Rise of a warrior

> DC Comics’ Amazon princess makes her first solo outing and introduces the world to a new superhero, Wonder Woman

THERE is bound to be a strong debate about Wonder Woman’s feminist credentials, and how she compares to all the male superheroes who’ve dominated the global box office in recent years.

Typically, the film turns out to be both progressive in its gender politics, and an exercise in compromise and pulled punches.

For all her martial skills, Diana is portrayed as a sensitive and engagingly naive figure. She has made it her lifetime mission to banish Ares, God of War, and to “save the world, this beautiful place”.

As portrayed by Gal Gadot, she has powers of empathy and kindness that her male counterparts in superhero movies completely lack.

It is refreshing to see Chris Pine’s wisecracking, Humphrey Bogart-like Captain Steve Trevor, the male lead, deferring to Diana.

After all, she’s the one with the powers and he is her love interest and Robin-like helper.

Director Patty Jenkins allows more time for character development than is generally given to Bruce Wayne/Batman or Clark Kent/Superman.

Jenkins also continually shows up the chauvinist attitudes of those around Diana, for example, when she appears at a meeting of the allmale British wartime cabinet, and they bluster away in anger at her presence.

Nonetheless, in the special effects-dominated action sequences, when the protagonists use their super powers to bring down the villains, gender doesn’t make that much difference anyway.

We’re introduced to Diana as a fearless and mischievous young child (played by Lilly Aspell).

For reasons that aren’t very clear, her mother Queen Hippolyta (Connie Nielsen) doesn’t want her to be trained as a warrior. Her aunt General Antiope (Robin Wright) has different ideas.

Eventually, by the time she is a young adult, it is decided that Diana will be trained “harder” than any of the other warriors.

She’s already the most lethal among them when, out of the blue, a plane driven by Captain Trevor crashes in the sea just off the island.

Gadot plays Diana in appealing fashion. For all her strength and prowess, she is an innocent, even comic figure, who simply can’t understand the cynicism, politicking, and violence of the humans she encounters.

The film becomes much darker and more compelling when she arrives in 1918 London, and then heads to the battlefront. The German army is close to collapse and an Armistice is about to be signed.

The film’s trump cards are its villains. General Ludendorff (a bravura performance by Danny Huston) is a bullish and intimidating figure who sniffs a mysterious gas which gives him superhuman powers. He is determined to scupper the peace

talks. His partner in villainy is Doctor Poison (Elena Anaya), a very delicate, very lethal woman with a disfigured face who has a genius for chemical warfare. Another intriguing character is David Thewlis’ whiskered and patrician British politician, Sir Patrick Morgan, a member of the establishment who has hidden depths.

As if to provide as stark a contrast as possible with the sunsoaked world of the Amazons’ island, Jenkins films the World War I scenes in a far darker palette. The colours are desaturated. There is just as much mud and barbed wire as you’d expect.

Diana is thrown together with Steve’s associates – the traumatised Scottish soldier played by Ewen Bremner, Saïd Taghmaoui’s secret agent, and the Native American chieftain played by Eugene Brave Rock (whose expertise with smoke signals comes in predictably useful).

It’s a drawback with films like this that the protagonists have to use their super powers sooner or later.

All the effort devoted to building up characters and developing plotlines becomes redundant as the Amazon warrior in the hot pants and the God of War face off against one another.

It’s a case of pow!, biff! bam! and boom! as the comicbook origins of the project become painfully apparent, and memories of Lynda Carter in the 1970s TV series begin to spring to mind.

Even so, Wonder Woman feels far fresher than most recent superhero movies. It leaves many questions about its heroine unanswered – but there are bound to be plenty of sequels to deal with those. – The Independent