As the summer movie season winds down, I decided this past weekend to finally endorse the sole remaining stalwart bastion of the early-summer blockbuster parade and hit the theater to see Wonder Woman, and I wanted to leave a few thoughts on my experience here.
First off, I want to say that I was surprised by the number of people present in the theater, given that Wonder Woman had been initially released way back in June, exactly 3 months beforehand. While the theater wasn’t sold out, and wasn’t exactly a megaplex either, it was definitely crowded, which for such a holdout has to be considered at least a mild achievement. I had read in an article published on the first of the month that the Patty Jenkins-helmed DC venture had become the third-highest grossing Warner Bros. release ever (behind two other mammoth DC hits, Christopher Nolan‘s The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises), but there’s a different between reading those words and seeing the evidence of the numbers in the form of a crowd.
Gal Gadot’s “I run the summer 2017 box office” face. Also her Wonder Woman face.
Second off, when talking about this movie, I’m planning on drawing what I think are cogent parallels to the MCU, so if you’re a DC fanboy who has a problem with that – well, tough. Having seen almost every comic book movie that has come out in the past ten years (only Thor: The Dark World, Suicide Squad, and Fox’s absolute stinker Fantastic Four have slipped through my fingers, as far as I’m aware), and having personally fallen asleep during both Man of Steel (which I expected more from, given Nolan’s production involvement) and Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, I feel at least remotely qualified to discuss Wonder Woman in such context.
The two MCU installments that can almost immediately be compared to Wonder Woman, for better or for worse, are Captain America: The First Avenger – comparable largely because of its real-world historic setting – and Thor, with its similar discussion of the merits and mythos of gods and demigods living and fighting amongst lesser men and women. Regarding comparisons with the first, I simply found Wonder Woman to be a far more fun version of Captain America in terms of the World War I hijinks, namely those that take place in no man’s land (a scene which, bafflingly to me, was apparently nearly cut from the final film) and in Veld. The combat is more gleeful (if not a bit wantonly destructive – destroying an entire church steeple in an effort to take out a single sniper comes to mind) and far more visually stylish, peppering in what I felt was a proper amount of slow-motion interludes that Zack Snyder – a producer here – is somewhat known for by now.
Watching a hot chick wreck German soldiers with nothing but a sword and shield (and occasionally a whip) is what the summer movie season is all about.
The characters are also notably more magnetic when juxtaposed with both Thor and Captain America, with Gal Gadot standing out both physically and charismatically as the lead. Chris Pine provides a more-than-suitable foil as the American spy Steve Trevor, who proves to be a worthy temporary love interest to Diana Prince, albeit the far less visually pleasing party of the two. David Thewlis also performs well as a British statesman who eventually plays a pivotal role in the movie’s action, while other minor characters – Trevor’s secretary Etta Candy (Lucy Davis), Arabian spy Sameer (Saïd Taghmaoui), Scottish marksman Charlie (Ewen Bremner, whom I recognized from The Rundown, of all things), and Native American smuggler Chief (Eugene Brave Rock) – form a capable and diverse supporting cast. Also of note for a solid performance, though underutilized, is Robin Wright for her turn as Antiope.
From left: Sameer, Steve Trevor, Wonder Woman, and the Chief. Inexplicably not pictured: Charlie.
As for the parallels to Thor, they can more readily be drawn in both the early scenes of the movie – detailing Wonder Woman’s origin story amongst the Amazon on the hidden island of Themyscira – and in the final major battle scene, during which Wonder Woman is forced to do battle with Ares, the god of war himself. The 300-esque fight scene on the shores of Themyscira between the Amazon warriors and the German soldiers hunting Steve Trevor, which occurs about a quarter to a third of the way into the film, marks a significant change in tone that persists well into the latter half of Wonder Woman. I found this departure to be pleasant, as I’m never really one for subplots involving demigods and mythology, nor origin stories lacking any sense of brevity. For this reason, I found Thor to be largely tiresome aside from its excellent use of fish-out-of-water comedy – as I’ve already said, I shied away from Thor: The Dark World because of this, and I’m still on the fence about the much-hyped Thor: Ragnarok coming later this fall. Simply put, I have a harder time relating to the plights and successes of a hero who isn’t, well, human, but Wonder Woman did a better job navigating this issue than Thor did.
This early scene marks a tonal shift that persists throughout the rest of the movie. It also marks one of Robin Wright’s more badass moments.
To me, and as I’ve mentioned above, the high points in Wonder Woman occur during the World War I centered combat, giving Gal Gadot a real chance to flex her muscles in both the literal and figurative senses. Similarly, these scenes give Patty Jenkins – now the female director with the highest ever U.S. opening, besting Sam Taylor-Johnson for Fifty Shades of Grey – ample time and space to demonstrate an excellent ability to paint a very grey and very bleak picture of war, along with early 20th-century London, which in this instance has all the charm and color of a Lemony Snicket book cover.
Overall, this is clearly a film that, while hardly bucking the various tropes of the countless comic book movies before it, manages to produce a well-executed and undeniably fresh perspective on a much-needed strong female character that will doubtlessly play a huge role in DC’s upcoming jaunts. It’s well worth checking out if you find yourself near a theater that’s still playing it.
Tuesdays with Cory 