Wonder Woman

Gal Gadot plays Diana, the multi-dimensional female lead Hollywood has desperately needed for years. Diana has an in-depth background story and demonstrates intelligence, strength, kindness, and bravery throughout the film. Wonder Woman opens with Diana as a child in her home country, Themyscira, land of the all-female Amazonians, watching impressive scenes of the women training for battle. Diana's bildungsroman shows her becoming a great warrior, alongside the cast of Amazon women who are commendably diverse. This includes Diana’s mother and aunt who are highly respected warriors and fully demonstrate their battle skills on screen, which is almost unseen in movie fighting scenes when actresses over forty are concerned. The film has also received praise for detailed design of the island, with the architecture being curved to illustrate it is without phallic symbolism, and the white female peacocks reiterating the fact that nothing male exists in this place. The graphics used for the island are beautiful, and the fighting scenes are excellently choreographed and filmed throughout the entirety of Wonder Woman.

The viewer is also quickly introduced to the notion that ‘fighting does not make you a hero’, which Diana demonstrates continuously in never harming another person without it being for the greater good, consistently placing kindness and empathy in the forefront of her decisions. The fact that Diana never refers to herself as ‘Wonder Woman’ also emphasises her humanity, maintaining a first name basis with the men assisting her that does not allow room for egoism or thinking that her life matters more than theirs. Diana proves herself again and again as a powerful leader, throwing herself into the path of danger and holding the most responsibility in battle, but also appreciating help when it is given. When praised and thanked for her actions by the men around her, she always replies by thanking them for their actions in return, again showing her humility. It is in these ways that the film illustrates that it is not fighting alone that makes Diana a hero; it the selflessness and bravery she demonstrates around her fighting that makes her heroic.

The love story between Diana and Steve was also a positive and important subplot to highlight within the film. Again, emotional and human connection is proved to be more important than status or war, and Diana is shown to keep her humanity and femininity not despite being a warrior, but in part because of it. Diana and Steve would not have met, or fallen in love, if it was not for Diana saving his life and leaving to go to war with him. Their relationship also provides moments of humour and deliberate awkwardness to emphasise Diana’s relatability, and even some Disney princess moments such as when she pulls him from the water, the scene looking very similar to Ariel saving Prince Eric in The Little Mermaid. The ending of the film also gives the viewer an emotionally powerful alternative to the typical hero and heroine storyline, and provides a poignant and moving connection to the characters, opening up interesting and thought provoking possibilities for the sequel.

Furthermore, there are numerous lovable male characters in this film, many of whom are shown in a sympathetic light to the viewer for their racial struggles or declining mental health as a result of the war. Jenkins artfully shows the flaws in humankind, whilst also emphasising Diana’s struggle to understand these divides, particularly in terms of race and gender, coming from a land where everyone is born equal and united. These moments of Diana’s recognitions of racial inequality, combined with how she is a treated as a woman in WWI England, are small but significant in the film, and produce undertones to the plot that both adults and children can connect to and understand. This, combined with the diversity in female roles within the film, is another factor that makes the film stand out against other superhero movies. In this one film there are the Amazons, an all-female nation of warriors, Etta Candy, a female provider of comic relief and witty repartee, Dr Poison, an intelligent female villain scientist, and Diana, the main heroine of the story.

On a personal note, I’ve always loved action films and TV shows, particularly those with female protagonists. I grew up on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Serenity, the Terminator series, Jurassic Park, and Catwoman, but as I got older these strong leading ladies seemed to become fewer and far between on screen, and I began to notice how overly sexualised and exploited female leads are in so many action films, particularly those where they are the token woman surrounded by a cast of leading men. In line with this, all too often they are given the less important and less action-based roles in the films, often needing to be rescued whilst the main male character is seen as the more significant and memorable hero. Female characters in action films also seem to be becoming increasingly one-dimensional as time progresses, with storylines that disregard their histories and their personalities outside of being an accessory or a side kick to the male lead, and this causes the viewer to care less if or when she is killed off. This can be seen clearly in the James Bond films where the majority of female characters are essentially reduced to sexy cannon fodder. Even when there was the occasional new female-based action film, such as Mad Max: Fury Road, the press surrounding the film focussed mainly on the backlash the film received for the majority of lead characters being female, rather than the quality or entertainment value of the film itself. This is just one of the many reasons why Wonder Woman is exactly the superhero film the world needed in 2017. It seamlessly breaks these boundaries and proves that female-led action films that provide quality characterisation and genuinely demonstrate female strength, bravery, and intelligence, without over-sexualisation or exploitation, are tremendous successes waiting to happen. I hope that this film creates opportunities for more films to be made moving forward with ever increasing diversity in gender, race, and sexuality.

Rating: 4/5