THOR RAGNAROK

            Ever since they put Jon Favreau in the director’s seat for Iron Man back in 2008, Marvel Studios have enjoyed great success, through letting established comedy directors make their action movies.  The same year they put established action director Louis Leterrier in charge of The Incredible Hulk and the results were notably less successful - both in terms of fan love and box office revenue.

            The importance of striking that balance between drama and comedy resulted in the hiring of writer-directors like Joss Whedon, James Gunn and Shane Black, who are all skilled in both.  I would, therefore, characterise the bulk of the Marvel Cinematic Universe films as Action Comedies.  The action is the priority, the comedy is a bonus.

            Thor Ragnarok is a bit different:  It’s a Comedy with Action.  The emphasis is very much on the yucks, with the fights and chases just, sort of, added in by contractual obligation.  This is a very different emphasis from the last Thor film, Dark World (2013), which was criticised for being too po-faced.  It is interesting, then, that the characters who did offer humour last time - namely Darcy, the sarky scientist and Selvig, the mad scientist - have been ejected from this film, in favour of a new gang of misfits. 

            The signal that there would be a significant change of tone with Ragnarok, came with the hiring of director Taika Waititi.  Again, he’s a director with a comedic track-record and, while his movies, so-far, may have been light on stunts and CGI, they were heavy on character and eccentricity.  There is a gentle feel-good to his work, and Thor Ragnarok, despite all the pomp and circumstance of a Marvel juggernaut, manages to retain that.

            His comedy is (deliberately) a little bit hesitant and shambolic.  Natural, you might say.  He doesn’t seem to want either the performances or the delivery of the lines to be too polished.  He likes his actors to improvise and, indeed, does much the same in his own performances.  This being so, casting Jeff Goldblum as the baddie was a masterstroke.  Goldblum’s eccentric delivery is never less than delightful, his characters never less than endearing.  Yes, that’s a problem when he’s playing the baddie ... Because he doesn’t really believe he’s evil any more than we do ... But he’s just so much fun to watch, no-one minds.

Vintage Goldblum.  Did I mention I interviewed him once?  When Jurassic Park was out.  He offered the lightest, handshake ever, it was like his hand passed through mine.  There were three of us interviewing him, for different radio stations; he asked us our names and, when he was answering our questions, used our names, which made us sound more important and him sound more friendly.  Lovely bloke.

            Otherwise, there are a few pointless cameos which are mostly played for laughs (not just the inevitable Stan Lee one), Anthony Hopkins gets to join in the fun by outrageously ripping the piss out of himself, and Chris Hemsworth reminds us of the physical comedy skills he displayed in the first film.  Waititi also gives a mo-cap and vocal performance as a talking pile of rocks called Korg, who is initially hilarious but, unfortunately, I found quite wearing quite quickly.

            Did I mention Tom Hiddleston?

            Okay I won’t.

            Oh, alright, then.  He’s back as Loki, of course.  Still wearing his silly long wig, still wearing the hat with antlers whenever he gets the chance; still very aware of how silly it all is.  He’s also wearing a bit too much pancake makeup now, for some reason.  As usual, he’s sort of a baddie, but not really.  At least Thor is wise to him now, which makes for lovely interplay between the two actors - who have both had plenty of chances to settle into these characters by now.

Planet Hulk (2006-7) was a comic which I never found especially convincing, (the World War Hulk story which preceded it was far better, in my estimation) but it has adapted very well to the screen. 

            As you’ll know from the first trailer, this half of the film features The Hulk (who crash-landed on this alien world after flying off in the Quinjet at the end of the last Avengers movie, in 2015) and a short-haired Thor.  They are matched as gladiators for the entertainment of Goldblum and his planet of Scavengers.  In between bouts, Hulk and Thor find themselves rooming together, as superherodom’s funniest odd couple.  These scenes are a joy, providing some great opportunities for Hemsworth and Ruffalo to stretch their comic muscles.

