And then one day a screaming comes across the sky, and a World War I vintage fighter plane disgorges Steve Trevor (Chris Pine), a blue-eyed flyboy who is the living embodiment of the phrase “not all men.” There are none of the latter on the island, which has been sealed off from history and the rest of the world by a magic membrane. In the course of family arguments about Diana’s destiny, the history of the Amazons is recounted, with emphasis on that tribe’s ambivalent relations with men - meaning human beings generically and dudes in particular. ![]() Diana’s mother wants her daughter to mind her tutors and steer clear of the warrior traditions represented by Antiope (Robin Wright), the girl’s aunt. Like a Disney princess - the resemblance hardly seems accidental - she is free-spirited and rebellious, her loyalties split between two opposed parental figures. The girl (played in childhood by Lilly Aspell and Emily Carey before maturing into Gal Gadot) grows up on a craggy Mediterranean island, a Bechdel-test paradise of flower-strewn meadows, noble horses and mighty quadriceps. Diana Prince is, properly speaking, Princess Diana, daughter of Hippolyta, queen of the Amazons (Connie Nielsen). Its earnest insouciance recalls the “Superman” movies of the ’70s and ’80s more than the mock-Wagnerian spectacles of our own day, and like those predigital Man of Steel adventures, it gestures knowingly but reverently back to the jaunty, truth-and-justice spirit of an even older Hollywood tradition.īut I’m getting ahead of myself. It cleverly combines genre elements into something reasonably fresh, touching and fun. A pretty good one, too.īy which I mean that “Wonder Woman” tells an interesting, not entirely predictable story (until the climax, which reverts, inevitably and disappointingly, to dreary, overblown action clichés). It feels less like yet another installment in an endless sequence of apocalyptic merchandising opportunities than like … what’s the word I’m looking for? A movie. ![]() “Wonder Woman,” directed by Patty Jenkins from a script by Allan Heinberg, briskly shakes off blockbuster branding imperatives and allows itself to be something relatively rare in the modern superhero cosmos. Once franchise continuity is established - a mysterious package from Bruce Wayne arrives at the office of Wonder Woman’s alter ego, Diana Prince, who works in the Louvre’s antiquities department - we are transported back to the heroine’s earlier life, long before she became mixed up with Wayne and Clark Kent. The question is not rhetorical, and I’m relieved to report that the answer is no. ![]() ![]() The rest of you are invited to keep reading.) synergy in the “Dark Knight” era? (This is the cue for unhinged fans to come me on Twitter and accuse me of being a shill for Marvel and Disney. Are we really going to pick up where “Batman v Superman” left off? Must we endure another dose of the grandiose self-pity and authoritarian belligerence that have characterized the DC-Warner Bros. The viewer may be forgiven a shudder of dread. “Wonder Woman” begins with ominous, lugubrious music (composed by Rupert Gregson-Williams), a voice-over invocation of “darkness” and an aerial view of the Louvre that seems full of sinister portent.
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