Wonder Woman

"Do you believe her?"

This question, posed in passing, ought to have been a central theme of the movie. Diana, stepping from the world of myth into the world as we know it, provides an explanation for events that is wildly implausible to the characters she interacts with. And yet...they do have evidence that she's right.

How much evidence is required to believe the unbelievable? How many times does a person have to be right before she can be concluded sane? How does one make critical decisions in the presence of uncertainty? At what point does faith become rational?

Wonder Woman dabbles with these questions, but doesn't really explore them in any depth, and the movie is weaker for it. It prefers to meditate on the nature of mankind, which would have been fine, if the climax of the movie hadn't completely undermined all of its previous ideas.

I suppose I should elaborate on that, so SPOILER ALERT: Diana's hope of ending all war by killing Ares always seemed naive, and even cheap, simply because of the historical setting. World War I is not some sort of myth or legend; it's a horrific event that really happened. To go back and alter history to say it was all the work of one malevolent entity, and that when that entity was defeated, all was well, would have been offensively simplistic. Life is almost never that straightforward, and WWI certainly wasn't. Admittedly, some of the fun of movies is that the solution sometimes is that easy, but the quagmire of trench warfare is not really the appropriate setting for that kind of movie.

I was, therefore, pleasantly surprised when the Ares fight was over in only a few minutes and changed nothing of consequence, and the cheapness of any other ending was made explicit as Diana talked with Steve about the fallen nature of mankind.

But then nothing really comes of it. Steve had never entirely been convinced of the whole Ares business anyway, and so he continues with what had always been more or less plan A in his mind, and Diana, before she can really come to any conclusion, is confronted by the real Ares. Surprise! This is why nothing changed when you defeated the Big Bad! He wasn't really the Big Bad at all!

There is some semi-philosophical argument during the fight, and Diana does have to make some choices, but in the end, she defeats Ares. Then the sun rises, and the battlefield is calm, and the next scene is a victory celebration. The war is over. Peace has been established. And the viewer realizes that, although the movie tried to cover it up with some fraught conversations, it did go for the cheap superhero ending after all. END SPOILER

Still, it was a good story and the characters were likable. Both Steve and Diana took a turn being the fish out of water, to reasonably entertaining results.
 (Although one does wonder why clothing is such a foreign concept to the Amazons. In the first place, it can't possibly be comfortable to wear plate armour directly over the skin. Secondly, wouldn't a warrior race want all parts of their bodies not protected by plate armour to be covered by heavy leather or something? And why would a helmet possibly not be part of Diana's outfit? I understand the real answers to these questions--that there is no point in casting a beautiful woman if you don't let people look at her--but from the Amazons' point of view, I'm not sure any of it makes a whole lot of sense. And while I'm on a tangent complaining about these sorts of things, why didn't the Amazons have more advanced technology? You'd think a race that was obsessed with training for war would have eventually gotten around to inventing the pistol. Is it somehow less honourable to kill someone with a bullet from a short-range firearm than with an arrow?)

Anyway, Diana and Steve bounced off each other well, and Diana was a strong woman without veering too much into obnoxious feminist territory. The assembled team was decent, though all of the members could have been a little more developed. These are minor quibbles. The movie is good and well worth watching.

It's only a shame that it could have been great and it wasn't.