Wonder Woman - Seen it (Open Spoilers)

Cafe Society
1

Just got back from a sneak preview of Wonder Woman. It’s pretty good. Easily the best entry in the DC Movie-verse, which says very, very little, but overall I really enjoyed this movie. It does have some significant flaws, which I’ll get to later, but first, the good stuff: Gal Gadot is a delight. Her Wonder Woman is smart, tough as hell, and (in a break from every other movie in this franchise to date) genuinely likable. Oh, and unquestionably heroic - aside from a brief crisis of faith at the beginning of the third act, she’s absolutely all in on saving lives. There’s none of Superman’s super-ambivalence, or Batman fucking branding people, like in BvS.

It’s really funny, the first act in particular. “Oh, you mean my watch!”

The climax features Wonder Woman beating up two different old white men. Which, considering it’s set in WWI, and she’s beating up WWI generals, felt really satisfying. I did figure out who Ares was about ten minutes before the movie told me, but it was still a good reveal, and he had a good villain speech, despite not actually having much screen time. Leutendorf was also a very hatable bad guy. Doctor Porcelainface was kind of disappointing, though. She’s pretty much just in the movie so Wonder Woman can dramatically not kill her. I was hoping for a lot more from her. She lived, though, so maybe a future villain?

The fight scene in the village was fantastic. The audience I saw it with lost their collective shit when she collapsed that bell tower.

I think my main complaint is: Who makes a WWI action movie, and doesn’t include a Zeppelin? Who makes a WWI action movie, whose climax resolves specifically around bombing London, and doesn’t end it with two people fighting on top of a blimp?

Actually, my main complaint is that the plot really doesn’t make much sense. The German super weapon is poison gas… which they had a lot of already. And, it’s really hard to make up a poison gas that’s more horrible than mustard gas. This stuff goes through gas masks (and apparently blows them up? I wasn’t clear on why the one in the dome caught fire when they were testing it.) so it’s bad, but it’s not quite “superweapon” bad. Also, if you can load up your goofy biplane long range bomber with enough supergas to wipe out London… would mustard gas not be just about as effective, on a civilian population? Why not use that, instead of waiting around for a moderately more effective gas to be invented?

It’s not much of a super weapon, is what I’m saying. But you know what would be a good super weapon? A gas that gives people super powers! How is the goddamn super soldier serum not the McGuffin of this movie? It’s not like they weren’t already leaning into the Steve Trevor/Steve Rogers thing anyway, what with him sacrificing himself on a plane at the end.

Not thrilled about killing Steve off, either. If they’re not doing any more WW movies set in the past, I guess it doesn’t matter, but they had good chemistry together, and I liked how cool he was with letting her save his life repeatedly. I wouldn’t have minded another movie of that. Hell, why not give them a happy ending together? It’s not like you have to explain why he wasn’t around any more in 2016.

Anyway, I don’t want to bag on the movie too much, because I did genuinely enjoy it. Gal Gadot’s Wonder Woman is the best realized cinematic version of a DC character yet. The plot needed some serious rewrites, but there’s a touch of Silver Age charm in how inane it is. Overall, I’d recommend it.

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So are the WW1 Germans pretty much Nazi Germans? I hate that trope.

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Loved Gal Gadot, her interplay with Chris Pyne was great: actual humour and character-building in a DCEU movie, more of that please.

The weakest part for me was checks to see the “open spoilers” in the thread subject David Thewlis getting out-acted by his armour as Ares. He was fine as the politician, but just didn’t bring the presence I’d want from a god of war.

Dr Maru blew it up—“cleaned” the chamber of gas ready for its next trial. She didn’t much care about the test subject in the mask, igniting the gas was the fastest way of clearing the chamber.

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One of my early childhood boy crushes was on Linda Carter. Just figured I’d say that.

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Did anyone else get a red band trailer for “The hitman’s bodyguard” before the movie? I thought that was super odd since the movie is pg 13 and the theater was full of kids. This is the best DC movie so far.

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I thought it was very strong. Went a bit of the rails near the end with the Ares stuff just happening. The baddies weren’t dealt with well but enough to get us through.

