Wonder Woman got many positive reviews since it came out. But for all the wrong reasons – the main arguments are that the main character is, in fact, a woman and that the movie was directed by a woman. However, those two things don’t automatically make the movie good. Too many people refuse to remove their rose-colored glasses and see the movie for what it is, but I’ll do my best to provide arguments as to why it’s not nearly as good as everyone thinks.
Before I begin, I’d like to point out that the movie was entertaining enough to be worth watching and it had some moments that I found enjoyable. But overall it has one too many flaws and was definitely overhyped. So let’s begin.
Visuals & sound
Just like every other Snyder movie, WW has washed-out, boring colors. In this case the filter is mostly blue-grey. The only real color and vibrance we see is on Themyscira, the amazon island. I wish the movie had spent more of its time there – it’s an ancient paradise of sorts, lively and filled with interesting characters. I would’ve loved to see more of the world of the amazons, their customs and society, their reasons for staying where they were. It struck me as odd that they’d been created specifically to help mankind, and yet they sort of just… left them to fend for themselves. One would expect they’d at least send some of their own to the rest of the world in times of war and conflict, to search for Ares and prevent more deaths. That was never even addressed.
There was an overwhelming amount of CGI in every single fight. More often than not, it breaks the flow of the fight and takes you out of it for absolutely no reason. A good example for a well choreographed and shot superhero fight is the airport one in "Civil War". There are a lot of characters, but we get to see everything that's happening without slowing anything down unnecessarily. Or for a 1:1 fight we can look at "The Winter Soldier". No slow motion, just smooth action and editing. It makes the fight so much more immersive and exciting. And it gives the viewer an idea of the speed, agility and skill on both sides. Something that was lost in Wonder Woman.
As for the sound effects and music – at one point, during the final fight, I had an urge to cover my ears before I went deaf. Maybe that was just the cinema I watched the movie at, but the volume had been normal up until that point and completely overwhelming after.
The soundtrack was mostly generic and the only character that had a theme song was Wonder Woman herself, but it was awfully underused. As I recall, it was only heard in one or two moments in the film. Completely forgettable music for the rest of the time.
Main character
Wonder Woman is not relatable at all. We know from the start that she's perfect in every way and every man in the movie proves that by gawking at her and talking to her in a suggestive way. I don’t see how that can be seen as empowering, as all it means is that men like her because of her looks.
She never gets hurt while she fights, even when she's against bullets in a skirt, using only a small round shield to protect herself. You're never afraid for her, because she's invincible. And even when she, at the end, kills the wrong person, there's never any doubt in her mind that what she did was right. Maybe it was, but it would've been interesting if we could see her show regret and doubt in herself and her motives.
The movie tried to hammer hard on the idea that Wonder Woman loves all of mankind deeply and believes they’re all good. And yet she never tries to reason with Ludendorff or give him a second chance. She decides to simply kill him instead. Which is refreshing, in a way, for a superhero movie, but ultimately makes no sense. Even if the outcome of that fight was still the same, at least it would've shown us that Diana is somewhat relatable. She has no real inner conflict and feels nothing for the people she's fighting. Wasn't the message of this movie supposed to be "love will save the world"? Or did she only mean that about her love for Steve Trevor? She falls in love with literally the first man she's ever seen and it’s suggested that it’s mainly because of his looks, so that certainly doesn’t tell us anything about why exactly she loves humans. I find it hard to believe that her mother’s stories continued to influence her in that way even after she saw the war.
The whole "love will save the world" message falls flat, because it was never proved in any way. Steve sacrifices himself for the greater good. He does it to stop the war and save his country. It could be suggested that he also does it out of love for Diana, and while I don't think that's the case, nobody else did anything out of "love" either.
Which brings me to the next issue:
Diana never looks for a peaceful resolution to any conflict. The only people she seems to want to protect are the ones from her "team".
She never really cares to ask if she was on the right side of the conflict. Steve tells her from the moment he's saved that he's the "good guy" and the men coming after him are the "bad guys" and Diana never questions it. She just starts fighting them. For someone as inexperienced in the ways of men and their history as she is, I'd expect her to ask more questions about why they fight at least. Yet she never gives it a second thought.
I was actually hoping to see her stop mid-fight, whether early in the movie while still on the island, or later on at the battlefield, and ask the soldiers, both the Germans and the Americas, why they were killing other men, when all of humankind is (supposedly) one. There is no thought behind her actions, just mindless conviction and the desire to finish her mission.
We never even saw her interact with Dr. Maru, who (in my opinion) was the most interesting character in the movie. I'd love to have seen her backstory, as she must've had some reason to do what she was doing. But we were never given any details...
