Wonder Woman (2017)

The biggest disappointment about Wonder Woman is that we didn't get the TV theme tune playing throughout it.

I think by now almost everyone in the world has expressed an opinion on the Wonder Woman film, so why should I be any different.

I've been a superhero fan for ... far too long. Superman was my first superhero, Batman my second - and Wonder Woman was there fairly early on, thanks to a run of the comics by Gerry Conway and Paul Levitz in the early eighties, and the Lynda Carter TV version. I've seen various versions of the character over the year - some have been excellent, others have been disappointingly poor.

Thankfully, the new film didn't have that problem. Gal Gadot seems born to play the role. There are a few actors who have been perfectly cast as superheroes - Christopher Reeve and Robert Downey Jr spring to mind - but there aren't many, so Gadot joins a relatively fall group.

The story itself manages well for most of its running time. The Paradise Island sequences at the beginning were well handled, and a welcome breathe of colour after previous drab entries in the DCverse. They might have been missing the Purple Ray and any invisible aircraft, but I can just about forgive them those things.

The London sequences could have been overlong, and admittedly there are a couple of points where the film drags, but largely they succeed thanks to the amusing scripting and the performances of the actors (principally Gadot, Pine and Davis).

The sequence on the Front are really where the film comes into its own. The sequence in the trenches leading to Wonder Woman (sorry, Diana - the Wonder Woman moniker is never uttered) going over the top is a perfect piece of cinema - emotionally manipulative in the way that all the best films are. I would put this sequence among my all time best, just below a couple of tear-jerking scenes from Up, Inside Out and Room.

Unfortunately, the film spoils its perfect score with the final showdown - Pine's Steve Trevor gets all the juicy heroics, while Diana has a decently staged, but ultimately emotionally empty battle with the film's main antagonist. There's some good character stuff mixed in there, but the two aspects of the climax - the showdown and the weapon - should have been more tightly connected. Diana's battle is too abstract - it needed to be grounded further than it was to make the audience really care.

Despite that slight disappointment, I've still gone back to see the film an additional two times, and I'm sure there will be a fourth viewing somewhere in the near future. Definitely somewhere within the top ten superhero films of all time.