Tequila shots, decapitations galore, and dialogue that's overtly about sexual politics… no, this is certainly not your father’s—I mean your mother’s—Wonder Woman…

But somehow it all works. Well, that’s not actually true: this briskly-paced animated feature does a lot more than “work.” Perhaps it’s not for purists, or for those who’d have a problem with Wonder Woman’s pulchritude being humorously objectified in a way that DC’s male icons would never stand for. However, there can be little doubt that this new Wonder Woman manages to do an extremely skillful job of satisfying its target audience by being equally appealing to fanboys and fangirls, to the most visceral of gamers and the most sensitive of manga-readers.

I myself don’t fit into either of these groups, but like any really effective work of pop culture, Wonder Woman made me feel like I had temporary membership in various fandoms—appreciating the somehow-fresh girl-power themes while also thrilling to the bloody, wall-to-wall, shouldn’t-this-be-rated-R? action.

Left to my own devices, I’m pretty much an old-fashioned superhero guy, which is why I admire the work of Bruce Timm’s team so much, the way it’s taken the classic icons and often made them “more classic.” In fact, two of my favorite moments in the Timm Era concern Wonder Woman. The first is her bigger-than-Superman, truly Amazonian proportions as a militant feminist in Timm’s adaptation of Darwyn Cooke’s magnificently dark DC: The New Frontier. The other is a simple-minded but wildly fun episode of Justice League Unlimited in which she is forced to take on pretty much all the other female members of the league at the same time in a steel cage… and still wipes the floor with them.    

The Wonder Woman here has elements of both those interpretations—the messianic champion of gender equality and the straightforward brawler-warrior princess—but inhabits them in a way that softens and blends them over the course of this George Perez-like origin story. (That is, it’s not completely updated: we get the invisible jet, not the flying W.W. of recent animation.) At times, with her awesome power juxtaposed with her stranger-in-a-strange-land naïveté, she comes across as a Barbara Eden-esque innocent “dominant”; and in that sense, Diana is a male fantasy writ large: to think that such a woman “needs” a man is the ultimate psychosexual self-aggrandizement (e.g., in adolescent male sexuality even an omnipotent female longs to be “potent”). Yet screenwriter Michael Jelenic never makes Steve Trevor the token pants-wearer, and is careful to lay out an emotional, rather than physical, rationale for male-female rapprochement. Moreover, the script balances the male wish fulfillment aspect of the Wonder Woman archetype with plenty of jabs at masculinity at Trevor’s expense—one particularly memorable exchange has him doing a Dr. Phil-style confession courtesy of the Golden Lasso. For much of Wonder Woman’s 75-minute runtime, then, I was put in mind not of other direct-to-video titles, but of Man on Wire—that’s the kind of grandly dangerous line that it walks in terms of keeping the character relevant to today’s audiences without shooting for either hipster retro or contemporary politically correctness. But Jelenic and director Lauren Montgomery don’t just walk that line—like Philippe Petit, they are loose enough and confident enough to be playful and do a few romcom-style stunts on it for our amusement.  

But to be clear, this is no date movie, at least not in the conventional sense. Opening with an extended battle scene that feels heavily influenced by 300, Wonder Woman sets the stakes high by introducing the perennial comics baddie Ares, the god of war. In that sense, the movie plays up one of the inherent strengths of the property—the title character is presented not as a superhero with a nod to mythology (like so many others), but rather the opposite: a refugee from a classics studies program who is only a “superhero” by dint of ending up in our world.   
 

Of course Diana and Trevor must fight a bit before they make up...
("Wonder Woman" (c) Warner Bros. Ent Inc.   "Wonder Woman" and all
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All Rights Reserved.)

Fighting a staggering array of monsters, demons, and even zombies in a clever, Harryhausen-like scene, Diana and her fellow Amazons make the case that an entire animated TV series could easily focus on their exploits independent of today’s world, the rest of the DC universe, and even, um, men. Still, the best lines consistently go to Trevor, and in that role Nathan Fillion really shines, making the character neither an improbable equal to Diana nor an awkward boytoy sidekick. Instead, he’s just a “guy,” at turns heroic, ordinary, insecure, and lusty, as might fit the popular conception of a fighter pilot. Keri Russell, in the lead, turns in a deceptively strong performance, often taking on the straight-man role relative to Fillion yet far from entirely humorless. Her best line: “Oh, crap.” Trust me, you’ll agree when you hear it in context.


...in the words of the script: "armored super models"
(image courtesy of Warner Home Video)

What’s most remarkable, however, about the work of these two actors is that they manage to exude so much charm when the script does it darnedest to foreground all of the gender and role reversal issues mentioned earlier—that is, with the text consisting of so much subtext. It’s as if the strategy employed was, hey, let’s not tiptoe around this stuff or avoid it altogether by getting rid of Trevor (or, still worse, giving him superpowers)—let’s confront it head-on and, if we can, have fun with it.    

Well, have fun with it the filmmakers certainly did—and it’s the audience that benefits. Bottom line? If you’ve at all been looking forward to this release, go ahead and rent/buy/borrow it as soon as it’s available… then invite a bunch of friends over and have the best time “at the movies” you’re likely to experience this winter.



Product Data from Warner Home Video

DVD Features:
Wonder Woman Feature Film (runtime 75 min) includes commentary
Sneak Peek of the next upcoming DC Universe title
First Looks at Justice League New Frontier, Batman Gotham Knight & Wonder Woman
Trailers

Special Edition DVD Features:
“A Subversive Dream” will explore the rich history of Wonder Woman and her inspiration on American culture.
“The Daughters of Myth” is a riveting documentary
explaining the archetype and tradition of the female DC Comics Super Hero.
Next Upcoming DCU Sneak Peak (10 min)
First Looks of Batman Gotham Knight, Justice League New Frontier & Wonder Woman
4 Bonus Episodes of Justice League
Wonder Woman Official Trailer