Wonder Woman Review
This year has been a great year for superhero films so far, and it continues to be great with our latest superhero flick, Wonder Woman. Anyone who has kept up with my thoughts in regards to this film will know I had my reservations, but after seeing this film, all of these second thoughts were thrown out the window. Wonder Woman is a brilliant film, finally giving us a solid DCU film.
The film starts of in present day, seeing Diana Prince AKA Wonder Woman, in France, doing some work at her desk, when she gets a delivery of a photo of her back in World War 1 standing alongside old friends. This is the same photo you may recognise from Batman v Superman, that she is sent by Bruce Wayne. When seeing this photo, it automatically triggers off Diana’s memory, sending us back to when she was a child growing up on the secret island Themyscira, wanting to learn how to fight, like how all her fellow Amazons have learnt how to. Sadly Diana’s mother was the queen of this island, and therefore forbid Dianna to learn how to fight, in an attempt of keeping her safe. As we are all aware, this did not stop Diana from training secretly, becoming the Wonder Woman we all know and love today.
As the film progresses, Chris Pine’s character, Steve Trevor, crash lands in the ocean next to this secret island by pure fluke, which luckily Diana spots, and proceeds to save him, causing these two characters story to become intertwined. As the Amazons see Trevor as a threat, even though he helped stop an assault on Themyscira, they interrogate him, which in turn makes him tell them about the World War, and how many people are dying. On top of all this, he tells them about how there is a weapon capable of mass killing in the works, and that he has just came from stealing secret information from the enemy, and that he needs to deliver it to his commanding officer. This news automatically triggers the hero inside Diana, as she proposes that her and the Amazons should go and help in this war, so that they can prevent more innocent people dying, but sadly the Queen does not want to be a part of this, causing Diana to go along with Steve, in hope that she can make a difference in this war. There is further reason to why Diana is so eager to go and help, but I don’t want to spoil anything. This first 30 minutes of the film or so sets up a really good backstory for Diana’s character, and shows us how much she is willing to help, no matter the cost, or who she may have to disobey, even if it’s her own mother.
With the couple now leaving the secret island, Steve takes Diana to London, which is where he is based, and I have to say this where the film really found its feet. There was plenty of humour in this section of the film, as we see Dianna acting like a fish out of water, as she adapts to this modern civilisation. I say plenty of humour, but I do mean this in a good way, unlike how the marvel films have become, where we get joke after joke which just takes the edge off the film completely. This is where Gal Gadot really surprised me with her acting ability. You instantly fall in love with her, as she plays this naive girl so well, a girl just wanting to save the world with her powers. I watched this entire section of the film with a big grin on my face, as Diana was truly an inspiring woman, just wanting to do good, one act at a time, no matter how small, and wasn’t going to let anyone get in her way, not even new companion, Steve Trevor.
This then leads us to where we see Wonder Woman show off what she is capable of. Steve Trevor takes Diana and a team of unlikely soldiers, ones that were in Diana's photo, on a mission to destroy this weapon, which his peers deemed was not a priority, but as Steve saw this weapon first hand, he knew it had to be stopped asap. During their travels they have to walk through a battlefield, which is where Diana gets true glimpse of the horrors of World War 2, causing her to go into superhero mode, demanding that Steve stop and help. Steve tells her that they need to continue on, but this is not what Diana came for, to ignore the disaster going on around them. Ignoring Trevor’s orders, she takes off her coat revealing our Wonder Woman in all her glory, wearing the armour we saw her wear in BvS, along with the same sword and shield. She then walks out of the trenches and enters the battlefield, and starts to run towards the oncoming fire of the enemy, which we then see her just deflecting bullets and bombs, whilst continuously heading towards the enemies base. This incredible act of heroism causes for the enemy to concentrate completely on Wonder Woman, allowing Trevor and his troops to get the jump on the enemy from behind. Diana then continues to move forward, and heads into a town where there are hostages, and literally takes out every enemy soldier in this town without slowing down. This was a really powerful scene showing us a glimpse of what Wonder Woman is capable of.
Diana, Steve and this dysfunctional team continue moving on with this mission, keeping the films action levels high throughout, right up to the end of the film, which has a really good twist, one I have to say I didn't guess. I pride myself on being able to guess what will happen in a film just by the way the story is panning out, therefore me not predicting this just impressed me even more. I have to say as well, there is a fairly emotional end to this film, which I personally think is something DC are better than Marvel at generally. They have always done well at making you feel for the characters, and this is certainly the case for Wonder Woman.
Speaking of emotion, this then leads me to the score of the film which was done by Rupert Gregson-Williams, which has parts pulled from Hans Zimmer’s Wonder Woman theme from Batman v Superman. I really enjoyed the music for this film, it was really emotionally driven, and gave the film some real feeling behind it. I cannot say it is a score I’d listen to outside of watching the film itself, but I think it did a really good job at conveying the emotion for each scene.
Wonder Woman is a really good film, and lived up to a lot of the pre-screening hype. I do think people may have gone a bit overboard in regards to how good it was, but I think this is because of how fresh it feels, especially in comparison to the previous DC films as well as there being a real shock factor to this movie. I, for one, am a fan of this film. It has set me and everyone else up perfectly for the Justice League, which has now been taken over by Joss Whedon. I have every faith in Snyder that he has created a good film, and I cannot wait to see it.
Let us know what you thought of Wonder Woman in the comments section below....
