Tag Archives: Wonder Woman (2017)

Movies

Wonder Woman (2017) a (for the most part) right on time review!

Add me to the masses.

I really liked Wonder Woman and would give it a solid “B” or 3 stars out of 4.  As many other critics have said -and, again, I’m going with the flow here- the film has a few problems but overall its positives far outweigh its negatives.

Gal Gadot is simply the absolutely right actress at the very right moment for the role, an important thing given the fact that the film follows Diana/Wonder Woman throughout maybe 90% of the its run time.  Even more intriguing -and shows the care Director Patty Jenkins had in the making of this film- is the fact that two other actresses also played Diana/Wonder Woman and, incredibly, both were also very good in the role: Lilly Aspell played the 8 year old Diana and Emily Carey played her at 12 years of age.

Further kudos have to be given to Chris Pine’s acting as Steve Trevor.  He is at Diana’s side for much of the film and provides a welcome counterpoint/guide to her character while she navigates a world ravaged by the horrors of World War I.  He’s never patronizing and more often than not takes her side while showing his growing affection and thrill at her displays of power.

But before we get to their adventure together, we spend time on Paradise Island, the home of the Amazons and of Diana and there we are presented its culture and characters.  Standouts during these sequences are Robin Wright as the warrior Antiope (Ms. Wright’s come a long way since Princess Bride!) and Connie Nielson as Hippolyta, Diana’s mother (I just checked IMDB and it looks like she’ll be back in the role for the upcoming Justice League movie.  Hurrah!).

Later in the film we’re also introduced to Wonder Woman’s quirky companion, Etta Candy, played delightfully by Lucy Davis.  I swear this film is filled with so many interesting characters that I wish there was even more screen time afforded to them than ultimately was!

The villains, alas, are a little less interesting though I did enjoy the enigmatic turn of Elena Anaya as Dr. Maru, aka Dr. Poison.

As for the film itself, its story goes like this: Diana is a restless soul within Paradise Island even as a young child.  After a fashion, she trains to be a warrior.  One day, when she’s grown, the outside world intrudes upon Paradise Island in the form of Steve Trevor, a spy for the allies whose airplane crash lands just off the island’s coast.

Diana saves Trevor but a German warship which has been hunting him also makes their way into Paradise Island.  A battle ensues and, afterwards, the Island folks are, via Steve Trevor, given an update on the world outside and the war being waged.

Diana decides she must venture forth and stop the fighting.  She believes Ares, the Greek God of War, is behind all this and it is her duty to stop him.

She leaves Paradise Island with Trevor, and the rest of the film follows her as she encounters the “real” world of 1917 and its many perils.

Again, I give this film a very solid “B”.  While it may not reach the heights of the original 1978 Superman, a film the makers of Wonder Woman clearly used as their guiding star, it does enough things very right to make us not only care for the characters, but to look forward to their further adventures.

One last note: The soundtrack to the film is awesome.  Gonna buy it real soon.

Recommended.

Movies

Wonder Woman box office power…

What with all the gnashing of teeth regarding DC superhero movies and, to many, these same movies’ perceived failures, there was a lot riding on the release of Wonder Woman.  The trailers looked terrific, but then again so too did the trailers for Suicide Squad, a film that even this defender of Batman v Superman couldn’t defend too hard (the plot of that movie was a complete mess, though I had to admit that if you were able to ignore this admittedly significant detail there was some entertainment to be had in the performances of the various actors).

When the Memorial Day Weekend box office turned out to be a bust, matching an 18 year low in terms of box office take, I felt it wasn’t too terribly surprising.

Audiences, I theorized, were perhaps burned by Prometheus and therefore not all that willing -without some damn good reviews/word of mouth- to give Alien: Covenant a try.  This was most certainly my situation.  Had I read good things about AC, I would have gone out to see it.  But Prometheus, despite the beautiful look and some great acting by Noomi Rapace, left me cold.  And when I found out what director Ridley Scott did with her character, the only character I liked in the previous film, I had no more interest in seeing it.

In the case of the latest Pirates of the Caribbean, I suspect that’s a franchise that’s gone on two or three films too many.  It didn’t help that Johnny Depp’s bizarre behavior of late didn’t help the situation.

And though I love me some raunchy, “R” rated comedies, any interest I might have for the Baywatch movie was dashed when I saw the very lame NSFW red-band trailer of the movie.  The trailer, to put it nicely, wasn’t funny at all.  Indeed, it seemed to focus on the fact that the Rock gets to say the word “fuck” in several different permutations and audiences were expected to laugh.  Again, I like raunchy comedies, but having a person swear an awful lot does not equal comedy gold.

