Wonder Women

We’ve waited long enough for a decent female superhero movie to grace us and, given the few flailing attempts of the past – Electra; Catwoman; Supergirl (the 1987 movie, not the swell TV series) – the big question is: has the wait been worth it? The answer, happily, is yes – if only barely.

Israeli actress and former model Gal Gadot (she was in four Fast & Furious films) takes on the mantle of the immortal Diana, daughter of Zeus, the God of Gods.

Living on an invisible, female-only island she is trained by Amazon warriors to face down the inevitable arrival of the evil God Ares, enemy of Zeus.

Eager to be her own woman, Diana gets involved fighting for the Allies in World War One when an American pilot (Chris Pine from Star Trek) pierces the island’s cloak of invisibility in a stricken plane and recruits her to his mission of destroying a secret poison gas program cooked up by a renegade German officer (Danny Huston) and a disfigured scientist (Elena Anaya).

Given how the superhero genre has been awash with testosterone pretty much since it was kicked off by 1978’s Superman, the need for a credible female hero has been growing, and the one delivered here has all the killer skills and defiant personal qualities required. She won’t be ordered around – not by men, not by her mother – and is always the first into battle. Hence the film is full of “you go, girl” moments designed to please the genre’s long-neglected female demographic.

Yet Diana seems far more confident than the film’s director, Patty Jenkins, whose last work of note was the Oscar-winning 2003 film Monster with Charlize Theron.

To be frank, as a narrative the film is over the shop, with huge story holes, inconsistencies and continuity lapses that are, at times, breath-taking.

For instance, watch for the vanishing German destroyer, a big-movie blooper only possible in this era of post-content cinema. Then there’s the matter of how Diana manages to conceal a large, heavy sword inside a skimpy ball gown. Why can’t the Amazons see beyond their dome of invisibility? Are they immortal or not? How do they reproduce? And why does Diana suddenly behave like a ditz in a rom-com when it comes to being with a man for the first time?

Even Diana’s battles with the German infantry are awkward. While they are well-staged, using that insta slo-mo device we were introduced to in 300, they feel odd, given how Diana pities all soldiers in the war as being innocent pawns manipulated by a greater evil. So why take such glee in killing them?

Ah, all this nitpicking. Perhaps, long ago, filmmakers might have cared about such lapses in logic, but the brief of Wonder Woman is not to make coherent sense but to conjure enough rousing big-screen girl-power action to spark a new femme-focused franchise, and on that score it acquits itself well enough.

The welcome doses of humour help make the film’s many shortcomings forgivable, and Gadot fills the form-fitting uniform vacated by Lynda Carter, who played Wonder Woman on TV from 1975 to 1979, with honour, sass, just the right amount of sexiness and, most importantly, the ability to lay waste with the aid of a huge VFX team.