DC

Warner Bros.



Warner Bros.

Warner Bros.

Wonder Woman is a terrifically fun movie, deftly balancing action sequences and emotional beats. Gal Gadot is charismatic as the eponymous anti-war Amazon princess, easily carrying the movie on her armored shoulders. But there's one basic problem. The storytelling is aimless and occasionally just downright incoherent.

Light spoilers ahead!

DC is back on the right track

Reviews of this film have been almost ridiculously glowing, and for good reason. Since the Dark Knight trilogy ended, DC has made some of the world's most atrocious superhero movies in history, culminating in the execrable Batman v. Superman. It's a relief to see the brand getting back in the saddle with a movie that feels fresh and whose hero hasn't become a terrible cliché. The performances are solid, with Gadot as a standout. Chris Pine is cute as her puppyish sidekick Steve Trevor, trying to prove his bravery alongside a superhero whose honor is the stuff of legend.

The setup for the action is also solid, with Diana drawn into World War I after it literally lands on her doorstep. Fleeing the Germans, British spy Steve accidentally crashes through the magical bubble that hides the Amazons' secret island. Soon, German warships follow after him, guns blazing. A magnificent fight scene on the beach leaves the Germans defeated, the Amazons suffering horrific losses, and Diana wondering how she can stop "the war to end all wars."

Turns out that the Amazons are the sworn enemies of Ares, the Greek god of war. Diana considers it her personal mission to stop World War I by killing Ares. So far, so good. We have a good reason for Diana to follow Steve back to the real world, and her half-warrior, half-innocent persona provides many opportunities for humor and valor as they travel from London to the frontlines.

The trouble with bad guys

That's when we start running into problems. Wonder Woman does a pretty damned good job offering us a new kind of hero, whose agenda is explicitly anti-war. But the film cannot figure out who the bad guy is. Diana is single-minded in her belief that Ares is to blame for World War I and that killing him will end the strife. Meanwhile, Steve is dubious. He's not sure Ares exists, nor does he buy the idea that the war can be won with a single blow of Diana's sword.

There are some terrifically interesting scenes where Steve tries to explain that the problem is more complicated than Diana realizes. There is no one person (or divine entity) to blame for this messy, international conflict. Diana refuses to believe him. This is a smart debate to put at the center of a superhero movie, which is after all about turning "good" and "bad" into individual characters and having them fight.

The problem is that the movie never really resolves the debate in a satisfying way. We wind up with an almost nonsensical array of bad guys, some of whom seem to suggest Diana is right and some that Steve is. To avoid spoilers, I'll just say that Wonder Woman wants to have it both ways: there's a god to blame, and there are evil humans who just want to make toxic gas for fun. This wouldn't be a problem if it weren't for the fact that the two classes of big bads kind of cancel each other out. This leaves us in thematic limbo and leads to a final battle that's a little boring and unnecessary.

Odd worldbuilding choices

The best moments in this film are when Diana finds her moral compass in a world that's completely unlike the reams of books she read back in Amazon school. The human-scale conflicts and passions she encounters are believable, funny, and occasionally heartbreaking. Watching her soar across No Man's Land, batting away bullets, is incredible. Her goal? Just to rescue a small village. Here it feels like director Patty Jenkins (Monster) is delivering a perfect superhero moment, transcendent and yet relatable.

But when the whole world is at stake, the story falls apart. One of the issues here may be the studio's choice to set the action during World War I, even though Wonder Woman is best known for fighting the Nazis during World War II. Maybe if this movie had Nazis, the bad guys would have made sense. The problem is that the movie kept wanting the Germans to be Nazis, even though Germany's role in World War I was a lot more ambiguous and complicated than it was in World War II.

We're also left with a new Wonder Woman origin story. In this version, Diana was molded from clay by her mother Hippolyta and given life by Zeus (who is now dead). So Wonder Woman is basically the daughter of the ruler of the gods, and is herself a goddess (fine). But as we learned in Batman v. Superman, she's been inactive for the 80 years since World War I, which means she missed World War II while she figured herself out (so, so not fine).

Admittedly this is just me spitballing based on a few hints dropped in the two DC movies so far that feature Wonder Woman. Her backstory has gotten so muddled in the comics that it's not worth whining over what sticks to canon and what doesn't, but there's something just wrong about a DC universe where Wonder Woman never fought the Nazis. I hope that the forthcoming Justice League movie proves me wrong or retcons away that 80 year time-out.

My point is this movie mixes up Wonder Woman's origin story and motivations in ways that feel unnecessary and random. If we're going to rewrite Wonder Woman's anti-war efforts, the results should mean something. They should matter. Ultimately Wonder Woman is a classic example of a great movie with a fundamental flaw. The filmmakers couldn't figure out what Wonder Woman was fighting against, and that turned the film's final act into narrative spaghetti.

Still, this movie was both entertaining and a welcome reprieve from your standard "let's fight an otherworldly menace" superhero yarn. Diana actually felt like a person rather than a collection of superpowers. And Gadot's combination of blazing righteousness and clear-eyed empathy make her the perfect embodiment of the hero who fights to end war, rather than to win it. This movie felt like the promising opening act to the Wonder Woman series we've all been waiting for.

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