Woman of the Hour

I'm late to the party, but I finally got a chance to see DC's latest superhero movie, Wonder Woman. My own response was less enthusiastic than the rapturous reception it seemed to receive in theaters, but that very same hype probably set me up to expect too much. (I also still haven't seen the reportedly terrible Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice or Suicide Squad, so the thrill of "finally getting a good DC movie" wasn't as strong for me.)

That said, Wonder Woman was a pretty good film, notably better than the DC universe film I have seen, Man of Steel. For one thing, it's considerably more fun. With this story depicting Diana's first time out in the world, there's a lot of fish-out-of-water comedy to be mined, and Gal Gadot has great comic timing for delivering it. (That said, other Wonder Woman appearances set in the modern day won't be able to leverage this, which seems like a big loss.)

The movie also has its share of action sequences that don't destroy every damn thing in sight. Yes, it devolves in that direction -- and those set pieces near the end are the most tedious of the movie -- but Act One stages a big battle on the Amazons' island without giving into wanton destruction, and Act Two has a tight, low-stakes fistfight in an alley that demonstrates how less can sometimes be more. (Or, at least, how variety really counts for something in an action movie.)

The core of the movie is kind of a bug and a feature. It really doesn't stray very far from the well-established formula of a superhero movie, and stocks heavily in cliches. You've seen just about every aspect of this plot structure in some superhero movie of the past decade, and you've got most of the tropes too. It is, by-and-large, a very predictable movie -- it does the formula well, but it's an old formula.

But like I said, that's also kind of a feature. It's not a small thing that a woman is the hero of this story, and while it would have been nice to be more surprised by the narrative, the fact that it isn't surprising is a statement. This story doesn't have to be different just because it stars a woman, it can just go through all the stations of the superhero movie cross, and do them better than any recent DC universe movie. It can gender-flop the damsel-in-distress cliches to a male, not really punch the character up all that much, and still attract an A-list star like Chris Pine to want to play the part.

I do come out of this movie generally entertained, easily believing that Gal Gadot must have been the best thing about Batman v. Superman, and more interested than I was before in seeing Justice League in a few weeks. Though Wonder Woman probably won't crack my top 10 list by the end of the year, I'd give it a solid B.