Wonder Woman (mini review)
I posted this as a reply to a post here. But I thought I'd post this here in case anyone is interested and has not seen it yet.
My feeling upon leaving the theatre is "I need to find MY Wonder Woman".
I've seen the film twice now and I really love it. At least as a super hero movie and a symbol of female empowerment. This is by far DCs best super hero film and the best on screen depiction of Wonder Woman. Gal Gadot, the direction (also a woman!), and the writers nail capturing the character of Wonder Woman.
This is the perfect depiction of the character. Her character is disarmingly innocent, kind and loving to a fault, but so morally principled and strong that she outshines almost everyone else on screen. I have to shout out Chris Pines as being an exception. He does a wonderful job as her costar and manages to humanize man kind and "men". In him she realises that there IS good in man kind, and "men". And indeed they fall in love. And of course she fucking hicks ass as a fighter. I loved the way they captured her strength while keeping her femininity. Her attacks were balletic, fast, flexible, yet brutally effective.
I really felt that they were trying to, and successfully pulled off, creating a female super man. Indeed there is a hilarious scene about mid way through where they are trying to find her cloths for her that won't make her stick out in WWI era London. She is of course innocent as the driven snow and so she has no idea why she needs to hide her beauty, has no idea that the world of "men" is misogynist and anti woman. She tries on a number of outfits in a hilarious montage. But the one they settle on does this amazingly perfect job of doing exactly what they want, allows her to blend in. But much more than that it does absolutely nothing to hide per stunning beauty. In fact if anything it somehow manages to highten it in an ironic way. And the straw that breaks the camels back is that they try to give her glasses to make her look even less intimidating, and what we suddenly have is "Female Clark Kent". And I suddenly realized that's who she is in that world. She is female super man. All of the best of femininity personified with as little of the negative as possible. Beauty, strength, kindness, compassion. And with her glasses she stumbles about awkwardly just like Clark Kent does in his attempt to hide himself as being super man. Only in this case her disguise is to hide the fact that she is a stunningly beautiful, powerful, strong woman. Cause that's too much for the men of that era, and sadly this one, to handle.
I walked away from the film with one thought in my head. Fuck, I need to find MY Wonder Woman. Lol. I hope no one feels that I'm being misogynist in having this thought. I don't mean that in any "ownership" sense. It's just that Gadot manages to create such an alluringly perfect fantasy woman (and I mean that not in the male chauvinist sense of the perfect woman) that I felt that I yearned to meet someone like that. Someone with such kindness, compassion, innocence (not in a derogatory way), moral integrity, steel like strength, and such beauty as to be blinding.
Diana is a goddess, both in mythology, the comics and this film. And to be honest when I said "I need to find my Wonder Woman", I really meant I want to find someone I simply worship. lol. She is the sexiest creation I have seen on screen in a LONG time. And I mean sexy in a multi layered sense, of course physically it's impossible not to keep your eyes off her, and I mean that respectfully if possible. But her strength, kindness, innocence and confidence magnify all that 10 fold.
I hope I don't come across as sounding paternalistic in any sense. Because there is always the danger in wanting to "worship" someone, that you dismiss their value as a human being as well.
= new reply since forum marked as read
[font color="navy" face="Verdana"]I'm not much of a Marvel Comics superhero fantasy fan, but I always did admire the Wonder Woman character and my friend is absolutely nuts about her as a symbol of feminine strength. Your review is not paternalistic in any sense, though obviously a male perspective. 
As a woman, I see her as someone with traits that need to be emulated by me and by more women - that combination of strength and compassion, with indomitable courage and oh-so-righteous fury in defending all that is good and beautiful.
Great movie!
She is part of the DC universe, Superman, Batman, Flash etc.