The good stuff was very good however. Wonder Woman is a true HERO. She will put herself in the way to help people. The trench scene was superb. Told that there was a village full of people in danger on the other side of No Man’s Land she was told yet again that they had to go somewhere else to get across. She stopped listening to people then and just did her thing. Going “over the top” was surprisingly moving I thought.

Chris Pine was excellent. Pity they decided to go with him dying.

All in all I enjoyed it a lot, way more than the others.
ETA: Robin Wright needs to do more action stuff. She was fucking fierce.

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The late-stage reveal of Ares worked really well, I thought, but perhaps to the film’s larger detriment, because there really weren’t any villains that were formidable for a huge chunk of the film (Danny Huston was more menacing in Wolverine).

This was definitely Chris Pine’s best effort in any franchise film (better than his Kirk or Jack Ryan), and while the pre-Howling Commandos were perhaps a little bit too unlikely of a melting pot, my biggest problem with them is that they don’t get enough screen time. Ditto (inevitably) Etta Candy.

I liked Gadot much more as Warrior Princess than Innocent Naif and the ending perhaps rings a little too closely to The 5th Element (she and Leeloo are kindred sisters). And some of the CG is a little dodgy (especially toward the beginning on Paradise Island). But the film does kick all sorts of ass and while I like Nolan’s Dark Knight and think Man of Steel is underrated, this is exactly what the DC-verse needed (and a far overdue gender corrective as well).

Let’s hope WW doesn’t get swallowed up in the Justice League franchise. She deserves more films on her own.

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Yeah, agreed. Especially the flashback scene where he got knocked down by Zeus and was lying there mostly naked and looking petulant. People behind me were laughing, and not in a nice way.

Loved the movie, though. Loved the humor, loved WW being a badass and getting full respect from the guys, loved Etta…it was a breath of fresh air after the last few DC crapsack-world films.

Also loved that there were tons of men and boys in our audience, cheering Wonder Woman along with the women and girls.

Maybe DC will learn something. Hell, maybe *Hollywood *will learn something.

9

I liked it. I thought Gadot did a bang-up job going from worry-free paradise princess to overly confident and naive hero to slowly seeing the horrors of modern (well, a hundred years ago modern) war. Her and Pine had good chemistry. I didn’t have any problems with most of the effects except maybe the cheesy lightning gloves and stuff at the end.

I thought the villains were all weak although they didn’t factor into the movie too much so it didn’t weight it down. The Chemist Lady was especially wasted. Was Ares sporting that British mustache back at the dawn of time? I called the “You’re the Godslayer, silly” bit right off but I’ll cop to not guessing Ares right away. I thought it was more of a “There is no real Ares (at least not here)” thing until he showed up in the tower. I guessed then but that was like five seconds before it was revealed anyway. In my defense, I hit the bathroom and missed the bit between their first entry into the meeting where everyone is scandalized that a woman is in the room and the pub “Let’s round up the band” scene so I missed what I assume was establishing that character.

Thought the WWI fight scenes were cool and noticed a subtle shift where even in the trench/town fight she wasn’t using her sword to actually cut people but then did so several times after the town was gassed and she was all hellbent on vengeance. Oh, and agreed that gassing the village seemed pointless as a demonstration since any poison gas would wipe out a bunch of random civilians. But all in all I thought it was a good movie.

10

It was… not bad. That’s the best thing I could say about it. It had some genuinely good moments. Some of that was cause it was a big rip off of The First Avenger. Gal Gadot was good and gave the character some depth. Chris Pine played his role well. You cared about the characters. The humor felt natural not forced. The cinematography was first rate.

On the flip side, the battle between the Amazons and the Marines inspired eye rolls. The Kraut Marines have never heard of cover? Or staying in formation? The German bolt action rifles could kill the Amazons just fine, it should have been a bloodbath, suspension of disbelief was difficult. Plus what was stopping the Kriegsmarine warship from following its boats into the veil and then engaging the natives with its copious amount of gunfire. It’s called “Gunboat diplomacy for a reason”. Would have made the character’s desire to kill Ares resonate with the audience more, rather than it seemingly be “on principle”, as in the film.

