Pros: relationship between Diana and Steve works, Nathan Fillion
Cons: dark, gory, all action with little attention to story and shallow characters
The Bottom Line: If you want an animated monster movie with heaving bosoms and swordfights galore, this is the movie for you. If you want a strong plot and well-developed characters, look elsewhere.
I wanted to like Wonder Woman the first time I encountered her. After all, she was a big, strong, athletic woman and I was a big, strong, athletic girl. Okay, so I didn't have the magic lasso and bra of steel, but it seemed like I should have some sense of female solidarity. I never quite managed to work up an excessive amount of enthusiasm, but I did find some incarnations of Wonder Woman interesting and found her enjoyable in group superhero settings like the Superfriends cartoon.
I recently stumbled on a new animated Wonder Woman that retells her origin story from the creation of Themyscria (the Amazons' island out of time), her initial meeting with Air Force Colonel Steve Trevor, and her first foray into the real world. The early sections are violent and dark and a bit gory and some of those elements remain throughout the entire movie, but partway through the movie seems to start focusing on a theme of renewal and hope - hope that the world has improved, hope that we can each reach our fullest potential and fulfill our own destiny no matter the opposition, hope that the world can improve no matter how bad things look at any given moment. Unfortunately, this is a mantle that's picked up and dropped at will rather than carried throughout the entire movie.
For those of you unfamiliar with the basic story of Wonder Woman, she is really Princess Diana of Themyscria, daughter of Queen Hippolyta of the Amazons. She grew up on a remote island with no men and is brought into the modern world when Trevor crash lands on the island. Eager to prove herself, she volunteers to be the one to return him to civilization. Instead, the queen holds a contest. Diana secretly enters and wins, thus earning the right to escort him.
At the same time, the war god Ares escapes from imprisonment on Themyscria and also finds his way to the modern world. Can Diana stop him from destroying all he surveys? Will she let Steve help her? Does she find what she's looking for in the outside world or discover that there's no place like home? You'll have to watch Wonder Woman to find out.
This is a darker Wonder Woman than any I've encountered before, but there are some crisp one liners and visual jokes to lighten the mood a bit. The story as a whole feels a bit abbreviated and far-fetched but it's true to other incarnations of the origin story in general outline. This is really an animated action movie with gunfights, martial arts, chase scenes, jet fighter attacks, monsters, and scantily clad women and with the same sort of plot issues you'll find in live action movies of the same ilk.
The voice cast of Wonder Woman is superb, but it's hard to appreciate it when they were given so little good material to convey. In fact, most of the characters are an odd combination of flat and melodramatic and it makes it difficult to recognize some of the familiar voices. In particular, I couldn't tell that Keri Russell was playing Diana until I looked it up even though she has a fairly distinctive voice. The one real exception is the always fantastic Nathan Fillion as Steve Trevor - his character was a walking tribute to early fighter jock but his voice and mannerisms came through loud and clear.
I think this would have been a better movie without the Ares sub-plot and the supernatural elements and magical fight scenes that resulted from it. Obviously Greek mythology is on the plate in this story and I don't object to its use, just the way it was included here. I can't decide if there's some way it could have been altered to work better within this context, but a different approach was definitely warranted.
One thing that does work is the development of a romantic relationship between Diana and Steve. Antagonism abounded on both sides, but chemistry did too. Although stereotypical in some ways, it was enjoyable and definitely the emotional backbone of an otherwise shallow movie. I wish it had been more of a focus than an afterthought.
While there were some good elements of Wonder Woman - most notably the relationship between Diana and Steve - the movie as a whole was not very good. It's dark, it's action packed, and it's shallow. If you want an animated monster movie with heaving bosoms and swordfights galore, this is the movie for you. If you want a strong plot and well-developed characters, look elsewhere for your superhero fix.
On the mystical island of Themyscira, a proud and fierce warrior race of Amazons have raised a daughter of untold beauty, grace and strength - Princes...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
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