“Professor Marston and the Wonder Women” is Mostly a Wonderless Biopic – REVIEW

BDSM, complicated love triangles and tall, dark and handsome rich dudes. No, this isn’t the new “Fifty Shades of Grey” flick. Surprisingly, it’s the origin story of everyone’s favorite superheroine.

Unless Wonder Woman fans couldn’t get enough of the character in 2017, “Professor Marston and the Wonder Women” brings the character back to the big screen just months after the hugely popular Gal Gadot-led film, albeit in a much different way. The new film tells the story of William Moulton Marston, a psychologist at Harvard, who along with his wife and an attractive, young student of his, confronts taboos head on through the medium of comic books.

While this sounds like an interesting story on paper, unfortunately it remains just that. Translating the tale of a progressive visionary into a feature length film results in major pacing issues as well as a tonally inconsistent journey through the trials and tribulations of this polygamous relationship. This means comic book fans going into this movie rather blind may be in for a surprise when they find out that the runtime is more devoted to relationship drama rather than the process of coming up with this influential character.

Not to say this element of the film is all bad, as Luke Evans who portrays the titular Professor Marston, Rebecca Hall who plays his wife Elizabeth, and Bella Heathcote as Olive Byrne all bring their A-game. These are performances that make the moments that do showcase Wonder Woman feel special, and add to the film’s overall message of identity.

In other words, the origin story of Wonder Woman feels more like something that would be more interesting to read about than to sit through this interpretation of the events, which end up more like an attempt to recreate the success of the aforementioned “Fifty Shades of Grey” than a compelling story that fits the narrative at hand.

As a quite surprising story, “Professor Marston” could have gone so many interesting places, yet essentially falls into the cliched biopic grouping, taking cues from 2010’s “The Social Network” in its non-linear storytelling. While this is meant to showcase the controversy surrounding the early days of the comic, it ultimately comes off feeling tacked on and doesn’t really add anything to the film as a whole.  

As the much weaker “Wonder Woman” film of 2017, “Professor Marston and the Wonder Women” suffers from a great deal of potential, but unfortunately fails from a lack of the eponymous character and consistent storytelling.