Review: Wonder Woman 👍
This one has been sitting on the shelf for quite a while now. I am not sure why it took me so long to actually write up all my thoughts on Wonder Woman [IMDb, Trailer (YouTube)], which I went to see about a month ago. Must have been laziness, because there is not really anything I dread having to put in words.
A little disclaimer first though: I never read any of the DC comics (and neither any of the Marvel comics), but rather Asterix and Lucky Luke, when I was younger and haven’t read any comics since then. So, I am not a hardcore fan of the Franchise and also not particularly knowledgeable in regard to it. All of my opinions here are based purely on the movie and whatever I read about it afterwards.

Diana (Gal Gadot), daughter of Amazon queen Hippolyta (Connie Nielsen), grew up in Themyscira, a mystical island hidden from the ordinary world by the magic of the gods. The Amazons have been living in ignorance of what is going on in the rest of the world, where the first world is wreaking havoc. By accident, Steve Trevor (Chris Pine) crashes his plane in the ocean right before Diana’s eyes. She was brought up hearing legends of how the Amazons protect the world and without hesitation jumps from the cliff to rescue him. But his appearance has torn the veil between the worlds and the German war ships pursuing Steve also reach the island. A fight between the Amazons (using bows and swords) and the Germans (using guns and rifles) ensues. At last, the Amazons are victorious, but at a heavy cost.
As Hippolyta uses the Lasso of Truth to get Steve to reveal his mission as an English spy, they discover to their chagrin that evil has spread over the world again. While Diana firmly believes that their arch enemy Ares, the god of war, must be behind all this, the Amazons decide that they shall not get involved in mortal matters. So, Diana decides to follow her calling alone, steals the secret weapons — the Lasso of Truth and the mighty sword God Killer — and helps Steve to escape from the island.
From there, the real story begins. Diana stumbles into a world she doesn’t understand. From the way people dress to the squabbles of politicians, everything is completely new to her and Steve has a hard time reigning her in, so she doesn’t attract unwanted attention. She is driven by her burning desire to fulfill her destiny and defeat Ares, firmly believing that this would end all the suffering at once. Following up on his promise to bring her to the battlefield, Steve introduces her to a couple of friends and they set out on a secret mission to infiltrate the enemy lines, because the English government and military does not sanction such a mission. To their surprise, they get support from high-ranking government official Sir Patrick (David Thewlis).
So much for the storyline. It is not particularly deep, but in my opinion it is the right amount for a comic adaption that has a clear focus on action. I’ll get to the obvious part later. First, I want to point out that I usually don’t like scenarios where a main character has no clue of his surroundings. Take the stumbling about of Thor in the first movie, for example. Very cringe-worthy, but luckily only a very short scene. In Wonder Woman this is very different. I would even go so far as to say that it is one of the true strength of this movie. Diana is totally oblivious of how the world works in 1918. But the way she reacts to things, the effect she has on others and Steve struggling to smooth things over is really charming and never cringy.
Another important ingredient that makes this movie really good is — as it is so often — the soundtrack. The original score was written by Rupert Gregson-Williams (and if you — like me — think you’ve heard that name before, that might be because his brother Harry Gregson-Williams is also a composer and worked on movies like Shrek or The Martian). It is very subtle and quiet, especially in the beginning on Themyscira, and very powerful and epic during the action scenes. Granted, you can definitely hear where it is coming from, that being Hans Zimmer’s movie score factory, but that doesn’t make it bad, it just means that this kind of soundtrack works very well for large movie productions. I listened to it a couple of times since then and still really like it. Especially the very iconic Wonder Woman theme is a perfect fit, because it does not sound like anything I have heard, and thankfully it does not appear with minor modifications in every track, but only very on point right where it needs to be.
And now, finally, a word about the action movie aspects. They are good. They do a good job of conveying Diana’s godly strength, contrasting it very well with the more mundane ways in which her companions fight. Of course they are in parts completely ridiculous, but that’s exactly what you expect from a comic adaptation, isn’t it? The fight scenes follow well thought-out choreographies and are very well shot, without any nauseatingly fast camera flights over the battlefield. I personally liked the final fight a lot. It reminded me a little bit of the epic final battle in the third Matrix movie, where the visual effects were also dialed down to a minimum, but somehow felt so incredibly powerful. I got a somewhat similar vibe in this one and definitely enjoyed it.
One final thought: The enemies in this movie are Germans and they even have a crazy chemist, who is working on weapons of mass destruction and a deranged general called Ludendorff (Danny Huston). At first I found this kind of ridiculous and was a little annoyed about the lack of originality. But I guess it makes sense that they made it this way. When Wonder Woman was first revealed to the audience in 1941, German Nazis were her most prevalent adversaries. I am sure there are a lot of fans out there, who already dislike the modifications they made to the original concept, so at least that one had to stay in.
As you can probably tell by now, I really liked Wonder Woman. From all of the comic adaptations I have seen in the last years, this one was definitely the best, except for maybe Guardians of the Galaxy (but that one is on a completely different level anyway). The story is sufficiently detailed and contains some interesting and sometimes surprising character developments. Action scenes, thoughtful moments and amusing elements are well balanced and make for an entertaining time. If you haven’t seen it yet, I can definitely recommend doing so and would even suggest to watch it on a big screen (and good sound!) to get the full effect.

