Chris At The Pictures

Wonder’s the word, alright. Patty Jenkins brings a pop-culture icon to the screen in grin-broadening fashion with this electrifying and earnest superhero film that aims to expand the DC cinematic universe. Thankfully, Wonder Woman’s part in building the latter is small, taking a step away from the stodgy forward-planning of films past to tell a singular, self-contained story (imagine that!). Its larger and more important contribution to the world is to finally deliver a female-led, female-directed megabudget film that puts to rest both the nightmare of Catwoman or Elektra, and the pig-headed mindset that audiences don’t want to see films made by, for, and starring women.

Gal Gadot (returning from her brief appearance in Batman V Superman) plays our heroine, Diana, an Amazonian warrior of the all-female utopia, Themyscira. Their peace is shattered when pilot Steve Trevor (Chris Pine) takes a tailspin into their paradise, explaining that the wider world is engulfed in the Great War. Believing the God Aires has poisoned the minds of humanity into committing such atrocities, Diana decides to leave her home, despite the express wishes of her mother, Hippolyta (a fiercely tiaraed Connie Nielsen). Nevertheless, she persists, taking command of her people’s most powerful weapons and following Steve back to the pointedly termed “world of men”.

Her values are soon challenged by the prejudices and practices of 20^th century London, as well as the sinister plotting of German General Ludendorff (Danny Huston, wearing his best sneer) and his scientist accomplice, Dr. Maru (Elena Anaya). They plan to unleash a new form of gas to scupper the oncoming armistice, so – after some smartly funny fish-out-of-water escapades in London – Diana, Steve and his hand-picked gang set off to the Western front. At this point, the film threatens to stick Diana in the backseat while Steve and the trio (engagingly played by Ewen Bremner, Eugene Brave Rock and Saïd Taghmaoui) momentarily take centre stage. This is one of few points where the pace limps somewhat, but how refreshing that it’s in service of character building rather than crash-bang-wallop.

Other pitfalls (due to genre and period) can’t quite be avoided. The special effects occasionally overwhelm and comparisons to Captain America: The First Avenger are in abundance, but they’re momentary setbacks that can’t harm the film’s feminist message. No matter how broad the strokes, the statement feels genuine and direct, and the moment when Diana climbs into No Man’s Land is unspeakably powerful. It’s a set piece that feels long overdue, delivering on a spectacular and emotional level that no amount of trailer footage can spoil. If Gadot batting away bullets can bring a tear to my eye, I can only imagine what it’ll mean to an entire generation of young girls.

Jenkins proves a confident action director in these sparse but thrilling sequences of derring-do, shedding the gawping male gaze and murky composition of her contemporaries. Cinematographer Matthew Jensen streamlines the Snyder aesthetic into something appropriate (it’s several shades brighter, but doesn’t let up on the speed-ramps and slow-mo), and composer Rupert Gregson-Williams proves me right about that signature guitar riff: it's a killer cue, and works incredibly well when embraced by a full score.

Tom Holkenborg’s leitmotif is the only hanger-on from the wider cinematic universe: the film spends less than a minute tying itself to the DC web, managing subplots you can count on one hand and connect without the assistance of Wikipedia. Given time to develop a single central character as opposed to the lead, their partner, their nemeses and – lest we forget – Granny’s Peach Tea, Wonder Woman builds to a satisfying series of emotional payoffs that are all to do with rooting for real heroes, not a brooding bulk or snarky pretty boy (Pine easily deflects any Kirk comparisons).

For Diana is not one of the boys, nor is she a damsel. Her quest for peace is taken utterly on her own terms and speaks to something often spoken but rarely felt in this genre: optimism. Not the staunchly-defended principles of Captain America or Batman’s misguided faith in his corrupt city, but a genuine belief that people are innately good, that lives are worth saving for more than the purposes of reparation or showboating. Batman V Superman failed to deliver on the promise of Clark’s smile at the end of Man of Steel, but Wonder Woman takes up the charge with conviction. When tragedy strikes, Diana is visibly shaken. When her powers manifest, she learns to command them without aid or exposition. When faced with the awful truth of humanity, she lassos the last vestige of goodness available and digs in her heels.

