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Old 06-18-2017, 06:05 PM   #41
Itse
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Hate to break the lore nitpick and talk about the film Wonder Woman

I think it was okay in a good way. I would say this movie suffered a bit from being such a late entry into the superhero game. Marvel has already mostly moved on to variations on superhero themes, so this felt slightly dated to me. That said, creating by-the-numbers entertainment that's actually entertaining can be hard even without the kind of extra scrutiny this film was under, so I think the creative team deserve a lot of credit.

Since I didn't really like Nolans Batman, I think this was my favourite DC film. It was also the first film where I felt DC's style could really be called artistic preferences instead of just being inferior to what Marvel has been doing. DC has generally been more about pathos and symbolism in comparison to Marvels more character driven stories. Marvels style appeals to me a LOT more, but here I can appreciate what they did and call the rest a matter of taste. (Captain America does high level symbolism better though.)

In general it's nice to see DC do something right for a change, since they're not going to stop making movies The box office success of WW heavily suggest we'll get sequels, so this will likely be the third commercially successful action franchise in recent years with a female lead. (Other two being the new Star Wars trilogy and Hunger Games. Feel free to add Mad Max to that, especially considering the talk about a possible Furiosa sequel.) Should put to rest the theory that female leads don't sell.

Random technical commentary:

I liked the script a lot on the concept level, although but the dialog could have used a few more really good lines. The main pair was a little lifeless and I think that's more on the script than the actors. Pacing was good, supporting characters were good.

I didn't like the way the action was directed, but again I'm sure that's a matter of taste. To me the constant switching from slo-mo to regular/fast pace in action scenes was jarring to the point of annoyance. I liked the visual effects otherwise. Use of colour was boring as hell, but that's a general problem with big budget action these days, so would be unfair to pick on this movie specifically. Still want to complain about it.

Overall this was a fun if a bit unremarkable piece of superhero entertainment.


...EDIT:
On the topic of recent commercially successful action franchises with a female lead, I guess I should add the Underworld series and the Resident Evil series. Obviously they're not punching in the same weight class, but both apparently make money considering the amount of films they've made.

...After checking the numbers, woah. Resident Evil series has made $1.2bn on a combined budget of $290M. That's good business.

Last edited by Itse; 06-18-2017 at 06:16 PM.
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