Wonder Woman

Friends and I went to the opening showing of Wonder Woman tonight. It was awesome to see all of the girls there in their wonder woman shirts. One of my friends brought her daughter, who not only had a Wonder Woman shirt but also the crown (is that what it's called?? I'm not sure.) and an action figure with her.

I am not an aficionado on Wonder Woman and I haven't read the comics, but I heard that the backstory for Diana was changed. In the DC Movie Universe, Diana lives with her mother, Queen Hippolyta, and other Amazon warriors on a paradise island (I can't remember the name of it). They are strong awesome women in charge of protecting against Ares, the son of Zeus and God of War.

When a man in a plan penetrates the mystical barrier and lands in the waters of their island, Diana rescues him from drowning. After some talk, Diana decides she needs to leave with said man, Captain Steven Trevor, as he fights "the war to end all wars." This is exactly what Diana has been waiting and training for. So they sail off, and have a very funny exchange on the sail about sleeping together.

There's a good bit of fish-out-of-water story going on when Diana first arrives in London. And she gets a pretty cool moment to show all the boys around her how she can save people and do good. She believes that killing Ares will stop people from being evil and doing bad things, and thus ending the war. Her naivete in this is charming and warming. When Diana is finally confronted with Ares it felt slightly ridiculous, and I wasn't entirely sure what was going on with everything else in the background (what was Steve doing??).

However, it still felt an awful lot like a DC movie. Which doesn't have the best track record in my book. The CGI in the film was lacking, as if their budget was half that of Marvel movies. Sadly, it has too much Zach Snyder in it. So while there is nothing bad or wrong with the film, it still felt an awful lot like just another run-of-the-mill superhero origin story. It reminded me a lot of Captain America: The First Avenger which, as the first Captain America movie, I thought was awful. But the next installment really kicked it up several gears and is still the best Marvel Avengers movie.

And that gives me hope for the next Wonder Woman movie. Sometimes origin stories can get boring, but once they are given room to flesh out they can become much more interesting.

The review from Vanity Fair pretty much sums up my take on the film, and quite possibly read my mind with these two sentences:
"Well, Wonder Woman is “more” in that it’s easily the strongest film DC and Warner Bros. have made since they left Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight world behind and reimagined Batman and Superman’s exploits as turgid, fascistic operas of destruction."
"[T]he Marvel movies really are just so much better... They’re cleverer, nimbler, more cohesively realized. They balance humor with pathos in buoyant, rarely strained fashion. They’re well-oiled machines, slick and confident. Mind you, I would be perfectly happy if Marvel never made another superhero movie as long as we live."