24 Lies a Second: Lasso Lass, At Last

1 Conversation

Lasso Lass, At Last

Wonder Woman! Wonder Woman!
All the world is waiting for you
And the power you possess
Fighting for your rights
In your satin tights
And the old red white and blue.

I tell you, folks, they don't write theme songs like that any more (although I must confess to always having been slightly baffled by the lyric 'Get us out from under Wonder Woman'). Well, time passes, and some things change, and some things don't. Expectations seem to have been riding high for Patty Jenkins' Wonder Woman, for a number of reasons, but – I hope this doesn't constitute a spoiler – the film itself does not concentrate much on hosiery, satin or otherwise, the jingoistic nature of Wonder Woman's costume has been toned down, and the references to feminine emancipation are handled with considerably more subtlety.

It is a fact that here we are in 2017 and there has never been what you could honestly call a hit movie based on a superheroine – there hasn't even been a genuinely good one that didn't just catch on with audiences. Personally I think the fact that most previous cracks at this sort of thing were generally quite poor and often rather patronising movies is largely to blame, rather than prejudice on the part of audiences, but there does seem to be a real desire for a female-led comic book movie that's actually good. The same could also be said as far as DC's movie project goes – the previous three films in the current cycle have their staunch defenders, but in terms of both critical success and box office returns, they are lagging a long way behind their arch-rivals at Marvel. So Wonder Woman has the potential to either kill multiple birds with one stone, or just perpetuate a number of ongoing injustices. Lotta pressure, there.

One way in which the new movie is very much of a piece with the rest of the current DC cycle is the fact that it often takes itself rather seriously – the actual codename Wonder Woman has clearly been decreed to be too frivolous and it's not until relatively deep into the closing credits that the actual words come anywhere near Wonder Woman the movie, which I must confess to being slightly disappointed by.

Nevertheless, there is much good stuff here, opening with our heroine, Princess Diana's childhood and education on the mystical island paradise of Themiscyra, home of a race of immortal warrior women, the Amazons. The Amazons have a historic beef with Ares, the Olympian god of war, and are constantly anticipating the day he will return to plunge the world into perpetual conflict and slaughter.

Well, when a plane breaches the mystical barriers surrounding the island, it seems like the day has come – piloting the vehicle is American spy Steve Trevor (Chris Pine – not too bad, for once), and pursuing him are some angry Germans. In the outside world it is 1918 and war is ravaging Europe. Diana can't help but suspect that Ares is somehow responsible for the brutal conflict in the trenches and beyond, sponsoring the work of an unhinged chemical weapons expert known as Doctor Poison (Elena Anaya). Availing herself of a god-killing weapon left to the Amazons by Zeus, she agrees to take Trevor back to the outside world if he will help her track Ares down.

Europe in 1918 proves a bit of a shock to Diana, as do the inhumanly callous attitudes she discovers amongst the senior military figures she meets. However, she makes a connection with Sir Patrick Morgan (David Thewlis), an advocate of peace talks, and with his help she, Trevor, and a small band of others head over to the trenches of France in search of the warmongering general Ludendorff (Danny Huston), her goal being (to coin a phrase) to stop a war with love...

Virtually the only element of Batman V Superman that everyone agreed was any good was Gal Gadot's appearance as Wonder Woman, and it seems that this was not a one-off fluke, for I am delighted – and, I'll confess, rather surprised – to report that Wonder Woman is pretty much everything you want from a summer blockbuster movie – it has appealing performances, action sequences that genuinely thrill, jokes that are actually funny, and a few bigger ideas for audience members who are not hard-of-thinking. Crucially, it feels like the work of people who've really taken the time to get to know this character and figure out what makes her distinctive, rather than just reducing her to a gloomy cipher plunged into a morass of cynical desolation.

I suppose Gal Gadot has an advantage over some of her colleagues, in that she isn't going to get compared to numerous predecessors in the way that, say Ben Affleck or Henry Cavill are – although this isn't to say that Lynda Carter's iconic performance as Wonder Woman doesn't cast a sizeable shadow – but even so, Gadot gives a winning turn here, easily carrying the movie, with just the right mixture of steely determination and charming innocence.

I suspect that the decision to move Wonder Woman's origin back twenty-five years to the First World War was primarily the result of a desire to avoid comparisons with Captain America: The First Avenger, another origin story about an idealistic, star-spangled hero. There is still a slight resemblance between the two movies, but on the whole the choice works, tapping into the popular conception of the First World War as an ugly, pointless slaughterhouse bereft of any moral justification. The film is quite careful to point out that Diana is not there to fight the Germans as such, but is in opposition to concept of war itself (which isn't to say there aren't some rousing scenes of her charging machine guns, flipping over tanks, and so on). One problem with the whole 'superheroes at war' concept, especially when it's done historically, is how to explain why they don't just win the war in two or three days flat and thus turn the whole thing into alt-history. Wonder Woman negotiates its way around this rather gracefully.

This is not to say the movie is completely immune to the flaws which superhero blockbusters are traditionally heir to – in addition to being rather obscure, Dr Poison is a somewhat underwhelming villain who doesn't contribute much, there are signs of the narrative coming a bit unravelled in the third act in order to keep the pace going, and so on – but it does manage to contrive one very neat plot twist, and it does a commendable job of feeling like a movie in its own right rather than just a franchise extension – it's not stuffed with cameos and plot-points there to set up half a dozen other coming attractions.

I have occasionally been accused of being biased in favour of Marvel's movies and against those of DC, which honestly isn't the case. If anything, I love DC's stable of characters slightly more than their Marvel counterparts, and I really do want the new DC movies to hit the same standards as the Christopher Reeve Superman films or Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy. This is the first film in five years to really come close, and the first to bear comparison with the best of Marvel's output. If this Wonder Woman is representative of what else DC have planned, Marvel finally have serious competition. Wonderful.

24 Lies a Second Archive

Awix

12.06.17 Front Page

Back Issue Page


Bookmark on your Personal Space


Conversations About This Entry

Entry

A87890043

Infinite Improbability Drive

Infinite Improbability Drive

Read a random Edited Entry


Written by

Credits

Disclaimer

h2g2 is created by h2g2's users, who are members of the public. The views expressed are theirs and unless specifically stated are not those of the Not Panicking Ltd. Unlike Edited Entries, Entries have not been checked by an Editor. If you consider any Entry to be in breach of the site's House Rules, please register a complaint. For any other comments, please visit the Feedback page.

Write an Entry

"The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a wholly remarkable book. It has been compiled and recompiled many times and under many different editorships. It contains contributions from countless numbers of travellers and researchers."

Write an entry
Read more