Wonder Woman (2017) Review

Wonder Woman is the 2017 live-action adaptation based on the comic book character from DC of the same name. It is directed by Patty Jenkins, written by Allan Heinberg, story by Zack Snyder, Allan Heinberg, and Jason Fuchs, and starring Gal Gadot and Chris Pine.


Introduction
I was super excited to see Wonder Woman. This was the 4th DCEU film in the lineup and, so far, it hasn't been good. I thought Man of Steel was okay. Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice was horrible and Suicide Squad somehow turned out even worse than BvS. I haven't made full reviews on them but I have mentioned them in my Most Disappointing Films of 2016 list. You can check that out for more information. Anyway, I wanted Wonder Woman to be good. So, does Wonder Woman finally set the DCEU back on track? Well, yes....kinda.

The Plot
American pilot working for British intelligence, Steve Trevor (Chris Pine), accidentally crashes on Themyscira, the home of the Amazons. Diana Prince learns of World War I and heads outside of her homeland to stop the war.

Positives
As always, I'll start off with the positives. There were some themes and ideas integrated into the screenplay that I liked.

I liked the chemistry between Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman and Steve Trevor played by Chris Pine. I thought their banter was decently written and I enjoyed their duo.

The film was generally fun to watch and the composition of characters was okay. Nothing great, but it's good enough to make me generally like the film. I liked the supporting characters.

The set designs of the World War I setting were cool. I'll give the film credit for that.

I'll give Gal Gadot's performance as Wonder Woman a pass. Even though I don't think she's a good actress, I can see her fitting the role. There were some areas that I questioned her acting, but for the most part, she did a good job as Diana Prince.

Negatives
Even though, this movie has a solid framework, it has problems that unfortunately keep it from being a good movie.

First of all, this film has major pacing issues. It gets very slow in the second act and you will probably notice that it gets boring until the "action parts" starts happening. I'm not saying that you need a film to constantly have action in it, but when you're going to have a film have "slow parts", have those sequences have substance. I mean, the movie does have substance in the slower moments, but they're not substantial enough to keep me invested into the pacing of the film. Then, once the action starts to pick up, it kinda just blitzes through to the end of the movie. The pacing could have been done way better.

The use of slow-motion in the action sequences was really annoying me. When it got the "action parts" I mentioned, the way the sequences were filmed were almost getting to me, especially when Gal Gadot was all over the place beating people up. The action sequences weren't shot very well in my opinion. It was just amateurish camerawork.

While half of the script is decently written and it had ideas that interested me, it was like some other writer or writers tinkered with the script and wrote some other stuff that wasn't interesting that made the film kind of bland. Like, the direction from Patty Jenkins is very bland. The action, like I said, is poorly shot. The cinematography, even though it had a very interesting color palette at the beginning of the film, wasn't very interesting.

Like Marvel, the villain character is, once again, underdeveloped. This isn't really a spoiler, but there was literally a scene where two of the antagonist characters do that "evil megalomaniacal laugh" whenever they do something evil and malicious. It's so cheesy. And the final fight with the main villain character is laughably bad. It reminded me of BvS and the ending was awful.

I hated the ending. It was very bad. A lot of the visual effects are just unconvincing and don't look good. And the musical composition is just terrible.

Conclusion
Overall, I think this is an enjoyably competent film. It's not good in my opinion, but this is most certainly a vast improvement over the past DC films. In my opinion, this movie is better than the 3 other DCEU movies despite its problems. The only things it does right is the chemistry between Diana and Steve and these "fish out of water" motifs. It's the best DCEU movie by far and I'll take it.

Score: B-