Cinephile Magazine

Zack Snyder veering more into Michael Bay territory with the “comedy” and character arcs in this one. It’s way too long, with a couple of subplots that could have been excised for a tighter pace. However, my two biggest gripes concern the cinematography and the zombie choices.

Zack Snyder lensed this film instead of his long time collaborator and DP, Larry Fong (who gets an admittedly funny cameo on a large ad outside of a casino). His choice to shoot everything with such a shallow depth of field for the entire runtime was completely misjudged. It was counterproductive to seeing the Vegas world that, once briefly in focus, was the most interesting part. Instead, we’re constantly tight on faces and spaces, which I suppose is one way to make the viewer feel as claustrophobic as the characters, but with so much frenetic action, everything just becomes a blur. The costumes, makeup, surroundings, everything is lost in service of the bokeh. It’s a disappointing choice for a director who often has a great visual flare and an eye for composition. Perhaps the allure of 8K digital cinema was too much to pass up.

Second, giving the zombies additional skills and personalities ironically makes them less scary. I don’t need my zombies to make deals with humans, impregnate each other, know parkour and martial arts, and wear capes. I need relentless f**kers who have one goal: kill every living thing. Slow or fast, don’t care. But they can’t be malleable, at least not in a Zack Snyder heist film where said skills don’t matter except to fill plot (i.e. script) holes. I need our characters to be in constant fear for their lives the moment they step outside.

Finally, every death, and entire exchanges of dialog, was predictable from the jump. So in the end, while not entirely bored, I wasn’t scared nor thrilled. Just squinting to focus.

1.5/5 stars

The film opens with an IMAX sequence, but I sure as hell didn’t see anything spectacular on the screen. Nothing but garbage CGI and green screen, masquerading as “epic.” IMAX is being used as marketing here, not as a creative choice to craft something visually striking. Instead, we just get a larger, boring, flat image, devoid of any texture, tactility, or depth.

Then we’re introduced to Barbara. How do you know she’s not cool? Because she wears glasses and isn’t all that popular with douchebag guys who pop their collars. Oh, but she’ll become cool by losing the lenses, wearing mascara, getting a haircut, buying new clothes, and ditching her comfy sweaters. Hell of a lesson.

But it’s most egregious and utterly preposterous contrivance? Bringing back Steve Trevor because…Aladdin. I’ll accept lassos of truth and other worlds and fantasy hand waving, but this was just lazy screenwriting shorthand. The entire plot of this film appears to have been written because they wanted to cast Pine once again, not as an organic story choice. And you know Steve’s ultimate fate is sealed the moment it’s revealed how he returned. It’s just a ticking plot device.

I don’t ask for all of my superhero films to be serious and dark and brooding. But this is just saccharin and laughably sincere to the point where I have zero concern for any of the characters. There are no stakes. In the wake of Man of Steel, DC and Warner continue to be so concerned with not killing anyone in their films, that they literally have Diana protecting the heads of security guards as they fall to the ground. Hey, gotta prevent that chronic traumatic encephalopathy! And don’t worry about those military guys, either, they fell in water!

Finally, there is no reason why this needs to be 2.5 hours. It looks unfinished, with truly awful CGI, and not even that runtime can find a moment which evokes the optimism and wonder of the No Man’s Land sequence from the first film. But I hope you learned the film’s valuable lesson: lying is bad. Honesty is good. Wow. It’s just…so profound.

And, as a disclaimer: this film’s total failure has absolutely nothing to do with the gender of its director or star. Jenkins has previously crafted great films with female leads, including the first Wonder Woman, so please don’t use that as some lazy excuse to go after those who don’t like this.

One star for Gal Gadot for still owning the role, Pedro Pascal’s Maxwell Lord having the only thing resembling a character arc, and Hans Zimmer’s score.

1/5 stars

I hated just about everything in this movie, with the exception of the gay couple, wonderfully portrayed with sincere love and affection by Marwan Kenzari and Luca Marinelli, and the genuinely terrifying image the film paints of constantly drowning to death and waking up on repeat for 500 years.

On the whole, though, this movie looks cheap as hell, with that Netflix filter in Final Cut applied, leaving behind a visually flat and ugly image, devoid of any colour, depth, or cinematic flare. Gina Prince-Bythewood, and her cinematographers Barry Ackroyd and Tami Reiker, shoot the majority of the film in such tight quarters that any scope the subject matter or anamorphic format invites is completely lost. Moreover, any momentum the film tries to establish grinds to a halt by characters constantly stopping to talk in that bullshit action stereotype way of “I’m too tough to tell you what I’m thinking so you’ll just have to infer everything by my scowl.” Charlize Theron’s Andy is so smug, disengaged, and unlikeable that I just couldn’t side with any of her motivations. But the film’s most egregious offender? The horrible use of pop music throughout with the most comically heavy handed lyrics to describe everything you’re seeing.

This is a film with an interesting idea completely squandered by uninspired directing, cliched writing and characters (including the requisite nerdy bad guy CEO), a totally misjudged soundtrack, and off-brand John Wick action. Yeah, I really didn’t enjoy this.

1/5 stars