I enjoyed this film on first viewing, but on reflection and a second viewing it;s really not that great.
The film starts off really well with a small and exciting flashback, and then we get Wonder Women doing her thing in a mall which is great. The film starts to become really interesting when Barbara (played by Kristen Wiig) shows up, then she and Diana start to develop what seems like a very sweet friendship which I was getting very invested in.
It's at this point where Pedro Pascal shows up and steals what seems to be the lion's share of the runtine, and the interesting story between Diana and Barbara gets by and large shoved aside. We do see Barbara's transformation into Cheetah, and it's pretty well handled, but it keeps cutting back to Max Lord and his rather silly adventures at being an evil version of the Genie from Aladdin.
Had the film stuck with just Cheetah as the villain and focused some of the VERY long runtime on building a truly genuine friendship between Diana and Barbara, then the sense of pain would have been felt much more in the end battle as she would have been fighting someone genuinely close to her and not just some work colleague who she went to a boozy lunch with one time.
Gal Gadot's beautifully wholesome portrayal of Diana almost single handedly carries what is a very bloated and so-so movie. Her warmth and goodness is everything I wanted but didn't get from DCEU's Superman, and credit where credit is due - it's almost enough. But not quite.
The film starts off really well with a small and exciting flashback, and then we get Wonder Women doing her thing in a mall which is great. The film starts to become really interesting when Barbara (played by Kristen Wiig) shows up, then she and Diana start to develop what seems like a very sweet friendship which I was getting very invested in.
It's at this point where Pedro Pascal shows up and steals what seems to be the lion's share of the runtine, and the interesting story between Diana and Barbara gets by and large shoved aside. We do see Barbara's transformation into Cheetah, and it's pretty well handled, but it keeps cutting back to Max Lord and his rather silly adventures at being an evil version of the Genie from Aladdin.
Had the film stuck with just Cheetah as the villain and focused some of the VERY long runtime on building a truly genuine friendship between Diana and Barbara, then the sense of pain would have been felt much more in the end battle as she would have been fighting someone genuinely close to her and not just some work colleague who she went to a boozy lunch with one time.
Gal Gadot's beautifully wholesome portrayal of Diana almost single handedly carries what is a very bloated and so-so movie. Her warmth and goodness is everything I wanted but didn't get from DCEU's Superman, and credit where credit is due - it's almost enough. But not quite.