I’m reminded of a line from the great Tom Lehrer’s “ MLF Lullaby”: “We taught them a lesson in 1918, and they’ve hardly bothered us since then.”) Patty Jenkins favors character over conflict, an approach that yields precisely the happy results one might have anticipated. She is convinced that Ares must be behind such rampant bloodshed (she’s largely correct), and that “once the Germans are freed from his influence, they will be good men again.” (She’s pretty far off on that one, I fear. Yes, she is going to be awfully disappointed by the outside world.Īfter dispatching the squad of Germans who were following Steve, Diana agrees to help him leave the island and deliver the intelligence he has gathered, which he believes could turn the tide of the war. “Would you say you’re a typical example of your sex?” Diana asks him. That is, until who should fall out of the sky and through said force field but USAF Captain Steve Trevor, piloting a German fighter plane that he stole while on an espionage mission. Diana also learns about the war god Ares, son of Zeus, who was defeated when he rose up against his father millennia earlier, but is believed to be on the prowl once more, fomenting discord in the World of Men.ĭiana herself knows little of the world or men, her females-only island being protected by veils of fog and a magical force field. The latter wins out of course, thus sparing us a movie in which Diana tries to end World War I by writing a thoughtful editorial in The Times of London. Her mother opposes the idea, but her aunt, General Antiope (Robin Wright), is in favor. (Like most origin stories told to young children, this one proves not to be entirely accurate.)ĭiana wants to train to be just like the proud, immortal warrior-women all around her. There, a young Diana is told by her mother, the Amazon Queen Hippolyta (Connie Nielsen), how the latter sculpted her out of clay and then had the god Zeus breathe life into her. It’s a vibe that stands in particular contrast to the bitter, Snyderesque unpleasantries- Do you bleed? You will!-that characterized the movie’s immediate DC predecessors.Īfter a brief framing scene in the present day-Diana Prince (Gadot), working as a curator at the Louvre, receives a package from Bruce Wayne-the movie takes us back in time to Themyscira, the legendary island of the Amazons. needed an installment in their universe-building effort that was-how to put this?-not awful.īefitting its World War I setting, Wonder Woman has a certain throwback charm, with Gadot and Pine playing off one another as good-naturedly as partners in a 1930s screwball comedy. Following its iffy outing with director Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel and the sequential disasters of Snyder’s Batman v Superman and the Snyder-infused Suicide Squad, DC Comics and Warner Bros. Happily, Gadot holds her own with exceptional poise and gusto, whether bantering with Pine or charging into a nest of German sniper fire. Would she be able to hold her own, or would this serve as yet another chapter in the difficulty of accommodating female characters into that most boyish of genres, the superhero movie? There was some reason to be leery of this arrangement, because Pine is an established movie star (and, it turns out, a more than solid actor), while Wonder Woman is played by the relatively obscure Israeli actress and model Gal Gadot. The principal difference, of course, is that this Chris/Steve-that would be Chris Pine, playing Steve Trevor-is not the movie’s principal hero, but rather her sidekick and love interest. There are moments in Wonder Woman that recall Captain America: The First Avenger a little too closely for comfort. Another guy named Chris playing another guy named Steve. Another cache of German superweapons intended to rain death upon an unsuspecting metropolis.
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