Review: ‘Wonder Woman’ film and star live up to the name

“Wonder Woman ” has been the subject of so much superfluous fuss, it’d be easy to forget that behind all of the hand-wringing and both symbolic and real pressure to succeed there’s actually a movie meant to entertain.

Yet, like the heroine at its center, “Wonder Woman” the movie rises with powerful grace above the noise. It’s not perfect, but it’s often good, sometimes great and exceptionally re-watchable.

Director Patty Jenkins’ film is so threaded with sincerity and goodness it’s a wonder how it got past the pugnacious minds responsible for what’s come before. “Wonder Woman” evokes not only the spirit of Richard Donner’s “Superman,” but also Joe Johnston’s “Captain America: The First Avenger,” while still being its own thing. Just look to the image of Gal Gadot confidently striding out alone onto an unwinnable battlefield with only a shield, a sword and a mission - and prevailing.

I think because Director Patty Jenkins harkened back to the great fun of the first two Superman movies from 1978 and 1980, it avoided the dark, brooding tone that made Man of Steel and Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice very difficult to watch at times. And it really helped that Gal Gadot and Chris Pine had GREAT chemistry on-screen, especially with surprisingly sparkling dialogue between the two.

Best of all, Jenkins also carefully avoided excessively pandering to the SJW crowd, so the movie is enjoyable by all audiences.

I think Wonder Woman could have an opening weekend box office revenue of just over US$175 million.

Doing the math, I guess your brother married his Air Force roomie’s sister? I read that Jenkins was an Air Force brat who finally settled in and grew up in Kansas. I’ve been impressed in all her interviews for this movie that she strenuously avoids discussing any kind of political agenda no matter how many times the interviewers bring it up. She avoids the bait in the most polite and gracious way possible, but basically says she wasn’t trying to represent women, she was just trying to make a good movie. She may be liberal but doesn’t sound like a leftist.

Wonder Woman’s a great movie in all the most important ways like character development and dialogue. Visually, a lot of other movies look more impressive, but the more old-fashioned, less stylized look may have been intentional to fit with the WW1 time period.

Supposedly Jenkins is not yet contracted for part 2, so she has to renegotiate a deal now. I’d say they’ll likely work it out, but there’s always a chance Warners envision a different direction for the sequel than she does and they part over the old “creative differences.”

My fanboy hope for part 2 is that Jenkins looks back to her first film, Monster with Charlize Theron and casts her as Wonder Woman villain Cheetah. That’s one of Wonder Woman’s most popular villains going back decades and to this day. It would give a change of pace from bringing in another Greek god type of villain. I suspect Jenkins would make it a “frenemies” type of relationship where they start out as friends but then Cheetah’s ruthlessness drives them apart and then she gets her powers to become a physical threat to Wonder Woman.

Here’s a little mock-up artwork of Charlize as Cheetah:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DBlX9LiXgAA7Qx4.jpg

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