![]() It certainly helps that Steve Trevor is your typical macho “ladies man”, as it allows him to be consistently upstaged and outdone by Diana. Balls are kicked and heads are sliced off aplenty. But what is surprising is the sheer quality of Wonder Woman, from its playful rom-com writing (by Gail Simone), to its sharp and colorful visuals, to its abundance of quality action. You can probably guess how things go from there.Īt least, you’ll be able to guess the broad strokes of the narrative, which holds few surprises. ![]() But a defeated and imprisoned Ares, who was being held captive on Themyscira and has finagled an escape, is also headed to the Big Apple. Once it’s established he’s no threat to the Amazons, he needs to be escorted back to New York a task that falls, after some shenanigans, to Diana. (His seven-issue story arc, “Gods and Mortals”, from 1987, provides a loose basis for Wonder Woman.) The components are molded much like how Queen Hippolyta (Virginia Madsen) shapes Diana (Keri Russell) from sand: there’s Ares (Alfred Molina), Hades (Oliver Platt), and Zeus (David McCallum) there’s Themyscira, the man-free utopia that the Amazons rule in secrecy and then there’s USAF Colonel Steve Trevor (Nathan Fillion), who crash-lands there and quickly runs afoul of its guardians.įillion is perfectly cast as Trevor and plays the airman as smug, bewildered and smugly bewildered. That story builds a framework by cherry-picking from Greek mythology and the more active parts of George Perez’s imagination. If it’s even half as good as this, I’ll be pleasantly surprised. ![]() But it’s mostly a welcome subtext to a really rather excellent action-adventure story – one that’s easily the best of DC’s offerings so far (I’m watching them in order), and also one that sets an extremely high bar for the forthcoming live-action version. The commentary is there, for sure, and the more overt instances of it range from fun to funny to startlingly astute. No, what sticks out is how ably this movie highlights the absurdity of everyday, cavalier chauvinism, without ever becoming preachy or losing narrative steam. The most noteworthy thing about Wonder Woman as a conception, and this version of Diana’s backstory, in particular, is not the fact that she dresses like a prostitute while advocating for representational parity – that feels like the point, and mostly a clever one.
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