Wonder Woman / Wonder Woman 1984 (Patty Jenkins, 2017/20)

[captveg]

Well, I'd say Man of Steel and Wonder Woman feel fairly comfortable in their 2hr 20m -ish lengths.

On the other hand, Batman v Superman was being asked to do a LOT by the studio. Because of this it actually works better in it's 3hr incarnation than the 2hr 30m version, but that doesn't resolve all the burdens being laid at it's feet of: establishing a new in-universe Batman, complete with non-standard psyche; the meta-human thesis, aka introduce four other JL heroes; have a combo of comic storylines of following up on Man of Steel's ending, Dark Knight Returns, Must There Be a Superman, Injustice, and Death of Superman; and also having an over complicated conspiracy villain plan.

To me, even if you keep all these elements, they could have made a cleaner pathway from Man of Steel's ending to the opposition of the heroes without such complicated villain plotting. And they really didn't need to have the clip show of future heroes and should have trusted that Diana's presence accomplished that mandate well enough. There are still some other things that get in the way, but these are the two quickest minimizations I would have implemented to improve the film if the studio insisted it all still be there.

[Perkins Cobb]

David Edelstein's Wonder Woman review is problematic.

[Big Ben]

Taken from the David's review:

"Gadot didn’t wow me in her debut in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. Her elation while fighting made for a welcome counterpoint to all the gloom, but she seemed like a stiff out of costume. But maybe it was Ben Affleck’s heaviness that dragged her down. She’s a treat here with her raspy accented voice and driving delivery. (Israeli women are a breed unto themselves, which I say with both admiration and trepidation.) In some scenes, Gadot’s Diana pauses mid-rant and a vertical crease appears at the base of her broad forehead — her mind is churning. Why do humans kill the innocent? Where is Ares? Are men necessary for anything but procreation?"

I have many questions stemming from just this paragraph alone.

[Luke M]

Come on guys I feel unpopular (and called out for being overly concerned with representation and politics and what have you) here too sometimes but let's not act like Knives is shoving people into lockers here. I don't think the intention was to mock the SJWness of 'African American' here, just a light goof on the fact that it's literally less accurate than 'black' at conveying intended meaning

I think everyone in this debate is forgetting that Wonder Woman isn't American.

(Sorry for being that guy)

[knives]

But she is a woman.

[Luke M]

I realize where I went wrong.

[Feiereisel]

I've been digesting Wonder Woman all afternoon...but broadly speaking, I thought that despite a promising start, this was terrible and sloppily executed--especially once the story shifts to London.

Normally I don't second-guess myself--and I'm not saying I'm doing that here--but given the extremely positive reception of the film, it feels like I'm taking crazy pills. Did anyone else have the same reaction?

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Also, why does DC insist on ending their movies with superheroes emailing one another? Who thinks this is a good idea?

[carmilla mircalla]

saw it yesterday

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I think it's good for what it is nothing groundbreaking like people are hyping it up to be. I like the reveal of who Ares was masquerading as but good lord they still kept Thewlis even after armoring up. I thought it was awkward because I could only think of Thewlis's wirt frame and mustache underneath the hulking armor and could not convinve myself it is a skinny guy in a CGI war ensemble. Also the design of him was just underwhelming and the CGI destruction was way more distracting than the climaxes in BvS or MoS

[Clarence]

I felt the same way. The editing throughout most of the movie was incredibly sloppy and the dialog was some of the absolute worst I've ever heard in a movie. The last act was so unbearably dull and contrived I was just hoping for the movie to end. I'm really baffled at the great reviews this is getting.

[tenia]

I'm really baffled at the great reviews this is getting.

My feeling for most recent super hero movies, especially the MCU ones. IIRC Age of Ultron has 75% positive reviews on RT, while I found it almost unbearably long and poorly done.

[knives]

I suspect some, not all obviously, are supporting more the idea of it as long as it is MCU levels of mediocre rather than the actual quality of the film.

