Gal Gadot exudes real movie-star aura in female-led film
The main thing many of us have been wondering about Wonder Woman is whether or not Warner Bros was actually planning to release it. For months you could have heard a pin drop on the publicity front: not exactly standard procedure in blockbuster tradecraft.
Perhaps the mere fact of it being a female-led superhero film gave them jitters. Perhaps it had something to do with the abuse meted out to the cast of last year’s all-women Ghostbusters reboot.
Studios want hits, not causes, and Wonder Woman is a cause in waiting. Of the 55 comic-book films produced by Hollywood in the last decade, zero have been centred on a solo female character: to put that statistic in its fullest perspective, that’s two fewer than have been centred on dogs. Girls in costumes can be one of the boys — one Avenger or X-Man of many — but for an unchaperoned heroine you have to go back to 2005’s Elektra, and no-one should have to do that.
Thankfully now there’s no reason to. Hit or not — and you’d better believe its box-office results will be scrutinised under a microscope — Wonder Woman is close to a knockout on its own ambitious terms. Patty Jenkins’ film officially belongs to the DC Extended Universe, the same sunless and woebegone realm that brought us Batman v Superman and Suicide Squad.
But Jenkins — whose only other feature to date is the 2003 Charlize Theron showcase Monster — seems uninterested in cameos and crosspromotion, and devotes every ounce of energy to the story at hand.
It’s set far from franchise continuity concerns, in the thick of the First World War, during which demigoddess Diana (Gal Gadot) battles her