even though she's already appeared, these origin movies are usually the best of the bunch--they're simpler in theme and enemy and you have, at the very least, a smattering of this thing called character development...well, hopefully. I liked the first Captain America movie, too, because it was also about everyone's favorite past time: punching Nazis. Tough formula to beat.
(There may be some inadvertent spoilers in here. I do try to avoid them though.)
That's the thing.. the movie doesn't have much character development. Side characters merely serve as minor plot devices to show Diana how humans really are. The only one that arguably has
some sort of arc would the Irishman, and to call that an arc would be a bit flimsy at best. Steve Trevor never changes throughout the movie, but that's because he had no need to do so. They try to give him a tinge of being troubled, but his actions make it quite obvious that he's just written as a do-gooder. There was actually one thing that Diana does later on that seems contradictory to things that she states earlier, yet it never comes up. That's not surprising given my complaints about the lack of character development.
I don't know... as I read some of these posts, I can't help but wonder.... did we see the same movie? If I were to rate it, I'd say a 6.5/10, which is actually still a positive review on Rotten Tomatoes. (If I recall, 60% is the threshold.) Here's an overall summary of my thoughts on the parts of the movie. The beginning up until Steve Trevor arrives was somewhat boring. Honestly, it's about 95% exposition, and 5% awful child acting. There's some minor action, but it's not that interesting. This is where you're supposed to meet and understand Diana, but I think they could've sold her naivety in a better way. From when she meets Steve until they leave London is arguably the best part of the movie. The dialog still has some awkward bits, but it's pretty obvious that Chris Pine brings a lot to the scenes. The movie declines from this point, but the decline is somewhat slow at first. This is the point in the movie where I started to ask questions like "How are there dead bodies with gunshot wounds yet no blood anywhere?" Things just started sticking out as weird... and that's mostly because these non-action scenes just weren't that interesting. The final action scene.. I don't want to say much to avoid spoilers, but to sum it up... it was just dumb. The turning point in it was arguably only
slightly better than Batman v Superman's infamous Martha scene. (Some people have already spoiled it in this thread too.)
...or maybe I'm just a crotchety old curmudgeon who can't help but see what's wrong in movies. Have I just seen too many episodes of Cinema Sins?