     Speaking of stretching, poor Chris Hemsworth seems to have had an allergic reaction to all that Australian food, as his arms are massively swollen.  Poor lamb.

            Unfortunately, the second story - the one from which the film actually takes its title - is less engaging and less ... Unique.  Cate Blanchett is not nearly as well served as Goldblum.  She plays the film’s other baddie, the Goddess of Death, Hela, who invades Asgard while Thor is off on his jollies.  Obviously, with a name like ‘Goddess of Death’, she’s not going to get many gags.  But, it turns out, she’s just your boiler-plate megalomaniac, who simply wants the world to bow down before her.

            Then, instead of leading her army to conquer the nine realms, Hela spends her time fretting about why the Asgardians aren’t going along with her plans.  She worries that no-one remembers her and, therefore, she has no authority.  Issues over middle-management and discipline are not, sadly, the stuff legends are made on.

Hela, struggling with the powerpoint projector at another Asgardian staff meeting.

            I fear that this half of the film has suffered from some late tampering.  In the trailer, the moment where she grabs Thor’s hammer takes place in a New York alleyway.  In the finished film, it has been moved to a bleak and indifferently-realised grassy cliff-top, where Odin gets to do some pointless pontificating.  Not sure why he couldn’t do that in New York.  Anyway, this suggests that Hela’s story has undergone some last-minute surgery.  Whether this has made the story better or worse is something which, I suspect, we’ll never know.

            What’s certain, is that the Ragnarok story hangs together less convincingly than Planet Hulk, and not just because of the lack of Thor.  We never really believe that Asgard is in danger, nor that the fate of the nine realms is really at stake.  This is, all too often, the problem with Marvel movies ... Like Bond films before them ... their villains just aren’t scary enough.

            Ragnarok does afford Idris Elba’s Heimdall the chance to do some action man stuff, saving the Asgardian ‘civilians’ and leading them - Moses like - into the wilderness which, apparently, surrounds Asgard.  But there remains the sense (held over from the previous two films) that he is a character they could have done much more with, yet have let him slip through their fingers.

            Similarly, Karl Urban is an actor who seems, for some peculiar reason, to have not (yet) fulfilled his potential.  He hasn’t found his niche.  There’s no denying Urban’s commitment to this film, as he shaved his head and bulked-up for the role, even though he wears armour throughout, so you can’t really tell.

An almost unrecogniseable Karl Urban is just one of a host of Aussie and Kiwi actors director Waititi surrounded himself with.  Here, he meets all the gods, aliens, celestials and magic powers with some good old-fashioned hot lead.

            Those intense eyes of his shine out in every role he takes (with the exception of 2012’s Dredd, naturally), and he’s able to give us chilling villainy (in The Bourne Supremacy in 2004), lovable comedy (as Bones in the Star Trek films) and be a reliable leading man (in the criminally undervalued Dredd), so quite why he finds himself still playing (albeit very interesting) supporting roles, is a mystery to me.  Maybe he likes it that way. 

            Anyway - here he gives a great turn as Skurge, long-term Thor antagonist from the comics.  He witnesses the Warriors Three being despatched off-handedly by Hela, so decides to bend the knee; but his heart isn’t really in this whole lackey-for-hire business.  Like Heimdall, he’s a diverting character who deserves more than he gets.

            Back on Planet Hulk, Tessa Thompson turns up as another Thor comic favourite: Valkyrie.  I confess, when she first turned up, her sulky demeanour and bad-assery made me think she was played by Michelle Rodriguez.  That’s the kind of sass she brings to Valkyrie - who forms an important bridge between the two stories.  The flashback to the last time the Valkyries met Hela is a startling sequence and proves that Waititi can do full-on action, with no sense of irony.  It’s a shame he didn’t do a little bit more of that, at key moments.

The second best ride of the Valkyries ever put on screen.