This refusal to go all self-referential or edgy seemed to draw out a smattering of sighs and snickers from the audience, but none from me. The unabashed display of hope and courage brought me back to watching my Dad’s DVD of Superman: The Movie as a child, and Gal Gadot’s performance succeeds entirely on her ability to convey that yearning, that desperation, even, to do the right thing. I don’t believe this to be some overcooked attempt on the behalf of Jenkins, Snyder and co. to counteract criticisms of the series’ dire grittiness, but because the movie honestly means to be so. It left me beaming, occasionally through watery eyes, but never through derision. My prayer that the DCEU (or, Goddess forbid, the genre as a whole) learns the right lesson from Wonder Woman may go unanswered, but it’s one as genuine as Diana’s desire for justice. I’m with her.

I’m not one of those people who grew up with Trainspotting. Heck, when it was first released I was barely older than the baby crawling around Mother Superior’s skag den. It does, however, hold a very special place in my heart. In the brief period between my GCSEs ending and the summer holidays beginning, I had a lot of free time and – not being a particularly sociable type – started to watch my way through the family DVD shelves. Obviously, I was a few years too young to be watching most of them but, if anything, that big red 18 certificate (and my love for the Star Wars prequels) had me keenly reaching for this Ewan McGregor film covered in laudatory quotes.

Films weren’t the same after that. Trainspotting was scummy, outrageously rude and utterly frank when it came to drugs, sex and growing up…and I’d never seen anything like it. So it’s fair to say that I had a different set of expectations for a sequel than those returning after two decades of appreciation, and I think this disconnect explains why T2 Trainspotting didn’t completely gel for me in the way it did for my parents and clearly thousands of others.

One thing it does get properly right is the characters. Surprisingly, they’re all still alive. Unsurprisingly, they remain various flavours of selfish, pitiful and psychotic. Sick Boy (Johnny Lee Miller) runs a pub but has a share in blackmail, cannabis and coke addiction on the side. Spud (Ewen Bremner) curls up every night in a hollow flat, miles away from his partner and son, his final smile from the previous film betrayed by an immediate return to heroin. Meanwhile, Begbie (Robert Carlyle) has made his escape from prison and plots his revenge against Renton (McGregor), who’s returned to his old haunts after twenty years in Amsterdam.

McGregor gets top billing, as expected, but his role is arguably secondary this time around. Having spent so long outside of his former friends’ world, Renton is now a sightseer. So the focus gradually shifts to the one sympathetic character left in the frame: Spud. Bremner further cements his place as one of his generation’s finest actors with a performance that retains every weird idiosyncrasy that made the character so endearing in the first place, but is tinged with Spud’s yearning to have his story heard above the macho posturing of his fellows. McGregor, Miller and Carlyle return to their roles, but Bremner advances his with an emotional maturity that Renton, Sick Boy and Begbie have only reached physically.

The entire film almost feels like a low-key realisation that maybe all the stuff you did when you were younger wasn’t such a good idea after all. The boisterous tone of the ’96 original is gone, replaced with a surprisingly frank bitterness and regret. Anthony Dod Mantle’s cinematography is as vibrant as ever (I still maintain he’s the only man on earth who could make a Transformers movie look good), but the canted angles and hedonistic zooms are few and far between. Even the soundtrack is supremely lacking in nostalgia until the last possible moment, choosing not to wallow in old hits or bankable Top 40 tracks (see Fifty Shades Darker or even, to some extent, Boyle’s own The Beach). There’s a thematic and technical handshake taking place, an agreement to turn it down from eleven.

And that’s what didn’t sit well with me. I’m not about to dismiss a film for including subtext, but what Boyle’s original worked best when it wasn’t really about anything. It was a sprawling, chaotic beast that provoked vomit and laughter in equal measure and marked a change in the landscape of British cinema. Maybe I’m too in love with that anarchic spirit, too enveloped in telling the older generations to stick it where the sun doesn’t shine, too busy choosing Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and everything else Renton despises to fully understand the existential bile of middle-aged regret.

However, I am also enough of a Danny Boyle fan to know when he’s doing it right (incidentally, you all need to watch Trance again), and there’s still heaps to enjoy here. The dialogue is excoriating, the emotional moments pack a punch and though the final moments are a shade predictable, they tick the box in a very comforting, homely way.