![]() ![]() ![]() It says quite a lot about the general tenor of the DC cinematic universe that a film set in the trenches of WWI, with a plot revolving around the development of chemical warfare, is nonetheless its most cheerful and kid-friendly entry. Poison’s gas will soon be ready to launch at soldiers and civilians alike, and finding little help from military brass, they take off to the Western front themselves to intervene. ![]() (Steve is the first man Diana has ever seen, and the film acknowledges the elephant in the room with some choice volleys of double-entendre.) The plot snaps back into focus when Steve and Diana learn Dr. She and Steve sail to London, and the film takes an unexpected, largely successful detour into light comedy, evoking shades of “Encino Man” as Diana stumbles wide-eyed through the big city, her rapport with Steve growing closer all the while. When Diana hears Steve describe the Great War raging outside their protected enclave, she immediately suspects Ares has returned, and resolves to head to the front lines to confront him. Once under the influence of the Amazons’ lasso of truth - a potentially silly device from the comic’s lore that the film adapts admirably - Steve reveals he was undercover with the Germans as a double agent, dispatched to collect intel on their experimental new weapon: a powerful poison gas developed by sadistic general Ludendorff (Danny Huston) and his facially scarred star chemist, nicknamed Dr. Diana swoops in to rescue the pilot, an American soldier named Steve Trevor ( Chris Pine). Themyscira seems a realm outside of time, but the film’s 1918 setting abruptly announces itself in the form of a crippled German warplane that crash-lands in the ocean just beyond the island’s shores. By the time she’s reached adulthood, Diana (Gadot) is ready to take on all comers, her traditional battle skills augmented by supernatural abilities of which she’s only partially aware. Fortunately, her aunt Antiope (Robin Wright, cutting an imposing figure and affecting a strange accent) is the tribe’s chief field general, and she agrees to train the girl in secret. Yearning to learn the ways of her fellow Amazons, Diana is shielded from combat training by her mother Hippolyta (Connie Nielsen). On guard against Ares’ possible return, the Amazons have all dedicated themselves to the arts of combat.Īll, that is, except young princess Diana (Lilly Aspell at age 8, Emily Carey at 12), who’s the only child on the island. Drawn in lush, misty colors, the island is a sanctuary for the tribe, sheltered by Zeus, whom they helped in fighting off a coup from the war god Ares. And perhaps more importantly, it’s almost entirely free of the distracting cameos and seeding of future films’ plotlines that so often keep modern comic-book films from functioning as satisfying standalone stories.Īfter a brief prologue in modern-day Paris, the action whisks us away to the secluded island of Themyscira, home to the all-female society of Amazons. Like far too many films before it, “Wonder Woman” offers yet another origin story, but at least it’s one we haven’t already seen several times onscreen. In her earliest iterations, Wonder Woman was an all-American figure with a mythical background here, she’s an essentially mythical force who just happens to fight for America. ![]() With most of the film’s presumptive audience too young to remember TV Wonder Woman Lynda Carter, Gadot and Jenkins have an unusually broad license to introduce the character to filmgoers, and they remain largely faithful to her comics origins while also crafting a hero who is both thoroughly internationalist and refreshingly old-school. Superman,” “Wonder Woman” assumes no foreknowledge of any previous franchise entry - or of the character herself, for that matter. Never prone to stewing in solitude, and taking more notes from Richard Donner than from Christopher Nolan, Patty Jenkins’ “ Wonder Woman” provides a welcome respite from DC’s house style of grim darkness - boisterous, earnest, sometimes sloppy, yet consistently entertaining - with star Gal Gadot proving an inspired choice for this avatar of truth, justice and the Amazonian way.Īlthough Gadot’s Diana Prince had a decent chunk of screentime in last year’s “Batman v. assembly line have given us sporadically successful, demythified takes on Batman and Superman, but they’ve all seemed skeptical, if not downright hostile, toward the sort of unabashed do-gooderism that DC Comics’ golden-age heroes exemplified. Sure, previous entries in the Warner Bros. It may have taken four films to get there, but the DC Extended Universe has finally produced a good old-fashioned superhero. ![]()
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