This feature-length, direct-to-video take on Wonder Woman leans heavily into the feminist themes of the DC comic, while also offering character design that wouldn’t be out of place on a truck’s mud flap. Is this a case of trying to have it both ways? Or a statement that warrior women have the right to look “sexy” too? I lean toward the latter this time around, if only because this Wonder Woman (voiced by Keri Russell) seems oblivious to her own bombshell-ness. In other words, she may look like a sex object, but she doesn’t carry herself like one, nor does the narrative treat her as such. Indeed, Wonder Woman—a.k.a. Diana, princess of Themyscira—is depicted more as an ambassador, a negotiator in the literal war between the sexes. Living on this secret island with her fellow Amazons, where her mother Hippolyta has established a woman-only society as a refuge from warring men, Diana begins to wonder about what lies beyond her shores. One day she encounters downed fighter pilot Steve Trevor (Nathan Fillion) and convinces her mother to let her escort him back to the outside world. There she finds a bewildering society in which women—for reasons unfathomable to her—are treated as inferior to men. And so, while there are close-ups of Wonder Woman’s bursting bustier, we also get an extended, comic scene of her blithely enduring Trevor’s attempt to get her drunk at a bar (he’s the one who ends up under the table). In terms of visuals other than those involving the title heroine, the art direction is crisp and exhilarating, and the action—overseen by director Lauren Montgomery—is nicely punctuated with striking insert shots modeled after comic-book iconography. In addition to Russell and Fillion, there is also strong vocal work by the likes of Alfred Molina, Vicki Lewis and Oliver Platt as a particularly sleazy Hades.