The importance of being beautiful
For a story about the "strongest woman in the world", Wonder Woman as a movie was all too focused on looks and romance. There doesn't seem to be a legitimate reason for a romance to happen, other than that Steve is handsome. And the "subtle" bragging about his size was just... I can only think of the word cringeworthy. It literally made me wince every time this joke was made. But it was probably just a bit cringier (is that how it's spelled?) than their awkward conversation about sex while they were on the boat.
I usually don't care what an actor looks like, as long as they're right for the role, and I have to say I was very disappointed with the choice for the lead. Gal Gadot is beautiful, of course, but she's never intimidating. The scene where she walks through "no man's land" is supposed to be epic, Diana's supposed to look fierce and threatening... But she just looks like a model in a high fashion photoshoot. The women on the island, on the other hand, actually looked like warriors. I'd watch the movie again and again if any one of them had been cast as Wonder Woman. They're the ones who were actually intimidating.
Something that stood out to me in WW is that one of the messages it conveyed was of beauty being good and ugliness/deformity being evil. The beautiful and perfect in every way Diana has an opponent who is broken both physically and mentally, and the movie never shows any sympathy for its female villain or consideration from the hero.
The actress who played Doctor Poison, Elena Anaya, recently revealed her character’s backstory in an interview. Dr. Maru “wants to provoke painful suffering, so she tested her own gas on her own face. She wanted to know how deep this form of her gas would go, so she put it on her own face.” I don’t know about you, but I’d have loved to see more of that and of her reasoning in general, as the character seemed really one-dimensional. But the movie chose to focus on perfection instead. There was no room in it for even the slightest bit of relatability.
The love interest
Aside from the too many d*** jokes, James is a terrible spy. Someone should make a montage of his mumbling and stuttering - it seems like he's unable to form a coherent sentence. Or maybe that's only when he's talking to Diana, I'm not entirely sure.
But the fact that, when trying to get to Dr. Maru, he forgets all about his mission just because Diana walks in wearing a revealing dress, and proceeds to ruin it, tells me that he's incredibly incompetent. It almost feels like there was a need to make him seem as "less than" our heroine. And if we're to make a comparison, let's take the most obvious choice - Captain America: The First Avenger. Peggy Carter is also a spy who is helping someone who's "superhuman", and yet she's never dumbed down or shown as less than Steve (Rogers). I haven't even watched her show, so I assure you there's no bias here. Steve and Peggy are simply shown as two people who are mostly equal and capable of working together without letting their feelings get too much in the way. They have their own missions and distractions in a time of war are not something they spend their time on.
Which also reminds me, did Diana actually have sex with her Steve, or did they just make out? Because either way, that scene was totally pointless and unnecessary. Leaving it out of the movie wouldn't have changed anything and it certainly didn’t show a connection other than a purely physical one between the two characters.
Ares
And as much as I like David Thewlis as an actor, he was definitely miscast as Ares. He looks way too different to what the character does in the comics, and I'm pretty sure that the huge moustache was never a thing. It looked so out of place for a Greek god. And while we're on the topic of Ares, is there a particular reason he waited for 5 minutes while Diana got her sword from the roof?
In the whole movie the CGI was lacking, but it really stands out as such during the final fight. This "epic" resolution of the movie's main conflict felt like it was added just because.
Even after everything that she's seen, Diana still doesn't believe that maybe humans are just not all good. And thanks to Ares actually showing up, she now has no reason to. Steve tried to explain to her multiple times that men are flawed creatures who crave conflict, but that's thrown out the window when Ares is destroyed and the German soldiers decide they want to be "good" again. As Ares said, he'd been nudging men on their path to war, but ultimately it was their decisions that led to all the pain and suffering. The impact of that idea is gone as soon as he dies. Why? It would’ve posed an important question for the main character to dwell on, but as with everything else, Diana just doesn’t think about anything. She just acts. The lack of internal conflict and consideration alone made me dislike her character.
Final Thoughts
The only conclusion that I got from this movie and how Diana acted was that beauty is good, ugliness is evil and as long as we're the good guys, there's no reason to question anything. No reason to understand the other side of the conflict's motivation and reasoning. Just a simple, easily digested good vs. evil story, beauty vs. ugliness, life vs. death... Except that the good guys killed people too, so maybe the last one doesn't count.
Wonder Woman could've been amazing. Instead it was mediocre at best, and in no way depicted this character the way it should have. And while the media keeps on raving about how good the movie was, and giving it a 10/10 score, it's good to take a step back and look at it from a more objective perspective.