Gal Gadot and Chris Pine (Warner Bros. Pictures)
After a seemingly interminable boom of comic book movies, we’ve finally got one fronted by the most iconic female superhero of all time. At the risk of damning Wonder Woman with faint praise, it’s easily the best of the DC Universe films since Zack Snyder started the series with 2013’s Man of Steel, but it doesn’t merely clear that low hurdle. It backflips over the bar with flying colors.
This release fills two key holes in the summer blockbuster marketplace. First, it’s a movie set in the DCU that isn’t a just a blunt hunk of gloom heaved at a brick wall, shifting the tone up from the depths of Suicide Squad. Perhaps more importantly, it’s a major tent pole release starring and directed by women.
Fans of Wonder Woman have long had to settle for reruns of the Lynda Carter show and episodes of Xena, so just getting the Amazon Princess on the big screen may be enough to win you over.
Still, the biggest challenge in adapting any superhero to the big screen is to pull from decades of comic books a story that best exemplifies what makes that character work.
Unfortunately, there’s no Wonder Woman equivalent of Batman: Year One, so head screenwriter Allan Heinberg (a former WW comics scribe and veteran of Grey’s Anatomy) cherry-picks the most recognizable elements of her publication history and jerry rigs them into something palatable for the average filmgoer.
This is a straightforward origin story with a modern day framing device to anchor it to Diana’s last on-screen appearance in Batman v Superman. We follow Diana as she grows up on Themyscira, a man-less paradise island hidden away from the rest of the world before American spy Steve Trevor (Chris Pine) crash lands there. He tells the Amazons of The Great War, which Diana assumes to be the machinations of Ares, a foe her people were born to oppose. She follows Steve back to man’s world to face the God of War and bring about peace, but her journey ends up being more complicated than the children’s story hero arc she’s anticipating.
Heinberg and company simplify Diana’s origin, scrapping the Greek mythic component of her birth for something more Joseph Campbell-friendly. The script suffers at times from clunky dialogue and uninspired plot developments, but that barely matters. This is the rare case of a middling screenplay elevated by a game cast and a smart filmmaker who knows how to deliver. Jenkins does a miraculous job of giving scope and heft to the scenes on Themyscira, with Connie Nielsen and Robin Wright providing necessary gravitas as Diana’s mother and aunt, respectively. The director bathes the screen in lush imagery and larger-than-life spectacle before plunging Diana into the murky blues and grays of WWI. But the real delight here is Gadot and Pine’s insane chemistry.
This isn’t just run-of-the-mill romantic chemistry, either. There’s a love story, but their screen time works so well because of the screwball comedy they both perfectly sell between the action and the intrigue. Gadot is perfectly cast as Diana, with an elegance and toughness that make her feel like she’s leapt right off the page, but her scenes with Pine are the most crowd pleasing. He’s basically our generation’s Brad Pitt, a hilarious character actor trapped in a leading man’s body, and he seems absolutely delighted to move left of center into a supporting role while Gadot has all the fun.
Wonder Woman is far from perfect, as its third act is about as underwhelming as most comic book films, and the bookended sequences feel like tacked on afterthoughts. But hopefully, it’s the beginning of something special.
Marvel’s films have done a great job of capturing the essence of their source material, telling character-based stores about relatable heroes who, if not for their suits of armor or magic powers, are just everymen with flaws and foibles. But DC Comics, the home of heavies like Superman and Batman, has always been a more mythical place. Its heroes are near God-like manifestations of inspiring ideas. Where Snyder’s films thus far have been dismal 9/11 rehashing oddities, Jenkins has made the first film to capture the magic DC’s always represented in the four color world. It’s a treasure to have it here on the silver screen.
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Wonder Woman
Directed by Patty Jenkins
Screenplay by Allan Heinberg from a story by Heinberg, Zack Snyder & Jason Fuchs
Based on the character by William Moulton Marston
Starring Gal Gadot, Chris Pine, Lucy Hale, Connie Nielsen, Robin Wright, Danny Huston and David Thewlis
Rated PG-13 for sequences of violence and action, and some suggestive content
141 minutes
Opens today at a theater near you.