[tenia]

I dont know. I can believe some are maybe a bit too nice with the MCU movies but at least in the US, most of them seem to genuinely get good reviews, which is why I was baffled when suddenly, the DCU movies were getting mocked for "failing to achieve what MCU has succeeded to do" since doing overlong mediocre movies was equivalently done by Marvel.

[Brian C]

I could be way off here, but back in the day, if a critic didn't like a movie that was a hit, they never heard much about it other than generic complaints about critics. Maybe they'd get some letters.

Now, though, even a small-time critic will get heaps of scorn and even death threats for shitting on a movie that has a vocal fanbase. And with paid criticism a dying phenomenon they'll probably get fired too. How many critics really want to deal with that? Honestly, it hardly seems worth it.

[Luke M]

I thought it was excellent. I think it had a great flow, was funny when it tried, was awe inspiring when it wanted. For all the enjoyment I had watching it, I have no desire to watch the Snyder films. I'd be up for a Patty Jenkins helmed sequel though.

[Clarence]

-

[mfunk9786]

It seems this film was destined to do well critically, regardless of its actual quality. No critic wants to bother after the hardcore fans' extreme reaction to Suicide Squad's negative reviews. Add that to the fact that this is the first major female-led superhero movie, and it starts to make sense why such an aggressively mediocre film is getting such high praise.

Let's make this the one forum where we don't spin theories about why critics reviewed movies a certain way because of sociopolitical conspiracy theories against comic book fans, or the gender of the filmmaker or stars, shall we?

[Luke M]

It seems this film was destined to do well critically, regardless of its actual quality. No critic wants to bother after the hardcore fans' extreme reaction to Suicide Squad's negative reviews. Add that to the fact that this is the first major female-led superhero movie, and it starts to make sense why such an aggressively mediocre film is getting such high praise.

Let's make this the one forum where we don't spin theories about why critics reviewed movies a certain way because of sociopolitical conspiracy theories against comic book fans, or the gender of the filmmaker or stars, shall we?

Co-sign.

Wild thought; maybe the critics wrote glowing reviews because they enjoyed the film.

[Clarence]

Let's make this the one forum where we don't spin theories about why critics reviewed movies a certain way because of sociopolitical conspiracy theories against comic book fans, or the gender of the filmmaker or stars, shall we?

You're right. Ultimately, it's great to see such a high profile blockbuster being directed by a woman. Hopefully this is the beginning of a trend of female-helmed blockbusters. I apologize if my comment offended.

[captveg]

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Also, why does DC insist on ending their movies with superheroes emailing one another? Who thinks this is a good idea?

None of the other three DCEU films end this way.

[Feiereisel]

SpoilerShow

Also, why does DC insist on ending their movies with superheroes emailing one another? Who thinks this is a good idea?

None of the other three DCEU films end this way.

Forgive me--I forgot that BvS still has something like thirty minutes to burn after Batman shares Lex Luthor's secret Google Drive files with Diana. I only wished it ended there.

Suicide Squad's dinner-table exposition scenes and smuggled-phone subplot are alike in that they are similarly inert methods of storytelling that speak volumes about DC's "just get it on screen and we'll figure it out later" approach to building an interconnected universe.

Wonder Woman does mostly avoid this, but closing the movie with such a silly beat--after an already muddled and unsatisfying climactic set-piece--really soured me on it.

[captveg]

I don't disagree with you - that's BvS' least important scene, and I don't like Suicide Squad at all. Just saying they aren't the part of the final scenes of either film (or Man of Steel).

I don't mind Wonder Woman's use of it as much because it's part of a bookends structure/trope, and not a totally isolated thing. It reminds me of how bookends are used in Saving Private Ryan more than anything else, and similarly doesn't hold its weight as much as the main story it surrounds.

