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That's more like it! DC and Warner Brothers recent attempts to launch a
cinematic universe have been mixed to put it kindly. They have been for the most
part, depressing deconstructions of the superhero genre. They seem to have
forgotten that these characters are meant to inspire. Until now. Wonder Woman
rights the ship in a largely successful way. It's a breathe of fresh air.
Amazingly and yet, sadly, Diana Prince (a.k.a. Wonder Woman) has been one of the
most popular and prolific comic book superheroes since her print debut in 1941,
yet she has never received her filmic due the way DC Comics' fellow heavy
hitters Batman and Superman have. Could it be because she's a woman in a land of
world-saving men, and studio heads remain skittish about hedging their bets on a
female who is just as powerful and cunning as her male counterparts? Does
Superman wear a cape? Save for a 1970s television series starring Lynda Carter,
the occasional animated appearance, and a key cinematic introduction in 2016's
"Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice," Wonder Woman has been stranded mostly in
the shadows of pop culture.
It makes perfect sense that a female director would receive the honor of helming
the storied heroine's first solo feature—not out of politically motivated gender
obligation, mind you, but because she is the right person to bring the material
to the screen. Making her long-awaited sophomore feature following 2003's
stirring, Oscar-winning Aileen Wuornos biopic "Monster," Patty Jenkins possesses
a distinct interest in her characters and an empathy in lives being lived and
lost that so few of her filmmaker colleagues have recently demonstrated within
this genre. Her voice, like Diana's, has miraculously not been silenced or
hindered by too many proverbial cooks the way the theatrical cuts of previous DC
Universe entries "Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice" and 2016's
"Suicide
Squad"
were, and the results are altogether better for it. "Wonder Woman" starts strong
and only gets better and more surprising from there.
Amazon princess Diana Prince (Gal Gadot) has grown up on the idyllic matriarchal
island of Themyscira. The daughter of Queen Hippolyta (Connie Nielsen), trained
as a warrior by General Antiope (Robin Wright), she and her people have been
created in god Zeus' image to restore goodness and peace to the earth. When
Diana rescues American spy Steve Trevor (Chris Pine) from his downed plane just
as German enemies close in, she is suddenly faced with the alarming knowledge
that a war rages in nearby Europe. Suspecting the maniacal leader of the German
Army, General Erich Ludendorff (Danny Huston), is really the god of war Aries in
disguise, Diana chooses to leave behind her family and accompany Steve on a
death-defying mission to stop Ludendorff and psychopathic physicist Isabel Maru/Doctor
Poison (Elena Anaya) from unleashing secret chemical weapons strong enough to
kill millions. In her pursuit to save the planet from annihilation, Diana will
move closer to learning the truth about her identity and purpose, and Wonder
Woman will be born.
In a landscape of brooding, dour, macho costumed crusaders, the eternally
hopeful, selfless Diana Prince is not only the superhero viewers should want
right about now, she's the hero they need. "Wonder Woman" may be set in the
midst of World War I and deal in serious, albeit fictionalized, subject matter,
but director Patty Jenkins breathes a blessed lightness into the proceedings.
Her characters aren't afraid to smile and be playful, and the interplay between
them zings along thanks to Allan Heinberg's lively screenplay and the
charismatic performances bringing his words and socially potent ideas to
fruition. The narrative follows the general conventions of a superhero origin
saga, but it feels fresher because the same back story hasn't been repeated ad
nauseam countless times before in different movie iterations.
Furthermore, Jenkins has deeper topics to organically touch upon as Diana and
Steve race toward their destinies. Themes of sacrifice and the importance of
doing what's right are familiar enough, but others feel blazingly progressive
within the context of this tale. "What I do is not up to you," Diana says late
in the picture, and indeed from the moment she steps foot in civilization, away
from her remote island home, she finds her ideals and aspirations second-guessed
in an era when women are still fighting for the right to vote and discouragingly
defined by the men surrounding them. These struggles for equality aren't only
issues for women; in a fleeting but effective moment, secret agent Sameer (Saïd
Taghmaoui) confides to Diana he became a soldier when his dreams of being an
actor were not possible. "I was the wrong color," he simply states, his words
speaking volumes about who he is and the adversity he's faced. One hundred years
later, not much has changed for minority actors looking for a break in Hollywood
and beyond.
Gal Gadot first appeared as Diana Prince/Wonder Woman in a supporting capacity
in "Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice," but there was no way to predict what a
terrific protagonist she would become once front and center. Gadot runs away with
this film, surpassing all expectations while giving her determined character an
irresistible wide-eyed innocence. Early fish-out-of-water scenes set in London
are genuinely funny, with Steve sending his secretary Etta Candy, played by the
scene-stealing Lucy Davis (2004's "Shaun of the Dead"), to help Diana pick out
more fitting attire for a lady in 1918. Suffice it to say, her true warrior
nature cannot be so easily subdued. As Diana edges toward the front lines of the
war in Belgium, Gadot movingly depicts the struggle within—her idealism over
what she has been taught, and the tough realities of how the world really is.
Gadot and Chris Pine (2016's "Star
Trek Beyond"), rarely more magnetic than he
is here as Steve Trevor, play terrifically off each other; their back-and-forth
exchanges are charming and electric, and the burgeoning love story between them
earns its third-act pathos. The villains of the piece are not as memorable,
unfortunately, with Danny Huston (2012's "Hitchcock") slimily embodying the
out-of-control General Erich Ludendorff, and Elena Anaya (2004's "Van Helsing")
giving the partially masked Isabel Maru/Doctor Poison an underlying sadness to
match her malevolent actions. They seem like standard issue villains in an
otherwise outstanding group of characters.
"Wonder Woman" is entertaining for most of its 141 minutes, but particularly in
the film's latter half as Diana's warrior skills and special abilities are put
to the test and the full scope of her destiny gradually comes into focus. There
are two minor missteps in the homestretch—one involving the clunky method in
which exposition is imparted by a villainous figure, the other in which a past
unheard interchange is later revealed when it would have been more affecting to
leave ambiguous—but these do little to hinder the denouement's dramatic power
and resonance. And the final confrontation goes on longer then it could have. By
the end, Diana is still the unapologetic, pure-hearted person she was at the
start, but now also wiser, her fight for peace extending far beyond the defeat
of one evil man—or god. As the start of a rousing, thoughtful new superhero
franchise and the superior next piece in Warner Bros.' previously rocky DC
Comics Universe, "Wonder Woman" is commanding and clear of vision, all the more
electrifying because the time is taken to get to know, to understand, and to
care about the people onscreen. This is a movie about battling evil that pauses
to ask what evil is and whether it's necessary to understand its nature in order
to defeat it. That's something we never get in this genre.
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