I was not looking forward to this movie. DC and I have been in a “fool me twice shame on me” kind of situation and I was hesitant to touch the hot stove again. You can’t give me Green Lantern like that and not expect me to have trust issues. But then the reviews began to roll in and I let myself get excited. This was DC’s saving grace, supposedly, and so I thought, “okay, I will give it a chance.” If this sucked, I was NOT going to see the Justice League movies, I don’t care how amazing Jason Momoa looks as Aquaman.

The movie didn’t blow my socks off but it was definitely an improvement on the other DC stories (I’m looking at you, Green Lantern). Diana’s history on Themyscira is a cute story, and the interaction between Antiope and Hippolyta concerning her future is so nice. Destiny plays a huge role in this story, and discovering Diana’s is one that takes the entire movie to reveal, with a cute little twist you may or may not see coming. I only did because as I’ve written about before, my brain seems to seek out where people or things might be trying to trick it with a vengeance.

There are spoilers after this so stop here if you don’t want them.

I have a few squabbles about the movie. First, Diana is SUUUUUper wide-eyed about the real world, like she’s never worn a dress before? Granted she is very sheltered and has never left the island, so I guess I have to give this issue a pass, but I wish she had been more in control in the movie instead of being portrayed as a bumbling, ignorant, naive child.

Ares. We need to have a short talk about the god of war. I get that we needed a British actor and Benedict Cumberbatch is taken by Marvel but did we really need to pick the super lovable werewolf from Harry Potter? The story was good, but I was distracted because I was looking at Lupin and not a god. David Thewlis is not really god of war material. So, casting has some ‘splainin’ to do on that one.

There was so much I liked though. The story was very solid. The doctor that made all the poisons was 100% terrifying. And Chris Pine can just keep on keeping on playing the plucky, arrogant, determined hero in as many movies as possible.

Someone told me once that when you shop for an engagement ring, the salesmen are trained to sell you using the Goldilocks technique. They will show you something AMAZINGLY EXPENSIVE then something way under your price range, then something a teeeeensy bit above your price range and guess which one you’ll accept? This was a good movie, but with Marvel showing out and DC giving us scraps, this is a movie that we are excited about for many reasons, one of which is probably that it wasn’t horrible. Luckily it was also good on its own. I look forward to seeing more from Gal Godot and the Justice League.