            They have come up with an audacious and well-deserved way of tying up all the loose-ends of this story and, indeed, this three-film story-arc.  Yet, the crescendo of both stories - the Hammer of the Gods moment, if you will - should have been hairs-on-the-back-of-the-neck filmmaking but, because of the tonal shifts throughout, and because Blanchett really hasn’t been given material the equal of her skills; this dénouement, whilst entertaining, lacks the tension it should have. 

            I feel that cutting back and forth between two seemingly unconnected stories cuts into the enjoyment of both.  Planet Hulk isn’t as exciting as it could be, Ragnarok isn’t as serious as it could be.  Also, the light-hearted tone of the one, defuses the end-of-the-world threat of the other.

            Thor Ragnarok is - in parts - a delight.  Mark Mothersbaugh’s plinky-plonky retro music, for example, is suitably eccentric and energetic.  But, as a whole, is not a great film.  It’s not even a great Marvel film.  It’s tone is very inconsistent and its script is very cluttered.  However, the whole messy confection is mixed together in the mighty Marvel manner, which hasn’t failed us yet.

Thor and Hulk as roomies.  So, whose turn is it to clean the toilet?

Dir: Taika Waititi

Script: Eric Pearson, Craig Kyle & Christopher Yost

Dur: 130 mins

Cert: 12A

SPIDER-MAN: HOMECOMING

Well, it was a struggle, but I managed to find a poster for this film, that didn't look like it was put together by the Graphic Designer's 12 year old kid.

            Spider-Man: Homecoming is so called, not because of the Homecoming Dance that features briefly in it; nor is it so-called because the story features a major “there’s no place like home” revelation.  It is called Homecoming as a knowing meta-narrative nod to the audience, that the friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man has returned to the Marvel fold after decades in the wilderness.

            Spider-Man is their Mickey Mouse, he’s their Superman; he’s the flag-bearer for their entire business and, anachronistically, because of difficult financial decisions made decades ago; they haven’t been able to use him.  But now they can.  This was the chance for Kevin Feige to roll up his sleeves and say “Right, this is how you’re supposed to do a Spidey movie!”

            What’s at stake, then, is whether Marvel can weave its magic over its own characters, when they have been damaged whilst on loan.  Fox keeps managing to pull the X-Men’s asses out of the fire.  For every desperately poor Wolverine (2009), there’s a surprisingly rich First Class (2011), for every Apocalypse (2016), there’s a Logan (2017).  And then, of course, there’s Deadpool!  But The Fantastic Four, bless them, they have enjoyed no such success; each of Fox’s FF films has dug a deeper hole in the affections of the audience than the one before it.  But, despite that, it has become abundantly clear that Fox will never return them to the fold.  So, Marvel is moving on without them.  Ramping up The Inhumans as replacements for the X-Men; going cosmic without the need for the Negative Zone and Galactus.

            But Spider-Man is different.  Apparently, so the story goes, Raimi wanted to continue his old-school approach to Spidey by having his third film feature The Vulture.  Along with Doc Ock and Green Goblin, he was one of comic-book Spidey’s longest serving adversaries (first appearing in issue 2), and one that the fans were desperate to see brought to the screen.  However, this decision was overruled and, instead, Sony decided to go with Venom - a character from a very different period in Spidey’s history, with a very different fan-base.  Well, we all know how Spider-Man 3 (2007) worked out.  But that was nothing to the delights which lay in store when the franchise went ‘Amazing’.  I gave a fair and balanced viewing of that debacle, here.

            So, Sony realised that its (galactically stupid) decisions were losing it profit.  Years of back-room shenanigans ensued and, finally, they struck a deal with Marvel to return the character, at least in part, to the MCU (that’s Marvel Cinematic Universe, in case you haven’t been keeping up with your Three Letter Acronyms).  This complicated process has led to no fewer than twelve credited producers and six credited writers.

            So, what we have here is what’s now referred to as a soft re-boot.  We don’t get Uncle Ben again, we don’t get the spider bite (although it is mentioned), we don’t get the Spider Sense, or J. Jonah Jameson; but we do get Peter back at school, navigating the corridor politics of bullies and girls and tests.  We also get The Vulture.  Point made, Kevin; point made!

