‘Wonder Woman’ Lives Up to the Hype: Review

The new film Wonder Woman is the latest DC movie, starring newcomer Gal Gadot in the title role. Director Patty Jenkins and longtime DC producer Zach Snyder do an impressive job of bringing Wonder Woman to life.

---***SPOILER ALERT***---

Wonder Woman starts with the upbringing of our hero, Princess Diana of Themyscira. Her mother, Queen Hyppolita (Connie Nielsen) is reluctant to have Diana train like the rest of the warriors on their island. As Diana grows up strong and determined, she also trains in secret with her aunt Antiope (Robin Wright). Soon after, the queen realizes that she can no longer control or deny Diana’s destiny when a pilot (Chris Pine) crashes on their island. Diana discovers that she is needed to go fight against the war and the Amazons' enemy – Ares himself, the annihilator and harbinger of war.

Jenkins did it right by breaking down Diana’s upbringing for the audience and was able to bring a naïveté to Gadot’s character. As a child, she was able to draw on her innocence and candor, all the while having a mind of her own despite parental objection. As she enters the human realm she is not only determined to stop Ares, but she is also disappointed and confused to see that defeating one mad man does not mean the ceasing of hundreds more. Gadot’s natural wide-eyed beauty and her virtue and unstoppable desire to make the world a peaceful place makes it easy to fall in love with her character as Wonder Woman.

Cinematically, Wonder Woman is near perfect – while DC’s Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice was a good movie, “Wonder Woman” elevates the bar where action scenes are played out perfectly and the lighting is not as murky. As producer, Snyder does a fantastic job of having Wonder Woman’s strength play out slowly. Nothing can be compared to the surge and rush you get when the theme song by Hans Zimmer and Junkie XL (featured in Batman v. Superman) plays out as she blindly taps into her undiscovered powers with some help from her Lasso of Truth and metal cuffs.

Those who know me well know I grew up collecting comic books, and along with my brother, the worlds of DC, Marvel and many other comic titles held a magical spell on us. Wonder Woman especially called out to me as a little girl growing up because she was a beacon of all that I aspired to be, but mostly because she was a woman who was able to not only stand her own ground but easily go toe-to-toe with the most ruthless of demons and bad guys. Eighty years after her introduction to DC Comics, this new film has lifted her out of the comic book pages and breathed life into what I would I have imagined Wonder Woman to be today.

This new Wonder Woman film will mean different things to many people – a love story, a warrior’s destiny, an alien out of place – but in all actuality she is a pillar of hope and veracity and that’s what makes this latest DC film awe-inspiring.