[Feiereisel]

That's a good connection--the Private Ryan's bookends are peculiar in that way, so much so I actually tend to forget that the movie begins the way it does. The D-Day landing sequence pulls focus.

The big sticking point for me with Wonder Woman is:

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the absolutely rudderless conclusion. Though the movie starts to fishtail once it transitions to London due to an uneasy blend of banter, physical comedy, and wartime drama, it at least holds together because the goals of the characters remain clear throughout. I question the inclusion of a lot of the comedic elements, such as the banter and the wardrobe bits; by setting these these light moments against the gritty, burned out city and following them with more somber, serious beats, the jokes seem comparatively inappropriate.

Once the film transitions to the front, it dumps more characters into the mix and picks up the threads of the film's banal villains, ricocheting between settings and set pieces with little regard for the story it's telling--it becomes a sprint of badly-cut action beats and characters who yell what they're thinking at one another. Rather than being developed or complicated, the plot is barked out between bits of very empty bombast. The speed at which the film burns story renders the the arguments between Trevor and Diana toothless. If I'd known the film's snow-set slow dance sequence would be the last thing worth watching in it, I would have made sure to relish it more before it ended.

The shredded storytelling leading into the conclusion makes end of the film a frustrating and fitful hodgepodge. The reveal of the "real" antagonist does provide a bit of traction--Thewlis can monologue, and the lines about his passivity are intriguing in the context of the scene--but that's undone by the bland CGI slugfest and the borderline shameless lifts from the first Captain America movie that follow. The second half of the film is a slow deflation rather than a carefully constructed build-up to a rousing conclusion.

I won't deny that it has some pieces that work well, but ultimately Wonder Womanjust fails to fit together in a satisfactory way.

A last quick edit: What did I miss that allowed others to enjoy it?

There's no review conspiracy--if I did anything to suggest that, I apologize, and the idea itself is ridiculous--it's just that usually I'm closer to the consensus, so I'm honestly curious as to why I'm such an outlier with regard to the film.

[tenia]

Wild thought; maybe the critics wrote glowing reviews because they enjoyed the film.

It seems also to be maybe an American thing (which would explain why these reviews seem strangely too often too glowing). I had a look at our French aggregator (Allocine) and compared with RT :

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Guardians 2 : 81% / 7.1 vs 6.8
Doctor Strange : 90% / 7.3 vs 6.2
Civil War : 90% / 7.6 vs 6.4
Ant Man : 81% / 6.8 vs 6.6
Age of Ultron : 75% / 6.7 vs 5.8
Guardians 1 : 91% / 7.8 vs 7.6
Winter Soldier : 89% / 7.6
Thor 2 : 66% / 6.2 vs 5.6
Iron Man 3 : 79% / 7 vs 6.4
Avengers : 92% / 8 vs 8.0
Captain America : 80% / 6.9 vs 6.6
Thor : 77% / 6.7 vs 6.0
Iron Man 2 : 72% / 6.5 vs 6.2

As you can see, most of these have better reviews is the US (simplifying that RT is mostly comprised of US-centric review, which isn't 100% accurate to be fully transparent).

The extension makes the exercice all the more interesting since many discussions have been "DC is copying Marvel" : the DCEU movies are pretty much within the critical range shown above (Suicide Squad, however, being notably below at only 4.0 - which is still too high if you ask me - ) :
Man of Steel : 6.6
BvS : 5.2
Suicide Squad : 4.0
Wonder Woman : 6.6

That's why from France, it has always been quite strange to see the rather positive feedbacks towards the MCU movies while DCEU was getting a backlash because here, the movies were seen as rather similar in quality (with, again, Suicide Squad being much lower).

[hearthesilence]

David Edelstein's Wonder Woman review is problematic.

Edelsten's response to the ridicule.

[hearthesilence]

I'm starting to see quite a few critics (Nick Pinkerton for one) calling this film out for being garbage. Not for any political or social reason, just for remaining another crappy blockbuster movie.