As for Guardians of the Galaxy 2, that film was released a while back and, while it did very well at the box office, those who wanted to see it seemed to have done so and, therefore, the film was on its way out.

So, in my opinion, people were itching for something new and the three new films, plus this hold-over, just weren’t cutting it, which seems clear based on the weak box-office take.  And that’s why I suspected the release of Wonder Woman the week after Memorial Day would provide plenty of reasons to smile for DC and Warner Brothers.

Now, understand, I’m far from a psychic and I can no better guess what’s going to happen in the next hour much less the next day or week.

Yet I nonetheless had a feeling Wonder Woman would do exceedingly well.  In part this was due to the early reactions, before the review embargo was lifted, which were generally very positive.  Once the actual reviews were released, they confirmed those early tweets.  Like Suicide Squad, the movie’s trailers looked fantastic.

And add one more element: The current times and the fact that this was the first superhero film for this modern era  (defined as roughly from when the first Iron Man was released) which features a woman as its main character.

So with audiences dissatisfied with the current slate of movies it seemed obvious there was a void.  And given Wonder Woman was next in line and looked so intriguing and was getting such great reviews, it felt like a no-brainer to guess it would do exceedingly well.

And, it would appear, so it did.

According to estimates (here’s one from The Huffington Post) the movie broke records in its release.  It most certainly is the biggest release directed by a woman and the $100.5 to $100.6 million it took in I’m sure did bring smiles to those folks at DC and Warners.  There’s already word that director Patty Jenkins and star Gal Godot will return, quickly I imagine, for Wonder Woman 2.

I remain curious to see the film and hope to do so within the next day or two.  I further hope it tracks as high with me as it does with so many others.

After all, that’s all you want in a film, right?

To be entertained.

Movies

Timing is everything…perhaps

We’re two days away from the official release of the Patty Jenkins directed, Gal Gadot/Chris Pine starring Wonder Woman film and, thus far, the aggregate of reviews presented over on Rottentomatoes.com are incredibly ecstatic…

Rotten Tomatoes: Wonder Woman (2017)

As of this writing, the film sits at an incredibly lofty 97% positive.  While I suspect this number will drop a bit when we reach Friday and the full forces of worldwide reviewers are heard, the film nonetheless already has 74 “pro” reviews, a fairly high number, and of those only 2 were “negative”.

The two negative reviews come from, respectively, Luke Buckmaster for The Daily Review (the full review is here) and Steve Rose for The Guardian (the full review is here).

Mr. Buckmaster gives the film a mediocre 2.5 stars out of 5 but his review is hardly a body slam against the film.  His main criticism appears to be centered around the movie’s climax, which he (and, to be fair, a few others) felt was just another CGI effects-laden fight-fight-fight-fest as well as the fact that the film felt familiar to him, especially the “fish out of water” aspect of Princess Diana/Wonder Woman emerging into the real world of WWI, which he interestingly noted was not unlike what occurred in the movie Crocodile Dundee.

Mr. Rose, on the other hand, is far less impressed.  Here’s some of what he had to say:

I had no shortage of excitement and goodwill towards this female-led superhero project, but in the event it’s plagued by the same problems that dragged down previous visits to the DC movie world: over-earnestness, bludgeoning special effects, and a messy, often wildly implausible plot. What promised to be a glass-ceiling-smashing blockbuster actually looks more like a future camp classic.

Ouch.

However, his appears to be the only really negative voice out there -so far anyway- and he ultimately gives the film a below average 2 stars out of 5.

At the risk of beating a dead horse, I’ve made my opinion of Batman v. Superman known plenty of times around here.  I really liked the film and, further, thought the addition of Wonder Woman in it was a stroke of genius.  She single-handedly spiced up the movie’s climax which, had she not been there, might have been a far duller affair.

This past Memorial Day Weekend proved a big disappointment to the theaters in terms of revenue.  According to Emma Spencer at laist.com, the theater revenue was at an 18 year low (you can read the full article here).

Frankly, this doesn’t surprise me.  Guardians of the Galaxy 2, which I had no interest in seeing (another dead horse: I didn’t like the first film at all, despite so many others liking it, therefore had no interest in seeing the second) plus the latest Pirates of the Caribbean, Alien: Covenant, and Baywatch were pretty much the “big four” films out there this weekend, and as far as I was concerned, none of them were interesting to me.

In fact, as I looked over the many films coming this summer, there were precious few of them that looked like slam-bang appealing works.  When I wrote my original list, I was indeed curious to see Wonder Woman and was wowed by the trailers that had been released to that point.

Now, given the very positive reviews and what I’m assuming is interest in this film (and lack of interest in the others), I’m most curious to see this film…and see how it does.

Perhaps this is very much the right time, both in terms of box office and political tides, for a Wonder Woman film to be released.