The 'If This Be My Destiny' story (it's not actually called The Final Chapter) is one of the most famous episodes from the early Lee/Ditko comics, and is now brought to the screen, as are many other careful references to the source material.

            The film heaves with smart acknowledgements to the original 60s comics; for those who are familiar enough to spot them.  It still irks, mind you, that the creators behind a lot of these moments, aren’t credited among those six writers.  Lee and Ditko are, but the others, John Romita, Don Heck, Brian Michael Bendis and the rest, they have to wait for a ‘based on characters created by’ acknowledgement at the very end of the credits.  ... After Robert Downey Jr’s Hair Consultant.  But then, I suppose they can’t all have cameos.

            Like the original Lee/Ditko comics, this is as much a High School coming-of-age story as it is a superhero adventure.  Yes, Tom Holland is 21 playing 15, but he actually gets away with it.  Unlike Andrew Garfield’s turn in ‘Amazing’, I can actually buy Holland as a kid.  Not too nerdy (not as socially inept as Tobey Maguire’s version), but not obviously too fit, too tall and too cool for school (as Garfield was).

            Holland’s Spider-Man is clumsy and confused and over-excited and sometimes scared.  He is, in other words, a teenager!  That works for the demographics of the Marvel movie audience, but it was also key to the character from day one.  As a comic-reading friend of mine once noted ruefully, back in the 90s: I remember a time when Peter Parker was older than me.  But the key to him is that he’s a kid, a kid given extraordinary powers that shift his entire world.  And he isn’t a billionaire or a god or a world-renowned scientist, he’s a kid.  How does a kid deal with the powers of a superhero?  That has always been the dilemma at the heart of the Spider-Man story, that’s the story that this generation of kids deserve to experience. 

            These early scenes fairly echo with the footsteps of John Hughes.  I’m grateful they resisted the temptation to put Don’t You Forget About Me on the soundtrack during the detention scene, and it is forgivable that they give in, briefly, to a Ferris Bueller gag.  But it isn’t all levity.  There is one moment in the movie, above all others, when Peter is alone and in peril and he panics.  He screams for help and, right there, we are forced to confront the fact that, however cocky and sophisticated and knowing and cynical our kids are ... They’re still just kids.

High-School Avengers Assemble:  Iron Man (top), Scarlett Witch (left), Bruce Banner (middle), Black Widow (seated), Captain America (right)

           This also informs Peter’s desperation to please Tony Stark.  He’s subconsciously looking for a father figure.  Shame he picked a globe-trotting billionaire narcissist egomaniac who has serious daddy issues of his own.

            For me, the characters and the small moments are much more impressive than the big set-pieces.  The ferry scene, which features so predominantly in the trailer, feels like a mash-up of the bridge scene in Spider-Man 1 (2002), the train scene in Spider-Man 2 (2004) and, inevitably, the ferry scene in The Dark Knight (2008).  There’s a similar big moment in Washington that also, for me, felt cluttered and confused and overly-familiar. 

            A part of this clutter must be put down to Spidey talking constantly to the AI of his suit.  Essentially, Stark has engineered the Spider Suit as a more streamlined version of his own Iron Man suit, complete with chatty computer interface.  This gives Spidey lots of fun toys to play with, some of which are unnecessary, some of which are just plain dumb; but the main thing is, it gives him someone to talk to.  In the comics, Spidey never shuts up.  He’s trading witty one-liners with whoever he’s fighting (something we’ve already seen in his Civil War fight with Falcon) but also, when he’s alone, he thinks things through or talks to himself.  That’s difficult to do well in a film.  Having an on-board AI gives him someone to talk to which, therefore, gives him a platform to externalise all that teenage angst.

Pfft.  And Falcon thinks his wings are all that.

