This was a
good movie, maybe even a legitimately great one but I'm writing this
about three hours after leaving the cinema so I'll let the euphoria
fade before making that judgement.
On Sunday I
wrote about how I thought Wonder Woman's success vindicated
the DCEU approach. The drive towards more auteur-driven superhero
movies and a greater variety of creative visions really pays off
here. Well, it pays off for me, at any rate, I know there are plenty
of people who felt it paid off in Suicide Squad or BvS or
Man of Steel and ain't no problem with that. With an approach
like this, mileage varies a lot.
Hell, even
DC's habit (much older than the DCEU) of reinventing the wheel at the
drop of a hat works here. Shoving Diana into the action of the First
World War rather than the Second was a fantastic idea. There's so
much more drama to be made out of having her interact with the “bad”
world war, the one that was just a bunch of alliances and pacts
getting in each other's way until the worst conflict in human history
happened. Surprisingly, there's a lot more attention paid here to the
period detail than many serious films about the period: one of the
film's major set pieces takes place in the German occupied Ottoman
Empire; Indian soldiers in turbans appear several times; even the most
sympathetic characters (besides Diana, that is) are moved to
callousness by the hopelessness of the conflict; and, some actual
thought goes into placing the story at a point in the war where we
don't see Wonder Woman rather insensitively winning a war that in
reality cost millions of lives whilst still giving her a good reason
to be involved (more on that tomorrow).
As to Wonder
Woman herself, Gal Gadot is great in the role even though it took a
while for her line delivery to really click with me. I've not seen
her in anything before (I decided to skip BvS somewhere
between learning about the peach tea and “Martha!” scenes) but
once you're used to the voice it really works. Chris Pine is
perfectly cast as Steve Trevor and its clear Pine has a good sense of
what Trevor is there for, never getting in the way of Gadot's
performance.
Lucy
Davis' Etta Candy is, sadly, not as prominent a role as the trailers
might have led people to believe but that's more than made up for a
brilliant trio of companions Diana and Steve pick up along the way
played by Said Taghmaoui, Ewen Bremner and Eugene Brave Rock as
Sameer, Charlie and The Chief and, yes, there is a perfectly good
reason for a Native American to be hanging around that even provides
a great moment for Diana's education in how Man's World works.
Patty
Jenkins' directing is top notch, by the way. Every fight scene is
fantastic, busy with action on multiple levels and sheer power
granted to Diana in those scenes is, whilst ultimately nothing
special in the genre as a whole, something we're just not used to
seeing a female superhero doing. Jenkins has an enviable sense of
space with Paradise Island being all open spaces and clear skies
whilst the London sections are full of crowded spaces indoors and
out.
Most
of all, though, at no point does the action stop to stare at Gal
Gadot's body. Now, it would be a braver man than me who could claim
that the camera doesn't linger on her, she's a stunning woman and the
star of the movie, but what the camera conspicuously does not do is
linger on her breasts or backside, nor is she ever blocked into a
shot in such a way to emphasis body at the cost of moving her face
out of shot. There have been something like five MCU movies with
Black Widow in them and ever damn fight scene, I swear...
So,
yes, this is a really good movie. I'm not sure I'm sold enough on the
character to see Justice League just
on the strength of her being in it but I'm more than on board for any
sequels or spin-offs to this movie DC might want to greenlight in the
future.
No comments:
Post a Comment