Wonder Woman is
the origin story movie for Wonder Woman. Given this is the first ever Wonder
Woman movie it makes sense that they chose to tell the story of Steve Trevor
crashing on Themyscira and Diana Prince leaving with him to go out into the
outside world and become Wonder Woman.
In my opinion this movie got Diana’s character spot on. She’s
one of the toughest most badass superheroes around but also one of her greatest
strengths is her compassion. The final battle perfectly showed both sides of
the character. Definitely during her fight scenes Diana is the strong and brave
warrior princess. But many times throughout the movie we see the desire to save
people from Diana that becomes a big part of why she becomes a superhero. Her
compassion and love is one of her strengths in the comics and it’s also one of
her strengths in the movie. One thing that’s always potentially risky when
doing the Wonder Woman origin story is how far to go with showing her discovering
new things after leaving Themyscira. On the one hand it’s only natural that she
should be surprised by the social and technological changes in the outside
world but on the other hand if it gets pushed too far then Diana can seem infantilised
and unintelligent. I think this movie got just the right balance. She is
surprised by things but that never gets in the way of her competence.
Diana wasn’t the only strong character in this movie, part
of how Wonder Woman works so well as
a movie is the strong cast of supporting characters. Steve Trevor was actually
pretty competent in this movie which is a significant change from the 70s TV
Series, I don’t mind this as he’s played by Chris Pine who I had a massive
crush on back in 2013. Etta Candy was a fun character to watch who had some
very enjoyable scenes with Diana. The Amazonians and the soldiers that Diana
befriends whilst fighting in the war were also well developed believable
characters. This is undoubtably Wonder Woman’s movie but I think it was a
stronger movie because of the supporting characters.
This movie chose to set this story during World War One
which is not a time period that we usually see Wonder Woman in but it
definitely proved to be an effective setting. The setting of World War One was
partially so effective because of the way that the movie portrayed war. It certainly
did not glorify war and in some emotional scenes showed the human cost of war.
I’ve noticed that increasingly it’s becoming a trend for superhero movies and
TV shows to place the emotional story on par with the action. I’m all for this
sort of emotional storytelling becoming a part of superhero narratives.
This is a more or less completely standalone movie. I know
that superhero movies are often criticised for being overly reliant on other
films and shared universes, Wonder Woman
breaks that as a movie that can definitely stand on its own. Whilst you’ll probably
get more out of this movie if you’re already familiar with the character there’s
no prior knowledge required. Literally the only reference to any other movies
in the DC Cinematic Universe is a little scene at the end where Diana is
emailing Bruce Wayne.
Whilst DC is often criticised for being humourless (clearly people
who say that didn’t go and see The Lego
Batman Movie!) Wonder Woman has
some great one liners in it which actually genuinely made me laugh out loud in
the cinema. I am a little disappointed that we didn’t get to see the Invisible
Jet but it probably would have felt out of place in the movie. Hopefully in a
future DC movie we can get to see Diana flying to the rescue in the Invisible
Jet.
In conclusion I loved Wonder Woman. This was exactly the
movie that the character needed and deserved. I mentioned in
my review of the Lois Lane Novels that DC is good at portraying their female characters.
Wonder Woman just further proves that DC
are good at giving us female heroes. I loved this movie and I’m looking forward
to seeing the Batgirl movie that is currently in development.