            At the other end of sci-fi tech scale, we have Michael Keaton’s Toomes.  He starts the film in a flashback, working as a contractor clearing up the alien tech and devastation after the New York fight from the Avengers movie.  He’s a working stiff who gets stiffed by the government, in the form of the all-new Department of Damage Control (how’s that for an oxymoron).  This pushes his business over the edge financially.  So, what’s he going to do?  Well, he has a pile of unrecycled Chitauri tech and an enthusiastic tinkerer on staff; so time to make like Tony Stark and build some weapons.

            His weapons manufacture is all very low tech, though, his  gadgets seem to be being assembled in, essentially, a garage.  He has limited aspirations for his toys; but that’s deliberate, because he wants to stay under the radar.  As he says - when the film proper starts - he’s been doing what he’s doing for eight years, without ever attracting the attention of the FBI or SHIELD or The Avengers.  He’s strictly small-fry.  But, if you push the little guy the wrong way, he can develop big ideas.  This is what took the honest business man and turned him into the gun-runner.  As Spider-Man repeatedly foils his plans, the gun-runner decides to step up a gear ... After repeatedly refusing the call to get properly nefarious, he finally gives in and does what any business man would do ... He steals from the opposition.

Psst ... A little bird told me you'll be playing a different kind of birdman ...

            The key to Toomes - and, no doubt, what attracted a heavy-hitter like Keaton - is that he speaks a lot of sense.  He has been treated badly by a high-handed military-industrial complex.  Tony Stark was a gun-runner before he found he could make more money elsewhere.  The American Dream was built on the belief that it is acceptable to do anything to support your family.  Toomes isn’t a grand-standing psychopath who wants to take over the world, he just wants to put his kids through college.

            There is an electrifying scene where Keaton locks eyes with Peter and calmly explains what he’ll do to stay in business.  No shouting, no histrionics, just one guy smiling while he threatens another.  That’s why you hire someone as complex as Michael Keaton, to get that intensity from a close-up shot. 

            Back in the ’80s, when he was best known for his comedies, there was always a dark edge to Keaton.  Ron Howard saw it first, when he cast him in Night Shift (1982), Tim Burton saw it when he made him Beetlejuice (1988), and John Schlesinger saw it when he cast him as the malignancy at the heart of Pacific Heights (1990).  There was always a recklessness in Keaton’s eyes which made him potentially dangerous.  Guess what:  It’s still there.  

            Of course, Toomes is a villain so, however reasonable his argument, however justifiable his cause, the fact that he is prepared to ignore morality and kill people for it, somewhat undermines his point.

            And Spidey is a hero so, no-matter that no-one believes in him, no-matter that he’s alone and out-classed and out-gunned; he’s still going to try and protect the little guy.  Cos that’s what Spidey always was, back in the early 70s, when four-year-old me learned to read on black-and-white reprints of John Romita and Ross Andru era Spidey .... He was always the little guy, always misunderstood, always struggling to balance the demands of real-life, relationships, work and super-heroing.

This isn't Tony Stark's happy face. Maybe he's just realised how few scenes he's in.

            The early scenes of Spidey keeping himself busy whilst waiting for ‘the call’ from The Avengers, are very reminiscent of Kick-Ass (2010) but then, they would be; that was Mark Millar’s take on an updated Spider-Man ... This is Marvel’s take on the same thing; it’s no surprise there are similarities.

            The film relies too heavily on the Toomes’ henchmen being as ham-fisted as Spidey, initially, is.  Otherwise, he’d’ve been killed pretty much at the start, and then where’s your movie?  But, because Holland is so likeable, and so endearingly clumsy, you go along with the film when it wanders into cliché or the odd page of lazy writing. 

            However, there’s one particular plot-twist that is just way too convenient, and stretches the bounds of credibility too far.  Nothing like the catalogue of contrivances in the last two Spidey films, though, so don’t worry.  It’s just that this film goes so far in making Peter human and fallible, and the world he inhabits, so credible, and the friends he spends time with, so nuanced and detailed and likeable ... That they nearly throw it all away with one plot contrivance too many.