I realized that David Thewlis was Ares 5 minutes after he was introduced. Would have been much better if Frau Evila Doktor had been Ares, why would a celestial being be restricted to human biological genders.

Plus Frau Doktor’s wounds were not that bad, her prosthesis made her look worse.

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I thought it showed the warship list far to one side as though it sank or something happened to it. The Germans were cut off from cover since the Amazons came down between them and what rocks there were on the beach. Anyway, that scene didn’t bother me at all.

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And while the amazons did die to bullets they were clearly not standard humans, their bows were just as or more effective than the German rifles.

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If the idea was that Ares was influencing people, a male in the British government would be much more useful than a female in the WWI era British government.

Besides, the Greek deities were pretty gender defined. It would have been weirder if they shifted around. Even Zeus who changed into bulls and swans changed into male bulls (is there any other kind?) and swans.

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I really really enjoyed it. I’m loved that she was a true hero. No shades of gray. That has its place but the pendulum has swung way to far in that direction and having some one who is kind and good just because that’s the right thing to do is a breath of fresh air.

The period setting was inspired and interesting (that’s also I reason the original Captain America is one of my favorites) and using World War I was smart. It’s an underutilized setting and fits their theme of the brutality of war.

I figured out pretty quickly that Diana herself was the weapon against Ares so that wasn’t much of a shock but I thought Ares would turn out to be Dr. Poison. The truth was probably better.

I was surprised that Steve Trevor was killed off. Although I couldn’t help but think that the Flash going back in time and plucking him off that plane would be terrible dramatically but totally what would happen in a comic book.

I did not like Man of Steele but liked the other recent DC Movies (unlike the rest of the world) but this was clearly the best one by far and judging by the audience cheers at the end DC has their first true hit.

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Also, if you’re trying to figure out where the God of War is during a war, the side that’s winning seems the best bet.

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I’m not really a fan of comic book movies or action movies in general, but saw Wonder Woman with some friends and thought it was pretty good. The things I disliked about it were mostly the things I tend to dislike about other modern action movies: everything is grey unless it’s on fire, there’s a big final battle that’s IMHO rather dull, and the running time ideally should have been about 15-20 minutes shorter.

I totally did not guess that Professor Lupin would turn out to be Ares, although some of my friends said it was obvious to them from his first scene. Like others here, I’d expected that the twist would be that “Dr. Poison” was either Ares in disguise or the daughter of Ares. Instead Dr. Poison turned out not to be particularly important at all. Maybe she was being established for a sequel?

It seemed for a while like the twist was going to be that there was no Ares and ending a war wasn’t as simple as killing one villain, which I thought actually would have been better. As things were, the movie seemed a bit confused as to how much Ares was to blame for WWI. His death apparently had an immediate pacifying effect on the German soldiers, which suggests he was lying about how little influence he really had, but WWII presumably still happens in this universe even with Ares gone and that was even worse than WWI.

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I thought it was great. Way better than the other recent DC movies, and as good or better than at least half of the Marvel movies, IMO (and I’m a big fan of most of those). Hopefully it will be a hit, and inspire more diverse superhero movies.

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Ares whole plan doesn’t really make much sense. He wants humans to fight each other until we wipe ourselves out, and to make that happen he needs… the war to stop? :confused: I guess the idea is that he knows it’ll be a false peace, and that the another, worse, world war will be right around the corner, but the film does an awful job establishing that.

That said, the Germans surrendering after Diana kills Ares is not, I think, a result of Ares’ influence going away, but everyone having the fight scared out of them after witnessing an enormous, supernatural battle.

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I didn’t think he actually wanted the war to stop – he was planning on launching more gas attacks, which would have undoubtedly prolonged the war.

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But we see him influence folks; it doesn’t matter whether he is General Ludendorff or whether he influences General Ludendorff, because as it turns out he gets the same result as a voice in that guy’s ear – you know, in his free time from being a voice in Doctor Poison’s ear. Ares doesn’t need to do much; he has people for that.