You know it, take it for granted: Hollywood is an industry that functions from a predominately male perspective, particularly in the big budget action genre. But films like Wonder Woman call out the typically unquestioned tropes of masculine storytelling. Wonder Woman‘s finest quality is that simply switching the gender of our world-beating superhero makes an otherwise routine outing fresher and more exciting.
Although Patty Jenkin’s Wonder Woman origin story is a DC project, as well as part of the Justice League universe they are establishing, it hews closely to the Marvel blueprint. It combines the mythicism of Thor, the 20th century nostalgia and geopolitical solemnity of Captain America, and is uplifting and cautiously optimistic in its worldview (as opposed to the grim dourness of Nolan’s Batman and Snyder’s Superman). Star Gal Gadot carries herself like a young Arnold Schwarzenneger – physically striking, charismatic, slyly funny. Like Arnold, her strong suits aren’t nuanced emotion or large chunks of English-language dialogue, but Jenkins does well emphasizing her strengths.
Wonder Woman falls into the standard pitfalls of the genre, including repetitious, desensitized action scenes. Wonder Woman, who goes here merely by Diana (her birth name), and her fellow Amazonians soar and twirl in a weightless, computerized blur. There are no real stakes in the hand-to-hand combat, and all the big battles are airless affairs conducted against a sterile green screen later filled in with backgrounds of smoke and glowing reds and blues. The plotting is familiar, generic.
But Wonder Woman is fun in smaller moments, particularly when Diana leaves her paradisiacal island and ventures into early 20th century London. Here the film enters a pleasant fish-out-of-water phase, and Chris Pine is charming and funny as a love interest and comedic foil. Most interesting is the way Jenkins and screenwriter Allan Heinberg subvert stereotypes, beyond the more obvious examples in which the super-powered Diana protects men in combat. In a very funny scene that plays opposite the way it would in almost any other movie, Gadot surprises a naked and vulnerable Pine as he’s bathing. Near the conclusion, Pine mansplains to the “naive” Gadot that all of her idealistic beliefs are false. Conventional storytelling states that Pine’s pragmatic, cynical views will hold true, but Wonder Woman eschews those tired machinations for a more conflicted ending.
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