            But - thanks to some classy writing and some brilliant acting from Michael Keaton - they bring it back from the edge in the nick of time.

It's just one of those boy-meets-suit, boy-loses-suit, boy-gets-suit-back-again kinda films

            So, this film isn’t spectacular.  It certainly isn’t amazing.  It is, however, friendly; and it’s great fun to finally see Spidey in Marvel’s neighbourhood.

Written by: Jonathan Goldstein, John Francis Daley, Jon Watts, Christopher Ford, Chris McKenna, Erik Sommers & Uncle Tom Cobbly
Directed by: Jon Watts
Cert: 12A
Dur: 133 mins

WONDER WOMAN

           I love superheroes.  I learned to read on black and white reprints of Spider-Man comics back in the early seventies; then I made many friends during the comic shop boom of the late eighties and nineties.  And now I’m basking in them all over again, up there on the big screen.

            Thing is, throughout all this, I have always been a Marvelite.  DC didn’t appeal to me.  Even when I was very small, their heroes seemed silly and their stories even sillier.  Reading Marvel comics made me feel grown up, like I had some secret insight into the lives of adults (Peter Parker was always struggling to pay his rent, Sue and Reed Richards were always struggling to balance the competing jobs of being superheroes and parents).

            The one time I did read DC was during that brief period in the late eighties when Jim Shooter drove several key Marvel artists and writers into the arms of Karen Berger, over at DC.  These included the artist George Perez, who brought his exquisitely detailed talents to bear on Wonder Woman.  This, then, was the only time I ever read her adventures.

A hint of the beautifully drawn and beautifully designed work of Mr. Perez.

            Consequently, I bring very little prior knowledge to a DC movie.  I had no idea who anyone was in last year’s Suicide Squad (except The Joker and Harley).  This means I can come to a superhero film as a relatively clean slate, something I can’t do with Marvel films.  The movie stands or falls by being a good or bad film in itself, not whether it’s a good or bad adaptation of a beloved childhood memory.

            This why I can say, after much consideration, that Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight is hands down the best superhero film ever made.  Not the most fun superhero film (that’s Marvel’s 2014 Guardians), not the most satisfyingly geeky superhero film (that’s 2012’s Avengers), just the flat-out best piece of film-making to feature a superhero.  It is the most complete, most satisfying superhero film in and of itself.

            Man of Steel (2013), Batman v Superman (2016) and Suicide Squad (2016) have been risible, lamentable failures, by comparison. 

            To put your curiosity out of its misery, Wonder Woman is nowhere near as good as Dark Knight, but it towers over the other three.  It’s a completely satisfying piece of film-making.  It’s one of those films which is far from perfect but wins the viewer over so completely with its charm, that you just don’t mind (It has that in common with Guardians Vol. 2, which is perfectly imperfect - see my review here).

Introducing the Amazonian squad of ultimate badasses.  Check it out: independently targeted bow and arrows.  We've got tactical swords, tempered-steel ball-breakers.  We've got shields, knives, and pointy sticks! 

            Our story begins in an idyllic Grecian wonderland (which, I believe, is a hold-over from those Perez comics, 30 years ago) where the entire population are women warriors called Amazons.  It’s like Zack Snyder’s 300 (2006), only with less well-developed breasts.  This background does, at least, explain why Diana’s costume is a corset and a miniskirt because, back in the day, even men wore skirts.  According to these Amazonians’ own myths, they have the power to craft babies out of clay, but only Zeus can give it life.  So, these feminist warriors are still dependent on men, then.  Indeed, so the myth goes, they were created by Zeus to show men love and peace and stop them fighting each other perpetually.  Cos, y’know what boys are like when there’s no girls around.   

            “We are the bridge to a greater understanding between all men."  And how's that going, hidden away here on your paradise island, with no men around?

            This mythic flashback is presented as a series of animated Pre-Raphaelite paintings, which is certainly a diverting way to dump a lot of exposition on the audience in a short space of time - it certainly worked for Del Toro when he did it at the beginning of Hellboy II (2008).

