I just watched the new Wonder Woman film

This isn't officially a movie review blog, but given I sometimes post random posts, I'll just take the chance to place a few comments about this Hollywood flick.

Hollywood has wanted to release a Wonder Woman film for quite some time and it was around 2012 when they were very close to doing just that with an unknown actress. However, between the cinema failures of Elektra and Halle Berry's horrid Catwoman film, releasing a movie of a powerful female comic book character was too risky. It also didn't help that fans didn't like the costume all that much.

In all fairness, the actress wasn't a bad cast, but the costume looked more like something you'd see in Comic-Con. I guess this was going to be a dud.

Regarding the new film where we got to see tidbits of Gal's character in that boring Batman vs Superman movie, I think Gal was well cast for the character. Whatever political opinions you have of her, I think her acting was quite suiting for the character and her more buky frame really gave her the title of a real world Amazoness. Let's face it, Hollywood is full of actors and musicians with political ideas that I don't really agree with yet that doesn't mean I'll just want to ban everything. However there are limits. Madonna's little tirade regarding burning down the White House when as far as I know she isn't even a US citizen didn't seem to be all that funny to me.

I'm not so sure about Chris Pine's character. He isn't exactly the most versatile or talented of actors and his character just seemed to be there saying the lines and enjoying the $$$. I found his character to be rather forgettable and it weakened the amusement factor of the film. Putting aside his acting, I also question what is going on with the character.

Okay, so he wants to save Europe from a mustard gas attack (just isolate atropine and inject yourself with a milligram of it!). He's a spy and loves England (Chris is so miscast in this role that it was hard to believe he was supposed to be a British national. I saw this film dubbed to spanish so I have no idea if his accent is convincing, but I'm rather certain it wasn't). The guy also shows up in an island that is not only inhabited by lots of available women of reproductive age, none of the inhabitants know about War World I. While delivering a crypted chemical recipe book to his army might seem compelling, most normal guys that are weary of war would probably just say, screw the army, I'm going to live in this magical island that is inhabited by lots of lusty women. Yet he just doesn't seem to care about Wonder Woman's affection or anything. What a weird male lead.

The token sidekick characters try to be funny, but they don't beat Mr. Marcus from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Heck, Henry Jones that was played by Sean Connery only stains a soldier's face with ink and scares some pigeons and yet he killed more enemies than the sidekicks in this film did. They could have killed all of the supporting characters and the plot wouldn't have hurt.

I liked Gal's acting and the way her character is a mixture between confidence and naïvety of the nature of mankind, but this is one of those movies where the villains are far more interesting characters than the good guys. I was infinitely more curious to know why chemical woman with crappy mask and her love buddy, Mr. angry German soldier toss some mustard gas into a meeting room and run off like they were playing a childish prank. How did they meet? Do they love eachother or just chaos? I cared more about them than the good guys.

The movie has a sort of uneven pace. Lots of boring filler talking scenes alternated with some battle scenes that are either rather well done and others with so much CGI that they look cartoonish instead of awesome. The movie would have been more impressive if the battle CGI was toned down and the battles more realistic. They seemed too clean with a plastic covering. Nothing to do with the grittiness of Saving Private Ryan.

There are some nice scenes going on that make it a mildly enjoyable movie, but the boring scenes were so boring I ended up playing with my cellphone. Might be worth it for the eye candy as a rental. I'll give the inevitable sequel the value of the doubt.

**1/2