I wasn’t a big Wonder Woman fan growing up reading Comics.
Outside of the Lynda Carter ‘70s television show, I really didn’t take notice of the character. She always struck me as nothing more than the female version of Superman in the JLA.
Wonder Woman never really had any any great creative team that I cared for or any classic story arc that I thought I should’ve read. The only thing that piqued my interested in her comics was the controversy that arouse when writer Denny O Neil (Green Lantern Green Arrow, Batman) wrote her stories in the early ‘70s and he had stripped her of her powers and had her using kung-Fu in some white jump suit that got the anger of many feminist who wrote letters complaining to DC comics, including Gloria Steinman.
That was until 1987 when artist George Perez and co-writer Len Wein came on board to craft a re-telling of Wonder Woman for the revamped DC universe following their ground breaking Crisis on infinite Earths maxi series. Initially I only showed interested in her new title because I was a big fan of George Perez after the work he did on the “new” Teen Titans comics. However, in the course of reading those great stories primarily plotted by George Perez, I started to realize how great a character she is and how interesting she can be under the right creative team.
She was more than just a female of Superman. A lot more! And in the course of the years that follow after George Perez left her book she have had some others creators that made the character richer in scope and more intriguing than I ever thought she could ever be.
And now Wonder Woman finally has a big screen movie adaptation and it has been heavily embrace by the critics and the fan alike.
There’s been a lot mentioned from the fanboy talking heads on the “intraweb” that this is the type of superhero movie we need right now to succeed with a strong female protagonist and even more so for the DCEU to “right the ship” of their movies.
While I’m NOT inclined to believe this film needed to be either of those assessment for the movie, I will say that this is movie certain succeed in being one of the BEST comic book movies of all time! And the best movie I’ve seen so far this year!
Director Patty Jenkins have crafted a film that has perfectly captured the spirit of the Wonder Woman comic and character as well give us a visual stunning movie (The contrast of Themyscira and “man’s world” is alarming) with some of the best action scenes on film in a long time albeit overly stylish at times.
And this is primarily due to extremely charming performance of the very beautiful actress Gal Gadot. She had previously won me over as Diana/Wonder woman in her brief role in ‘Batman V Superman’, so I was very eager to see how she would be able to hold her own in a full length version of a Wonder Woman movie. And she did on every level possible.
She was able to hold your attention as Diana with a sweet but sharp nativity when it comes to learning a strange culture journeying to London from Paradise Island and at the same time able to portray a fierce warrior who has a heart for the weak and oppressed. The scene in which she comes out of the tranches to ‘No Man’s Land” to rescue the captured village and inspire Steve Trevor and other soldiers to follow her lead is one of the most inspiring in a comic book movie.
Her chemistry with co-star Chris Pine is very evident onscreen and it help to make their relationship more appealing and even more heart wrenching painful when Steve sacrifice himself so that she “…can save the world”. Actually Chris Pines whole performance in this movie is outstanding.
It has been well known Ares, the god of War would be the main villain and he was shown as a formidable foe for of Wonder Woman, not only by him being the influence for mankind to war against one another but even in the way he was trying to convince Diane that they could recreate a paradise on earth and defy Zeus in his creation of man. For me that was more than a one deminsional villain but one that was fully thought out that and is more menacing than one of brute force. Making them “related” by being children of Zeus was a nice way to incorporate the recent New 52 retcon of her origin and made their battle more personal.
I went in Spoiler free, so the twist of him been Sir Patrick, whom had been the most advocate for peace in the movie prior to him being shown to be Ares was a very nice “Kyser Soza” like touch.
But the movie isn’t perfect, no movie is.
Some of the CGI is off quite a bit. There isn’t any explanation of what her costume represented or how her gauntlets came to be. And there may be one to many stop motion slo-mo action sequences that we could have done without. And the “purist” comic book fan in me keep thinking that the setting of WWII could have worked just as well as WWI in line with her actually comic book history. And I’d wish they had placed “the contest” aspect of her origin where she won the right to take Steve back to America in the movie.
Aside from those issues the movie is an amazing film! Very well thought out in the story and very exciting in the action scenes but also a movie that had a lot of charm and heart.
Conclusion: Wonder Woman is a major achievement in the superhero movie genre and one of the best of all time and prove that she is more than just a “female Superman” but a character that has proven her time has come!