            Young Princess Diana is being protected from Ares, the God who will bring war to her, if he discovers her existence (you find out why, later on).  However, rather conveniently, Diana discovers she has an explosive super-power just as war comes a-knocking in the form of a WW1 pilot who falls through an unexplained time-warp kinda thing, bringing a fleet of Germans on his tail.

            There are men on the Amazons’ island.  Well, that isn’t going to end well.               

Robin Wright is General Antiope.  Training Diana, kicking asses and taking names.

            A battle ensues, swords and arrows against machine-guns and, of course, Snyder’s fingerprints are all over this (he’s still got overall creative control of these DC films), but that just adds to the balletic elegance of what we see.  This vision of female warriors, it’s not like a Kathryn Bigelow film, where she’s just concerned with repeatedly demonstrating that she’s got brassier balls than the boys; these action scenes have quite a different feel about them.

            After this, we settle into a little getting-to-know-you.  These scenes serve several purposes.  We get chance to get to know both Gal Gadot’s Diana and Chris Pine’s Steve, as they get to know each other, but the film also plays around with the clichés of the genre.  So she walks in on him in the bath, rather than the other way round, and he is therefore reduced to sex-object to be looked at, which is a delicious reversal of the usual way of things.

            Of course, that isn’t the only reversal we get here.  A lot of very familiar motifs are made new again by simply having them involve women.  For example, it is Diana who draws the magic sword.  I’ve seen a lot of warriors tool up with a lot of swords, but never a woman before.  Not before bloody time.  Remember the bullet-catch in Superman the Movie (1978), where Clark catches a bullet destined for Lois?  Well, that gets reversed here, too.

            There is beautifully written fun to be had with their mutual misunderstanding of each other’s customs.  And the scene where she persuades him to sleep with her is subverted from the usual male wish-fulfilment fantasy, when she matter-of-factly assures him that she knows all about procreation and understands that men are “unnecessary for pleasure”.  That would feel very different in a film made by men!

Chris Pine's Steve Trevor, just standing there, looking all above average and that.

            Steve’s ‘secretary’, Etta Candy, is played perfectly by Lucy Davis, but isn’t given nearly enough to do.  She, again, provides a thread of very human comedy, when she and Diana go clothes shopping and, again, a sequence that could have ridiculed both parties, or been played purely so the camera can catch a glimpse of breast in a mirror, is a lovely piece of character comedy.  It pushes the story along a bit, but it pushes the characters along a lot.

            It was interesting seeing this film just a week after Pirates of the Caribbean, and comparing the way the two films deal with an assertive female character.  Pirates’ Carina is branded a witch, because she understands astronomy and navigation; in this film Diana’s entrance into a Whitehall cabinet meeting, with her understanding of tactics and foreign codes, is met with a comparably scathing response.  Even though the great and the good are discussing the imminent end of the war, it suddenly becomes far more important to get the woman out of the room.  Priorities, guys.

            This does, of course, let Diana (and us) get first-hand experience of the complacent corrupt old men who are running the war, before we get to experience the grit and grim of the battle first hand.  It’s important to get that perspective.  When I saw, in the trailer, that this film was going to drop Wonder Woman into the First World War, I was really concerned about this being cheap and exploitative.  But it isn’t, because the film concentrates on the human sacrifice, on the pain, on the victims.  Diana’s whole mission is to confront Ares, which is, in essence, the mission to end all war.

            Well, that’s gotta be a good thing!

            As we move into the film’s second half, set amid the chaos of the Western Front, we are introduced to a rogue’s gallery of swiftly-sketched side-kicks and colourful characters who, again, add to the films humour and humanity.  Wonder Woman is also chock-full of clever little details such as, for random example, the way Steve brings with him “English tea for the Germans, German beer for the English, and Edgar Rice Burroughs books for both”.

