I will start with the elephant in the room, I’ll avoid direct spoilers, but one thing needs to be addressed and said out loud: the plot, the writing are not good, certainly not good enough for a movie of this caliber.
Sure, it works as a true comic book movie, but this movie is a lot more than that, fans have expectations and even if it’s the second part and fourth appearance of Wonder Woman in the DCEU, you need a story good enough to attract new and old viewers, this movies fails to do that. The story line is pretty weak truth be told. At first I thought it missed one thing I couldn’t put my finger on, but then I started to analyze the entire movie and I found that there’s many flaws in the plot.
I hate to say this, but it does feel unrealistic and the movie comes over as cheesy. The exact same plot would be fine for an Animated version, where you can forgive some of the mistakes made in the movie, but here the villains were just badly used and the plot doesn’t always make sense. I don’t think the movie is very friendly to potential new viewers, but comic book fans should be able to enjoy this one.
I wouldn’t go as far as calling it terrible movie, there’s some good parts in it, which I’ll get to in the second part of the review.
The running time drags on for too long, since the writing is sub-par for the franchise, it contributes to make the first half of the movie extra weak.
I understand what the goal of the plot was, but at the end of the day, the story should have been a lot better. I’m not 100% if they picked the wrong villains or perhaps they just used them wrongly? Maybe a third more dangerous villain would have added to the plot, we’ll never know.
The good aspects of the movie:
I’ll start with the acting; Gal Gadot doesn’t disappoint, she now truly owns this role, in fact this performance may have been her best so far, she truly becomes Wonder Woman in this franchise, not just that, she also shows some very convincing (emotional) acting. I would even say she was even better than in the first one, at least in therms of character. I look forward to seeing her more in a future part III and seeing her in other movies of the DCEU.
Kristen Wiig is pretty spectacular in this movie, she is no stranger to the big screen and that is clearly visible in this movie, she knows what she is doing. She convincingly goes through 3 transformations in this movie and they are all very enjoyable and believable. I wasn’t too sure she was the right pick for the character, but having seen the movie I can confidently say she pulled it off!
Pedro Pascal, though coming over as cheesy at times, did fulfill his role and character perfectly. It’s quite the contrast from his lead role in the Disney/Star Wars series “The Mandalorian”, clearly the guy can act!
The action is more spectacular than ever, they took Wonder Woman to the next level, not only that, all the action and all the fight sequences were very well done, though there’s some minor flaws in the CGI, overall the action still is one of the strength of this movie. We’re talking about a comic book movie, it did have “those moments” in this movie, I’ve heard several other reviewers call this an homage to the old-school comic book movies of the 80ies, that’s why the setting also contributes greatly the whole movie. I’m not sure what it is about the 80ies, but those seemed very fun to live in. I think it might be the fact that I and other people grew up watching movies set in that period and we get some nostalgia seeing a modern movie set in that era. It’s like watching and old movie with modern special effects.
I think the acting as well as the action redeem the movie.
In therms of comic book content, it does not disappoint, I already said the plot is very comic book like, and most of the fans of the characters will be happy to see many direct references to the source material.
Overall it’s still a very enjoyable movie, even if the plot could be a lot better. Not too many movies were released in 2020, I think this one is still worth checking out, but that may just be me.
