Tag Archives: Gal Gadot

Justice League Proves Wonder Woman was a Fluke

After last summer’s excellent Wonder Woman, many fans were hopeful that Warner Brothers had finally turned a corner with their DC film universe. Unfortunately, Justice League proved that Wonder Woman was nothing but a happy anomaly in an otherwise endless sea of wretched films. Zach Snyder directed most of it, and infused the film with his signature bleakness. Joss Whedon was called in to finish directing when Snyder left the project because of a family tragedy. Whedon’s ham-fistedly grafted-on one-liners and attempts at levity are painfully obvious.

Justice League was an expensive movie, but it looked cheap. The big bad Steppenwolf (voiced by Ciarán Hinds) was a CGI mess that might have been passable in a video game 5-10 years ago. League member Cyborg (Ray Fisher) was a constantly morphing, humanoid-shaped blob with garish red bits. He’d have looked better if the studio had simply copied the effects from 16-year-old Terminator 2. The endless waves of minions, the weapons, the explosions, the fire effects, the water, pretty much everything looked obviously and horribly fake. You couldn’t get away with releasing a top-tier video game that looked this bad. Continue reading →

Wonder Woman

After Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and Suicide Squad, the DC universe desperately needed a movie that wasn’t awful. Giving Gal Gadot, a relatively unknown quantity, the lead in Wonder Woman was something of a gamble. Could she carry a movie? That was the question asked by many, including myself. Well, the answer turned out to be “yes,” and the gamble seems to have paid off.

Wonder Woman starts out briefly in the present. Diana Prince (Gadot), working in the Louvre, receives an old photograph of herself from Bruce Wayne. As she looks at the photo, her mind wanders back to the past, where most of the movie takes place.

Diana was raised on the hidden island of Themyscira, home to the Amazons. According to Amazonian mythology, Zeus created men and everything was fabulous until Ares, the god of war, decided to corrupt them and make them fight. This led to a humungous war where all the gods were killed and Ares was driven off. With his dying effort, Zeus created a home for the Amazons to live and train for the next several thousand years in preparation for dealing with Ares if he ever came back. Continue reading →

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice – How do you screw up a Batman/Superman movie?

Spoilers aplenty. You have been warned.

From the title and the trailers, you would think this movie would be about Batman fighting Superman, with Wonder Woman showing up and some sort of tie-in to the upcoming Justice League movie happening at some point. What it’s actually about is two oafish morons alternating between petulance and naval gazing while Lex Luthor gambols about like a deranged elf and implements increasingly implausible plans. Continue reading →