Diana, princess of the Amazons, trained to be an unconquerable warrior. Raised on a sheltered island paradise, when a pilot crashes on their shores and tells of a massive conflict raging in the outside world, Diana leaves her home, convinced she can stop the threat. Fighting alongside man in a war to end all wars, Diana will discover her full powers and her true destiny.

IMDb: 7.8

Tomatometer: Critics 92%, Audience 90%

Okeeeeeeee… I’ve got to admit I don’t understand this movie. Nor the high scores with critics and audiences. And hubby doesn’t neither. So, pheew, at least I’m not like totally alone vs the world.

But let’s get to that point of my criticism later. Because that is what I consider a KO argument, something that – at least in my mind – made absolutely no sense in WW and is also such a badly warped falsification of historical happenings, we see it debunked every day. But first the usual stuff …

Let’s begin with the question on everybody’s mind, the only thing that seemed to matter: Is Gal Gadot up to the job? Hmm, not that easy to say, but yes, she’s doing well, she’s into the role of Wonder Woman and gives her best. She even has nice chemistry with her supposed sidekick Steve Trevor (Chris Pine), eventhough he outshines her in every scene they share.

Honestly, Gal Gadot has a very limited range as an actress but she fills Wonder Woman’s high heeled (why o why?) sandals quite nicely. Still as main character, as title heroine she stayed a bit too pale for my taste. This movie was more of a Chris Pine vehicle than a WW spectacle.

We could blame the directrice Patty Jenkins for allowing Pine to play his partner against the wall, or at least we can blame her for not getting the best out of Gadot. But it seems WW has been turned into a feminist project movie, at least in the public’s mind. In so far every critique of Jenkins and Gadot will be disallowed and voided. It’s the times we live in.

But wait, there’s more: Apart from Wonder Woman, Diana and spyboy Steve Trevor the complete rest of the cast stayed strangely underdeveloped and aneaemic and … unbelievable.

 

The whole movie, although competently filmed and directed, gave us the impression of a test. A schoolwork one has to deliver in order to satisfy the teachers and score a good score. Tick all the right boxes but play it so save there isn’t room for any personal feelings or a personal touch. In other words: WW was a  stonecold calculated commercial product. And it showed.

Not even the small gang around Diana and Steve gets more screentime or character than absolutely necessary. Quite the contrary, we don’t even get the most essential informations about them.

There is for example Sameer (Said Taghmaoui), as far as I know a staple of WW’s universe in the cartoons, and we don’t know what he’s doing in this movie. Just some sidekick. Same for Charlie (Ewen Bremner), a sharpshooter that only has one deciding action scene … in which he misses the target. Besides he’s Scottish that’s all we gotta know.

Particularly concerned I was about the character “Chief” (Eugene Brave Rock) who just happened to be there and was a member of our ragtag group of heroes. Come on, Ms. Jenkins, you made a film with a runtime of well over 2 hours, and bored us with a loooong introduction of Diana, her mom, the Amazon culture and her hidden island. But you couldn’t find the time to introduce at least your main cast properly?

Let’s have a look at the villains now: Quite unexpectedly Wonder Diana finds out it’s not the Jerries. 😮 You know they are under Ares’ – God of War – influence. Of course, that explains it all. In modern Hollywood you can turn a whole nation into the Bogeyman or into saints in a matter of seconds with the most silly and simple explanations.

How does she know it: Easy, Ludendorff ain’t Ludendorff but he’s possessed by Ares. Aaaah, ok. I buy that.

Apart from wondering what an American Indian has to do in WW1 Belgium, and how he becomes a member of Diana’s action team, there were more stuffs we couldn’t wrap our heads around. For example – and here comes my biggest blow – if Ares is the original enemy, and Diana kills him in the end, then how came WW2 to pass? And Korea, and Vietnam and Nicaragua and Cuba and Afghanistan and Iraq and Syria (and coming attactions Iran and North Korea)? Huh? Can someone please explain that?

Even more confusing: Is Ares, like, stupid or sumfink? When Diana and we finally find out it’s not Ludendorff who’s infected but Sir Patrick (a weirdly colourless David Thewlis), a member of British gov’ment, who urges everybody to get into the armistice negotiations … we, wait … what? Isn’t Ares supposed to drive everybody into endless war n shit? And now he lets his puppet propagate the first steps to peace?

Sorry, but that doesn’t compute. Not at all. I wouldn’t have noticed because I was so bored and spaced out already, but when hubby mentioned it all became clear. WW’s whole premise is shit! It has no basis.

Ok, let’s suspend our disbelief for a second here, apart from the few nitpicks WW sure was a great adventure spectacle, a huge exciting movie. Was it not?

Yes, right. It was not! I can’t exactly put my finger on it but somehow in all the hoozah emanzipation and feminism and grrlpowa, the director forgot to make a good movie. That thing just dragged along for much too long, interrupted by ok-ish action sequences, interrupted by dialogue scenes which didn’t give us any needed infos.

Honestly, if any of our hero group had dieded, incl. Diana and Steve, we’d just shrugged it off. Such poor characterization is obviously en vogue in Hollywood now. I mean they have so many really talented actors these days but the industry reduces them to mere mannequins saying their very view script lines.

Sorry, but hubby and me can’t join the choir of favourizing critics who obviously all fell in love with Wonder Woman. This film was crap. An expensive trainwreck.

There was, with all the drama and war and innocent people dying and big bam and boom, not a single real emotion to be seen in WW. Even when Diana’s personal trainer Antiope (Robin Wright) was deaded, and Diana was like No, No, No (repeat x100) we couldn’t believe it. It’s not that hubby and me are like totally soulless and don’t wanna suffer with our heroes and heroines, but I guess that even the earlier and pretty cheesy  orchestrations of WW, were more engaging than the 2017 version.

CONCLUSION: What a nice project this was. And what high hopes we had for Wonder Woman to become the single movie to drag the DC Extended Universe out of its hole and join the glorious Marvel Cinematic Universe. And according to the audiences and critics and reviewers around the globe they did just that. And the box office confirms WW’s success.

Only one flaw. They forgot to cater for Hubby and me. We didn’t like this flick. It’s not that we were blind to the effort that was made, or that we didn’t agree with the casting or the production or the camera or the lighting. WW was great spectacle. It’s just that the screenplay writers obviously forgot to calculate that we are more clever and spoiled than audiences in 1974 and, in 2017, demand more clever products. And the director was obviously out of her league and her comfort zone as well. She treated a big huge multimega production like an independent social drama or sumfink like that. The result was a big multimega snorefest. What she got right, was that she didn’t trap into the sarcasm trap. This movie takes itself serious. A very welcome rarity these days.

WATCH IT? Stupid question really. Yes, of course. This is a grande spectacle, talk of the town, chewing gum and popcorn movie if there ever was one. The feelgood hit of the summer. Oh, and don’t forget to stock up on whiskey and beer to get in the mood for Wonder Woman.

What YouTube thinks:

“the first really really good DCEU movie since Man of Steel”

“such good dialogue”

“It is not a 10/10”

“Is it enough to save the DCEUniverse?”

“Various villains in this movie, and I didn’t enjoy any of them.”

“I loved it. I loved it so much!”

My girly hates everything DCEU! But even she liked Wonder Woman … somehow.