but she still does a great job of it. Her acting doesn’t make any scenes not work, and honestly that’s enough. Chris Pine, on the other hand, does an excellent turn as Steve Trevor. Wonder Woman has a light, fun sense of humor that we see a lot of in the first half of the film. It’s very reminiscent of the humor we see in many Marvel films, and a big part of why it works is Pine. His comedic timing is excellent in “Wonder Woman,” and it makes a lot of the funnier scenes work. He makes watching “Wonder Woman” acclimate to modern society an entertaining affair, which is important because it’s about half the film.

Though I don’t think it’s ever been the weak point of a DC movie, the action in “Wonder Woman” is all great. “Wonder Woman” isn’t a very actiony action film, in large part because it spends so much time developing Wonder Woman and having fun with its humor. But once it starts going it really starts going, and we get some great action sequences. My only real issue with it is that after a while it feels like it overuses slow-motion, and that a few scenes would have been more impressive if they were just allowed to play out at normal pace. Regardless, the action is engaging and a whole heck of a lot of fun.

CR Staff:
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