The motley crew:  Saïd Taghmaoui as Sameer, Chris Pine as Steve Trevor, Eugene Brave Rock as Chief and the bird in the unnecessarily short skirt ... is Ewen Bremner.

            The first big action set-piece, when Diana cuts loose in a small town overrun with Germans; bears more than a passing resemblance to the scene in Iron Man (2008), when Tony Stark first uses the suit, and takes out a town full of badguys.  But that scene worked for Marvel, it was a hair-on-the-back-of-the-neck moment that played a major part in building the billion-dollar empire that is now the Marvel Cinematic Universe; so, why shouldn’t DC try to catch some of that lightning in their own bottle?  I have to say, watching Diana running fearlessly into overwhelming odds, has a similarly inspiring effect.  That is a genuinely exciting action scene!

            As the film proceeds, it misses a few steps, and the plot reversals - the surprises that you aren’t supposed to see coming - are bleeding obvious; and there are a few annoying plot threads that are left dangling (such as what's with the time-warp thingy at the beginning ... and why did it suddenly appear?); but I really didn’t care.  The film had paid its dues, it had built up a cast of interesting and likeable characters who a really cared for; which is more than can be said for Man of Steel, Batman v Superman or Suicide Squad.

            The film even shoe-horns a few genuinely profound philosophical thoughts in amongst the energy bolts and flying masonry of the inevitably explosive show-down.

That really is an inefficient way to carry a long sword.  I mean, yes, it looks cool, of course it does, but, unless you've got freakishly long arms, you're never gonna get it out of the damn scabbard.

            So, Wonder Woman (and, thankfully, that phrase is never spoken in the film) makes credible a character who has always seemed, frankly, ridiculous.  Gal Gadot’s central performance is mistressful.  She is equally comfortable with the comedy as she is the drama, and she manages to wear that armoured corset with real dignity.  Chris Pine is perfectly chosen as her foil, because his humour strikes the right tone throughout (and, let’s face it, humour is something these DC films have been sorely lacking).  It is to the credit of all that Diana isn’t simply reduced to being Steve’s straight-woman.  She has her own intelligence and her own mischievous sense of humour.  She is, in other words, a fully-rounded character.  Imagine that.

            It is a tribute to the skills of scriptwriter Allan Heinberg, that this film feels like it was written by a woman.  He’s worked on TV shows with predominantly female casts, so he has a good idea of how to structure a scene so it doesn’t feel creepy or clichéd - as several of the getting-to-know-you scenes would have if they’d been written less sensitively.

In her first major acting role, Ms. Gadot manages to be disarming, both in the literal sense in the action scenes, but also in the more sensitive moments requiring a skilled actor.  Expect her to be a BIG star, very soon.

             Judging from the responses I've seen and read; this film is already inspiring a whole generation of young girls; hopefully to do more than just usher in a new fashion in cosplay.  I imagine there will a significant uptake of girls studying Martial Arts.  Which would be pretty frickin' awesome!

            And, of course, an incredible amount of credit has to be given to director, Patty Jenkins.  It’s been fourteen years since she directed a movie, but the last one she made was called Monster (2003) and it won Charlize Theron a hatful of awards, including an Academy Award.  I wonder if Jenkins chose to leave it this long, or if she just couldn’t find a project that was worthy of her?  Her touch is assured, throughout.  She handles the special effects confidently (okay, some of the flying scenes are a bit ropey), gives all of her characters depth and interest, paces the dialogue beautifully to bring out the comedy and the drama, often in the same scene, and then builds action scenes that wouldn’t be out of place in any recent blockbuster.

            Given the overwhelmingly positive response Wonder Woman has received, I wouldn’t be surprised if this superhero film doesn’t gather some traction at Oscar time.  Either way, I hope Jenkins is bombarded with offers to make films that are worthy of her, and she doesn’t leave it another fourteen years before she shows us all how it’s done, one more time.

Writer: Allen Heinberg
Director: Patty Jenkins 
Cert: 12A
Dur: 141 mins