Yes, I know the movie has been out since the Spring. I only just got around to watching it myself, and I needed to break NuMutant’s months-long hiatus. So here is my review for DC’s animated Wonder Woman movie!

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This movie doesn’t begin with the luxury of peace and tranquility. There is darkness. There is thunder. And yes, there is also blood.

That’s gonna hurt tomorrow

The Amazons are at war with the army of Ares god of War. Amazons, men, and beasts are getting slaughtered left and right. Right off the bat, it’s clear that maybe you should exercise caution when showing this movie to small children. Of course, the gore is minimal, so don’t expect the violence to be up to 300 standards.

Soon we’re introduced to Hippolyta, queen of the Amazons:

From the way she starts tossing dudes around left and right, it’s established that the feats of strength we’ll be seeing Wonder Woman perform later in the movie won’t be unique to her. Apparently all Amazons are incredibly strong, and Queen Hippolyta is the baddest mamma-jamma of the bunch.

See the way her lasso returns in a perfect loop? Respect.

Hippolyta finds Ares himself, and (after she calls him bad in bed) a vicious fight ensues. Hippolyta kicks Ares in the face. Ares punches Hippolyta across the room and into a pillar. Seriously folks, the action here is pretty good for an animated movie.

Back on the battlefield, a couple of Amazons named Artemis and Persephone (not to be confused with the goddesses of the same names) compete in killing male soldiers. Meanwhile, an Amazon who’s more philosopher than warrior named Alexa is getting her ass kicked.

Persephone and Artemis save Alexa’s life a few times, but Alexa’s habit of running away accidentally gets one of Persephone’s eyes slashed, partially blinding her. Meanwhile, Hippolyta and Ares’ illegitimate son is slaughtering Amazons left and right. When Ares points this out, Hippolyta reenters the battlefield and decapitates her murderous rape-baby.

You know he dead!

Hippolyta then beats the crap out of a grieving Ares, and is mere seconds away from putting him out of his godly misery until the clouds part and the mighty Zeus tells Hippolyta to stop. Ares is, after all, one of Zeus’ many many many children. Hera also appears in the sky, and promises to punish Ares by allowing the Amazons to keep him prisoner for all eternity. A pair of bracelets are then placed on Ares’ wrists that prevent him from using his powers. Hera also decides to give the Amazons a new beginning by placing them on a hidden island where they can rebuild their lives.

Marg Helgenberger provides the voice of Hera, and I’ve got to say she provides the worst, most phoned in performance in the entire movie. So far Alfred Molina is doing a good Ares, Virginia Madsen a good Hippolyta, Vicki Lewis a decent enough Persephone, Tara Strong as good as ever as Alexa, and Rosario Dawson finds an almost surprisingly good mix of humorous bravado and ferocity as Artemis. David McCallum also does well with his brief role as Zeus. Helgenberger as Hera? Totally phoned in.

Time passes, and we see Hippolyta form the shape of an infant child out of clay. She cuts herself and places some of her own blood onto the clay statue, making it her of own flesh. The clouds part in the sky, and the light of the gods strikes the statue, making it a real child. Diana is born.

And I’m unimpressed. I wasn’t expecting beasts and creatures from across the island to gather as Hippolyta holds her child over a cliff for all to see, but a little fanfare for the birth of the title character would’ve been nice. Instead, we’re treated to 3 seconds of the baby crying before fading to the title.

Years have passed, and Diana is now a young woman whose hair sticks out a little too far from her head.

Seriously, comb it down a little.

Diana and Artemis have a friend sparring match, and it’s made clear that Diana is the better fighter. Hippolyta walks in on the match, and Diana asks her why even bother training if there’s no one to fight. Diana even suggests (and whimpy bookworm Alexa backs her up) that maybe it’s time they rejoined the outside world. To show Diana just how evil men really are, she finally takes Diana to Ares’ prison cell to see how twisted and cruel the Y-chromosome is.

By the way, one-eyed Persephone is the guard who’s been watching over Ares for centuries. This will come up later during his inevitable escape.

Just above the Amazons’ invisible island of Themyscira, Colonel Steve Trevor and a couple of other fighter pilots take the audience right into the danger zone. A dog fight ensues in the air, which ends with Steve as the only survivor in a damaged jet. Steve flies right through Themyscira before landing in the middle of one of their rivers. His arrival doesn’t go unnoticed (especially since Hippolyta and Artemis watched the entire jet fight through a magic mirror), and a group of Amazon soldiers chase him down. It’s Diana (who may or may not be able to fly– this is never made clear) who finds and confronts and captures him.

Now tied up and held prisoner, Steve gets the lasso of truth wrapped around him as Queen Hippolyta interrogates. This scene is used to establish the lasso’s ability (which we’d only seen used as a regular lasso til this point), but it also breaks up the tension in the scene when Hippolyta inadvertently forces Steve to admit Diana has amazing boobs. Hey, I laughed. This also sets up the movie’s first running gag, which is Steve saying the word “crap” and Diana getting offended by it.

Since Steve Trevor poses no threat to the Amazons, they’re going to allow him to leave, but not before they choose an emissary to escort him back to the outside world. A tournament is held to decide which of them will do it. I’ll save you another paragraph or two of tedious details and just tell you that Diana won.

Meanwhile, Alexa has joined Persephone on guard duty while every other Amazon on the island is either participating in or watching the tournament. When Alexa turns her back to read a book, Persephone sneaks behind her and kills her.

“That’s for my eye, bitch!” -What Persephone should’ve said.

Persephone then frees Ares, and the two passionately kiss. Yeah, turns out she fell in love with him while guarding him all these centuries.

By the way, the comic reader in me can’t help but point out the absence of bracelets on the Amazons’ wrists. In the comics, all Amazons are forced to wear bracelets by the goddess Athena as a reminder that they had once allowed themselves to be taken advantage of by men and chained up. They can never take them off, and they’re completely indestructible. This movie sorta skips over the fact, and the Amazons only wear their bracelets into battle for the explicit purpose of blocking things like arrows with their wrists. Go figure.

Anyway, Diana wins the tournament, and is given a garment designed to resemble the American flag on Steve Trevor’s jacket as a sign of peace. Hippolyta then summons the Invisible Jet– goddess only knows why they know it’s arrived if they can’t see it, and it exists with no explanation. There’s no “we’ve studied your modern aircraft before” or “the gods gave it to us decades ago” reason given. Diana just suddenly has an Invisible Jet, and she’s going to use it to take Steve Trevor back home.

Word is also out that Ares has escaped. As soon as Diana escorts Steve home, she has a second mission to find Ares and bring him back to Themyscira. And now we have the conflict that will carry us into the next Act.

Wonder Woman and Steve Trevor arrive in New York City, and they land the jet in the middle of Central Park, which startles the living hell out of a nearby wino.

Diana gets her first up close look of NYC, and it’s mixed with both good and bad. She’s happy to see children for the first time since she looked in a mirror years ago, but she’s saddened to see a little girl whose guy friends won’t let her play pirates with them unless she pretends to be a damsel in distress. Diana gives the little girl a quick sword fighting lesson, and tells her to “unleash hell” on the little boys. This all makes for a pretty amusing scene, which is topped off with Steve being afraid that cops will think he’s Diana’s pimp if he doesn’t put her in some regular clothes.

What follows is a scene you’re about to endure a small rant about:

That vacuous blonde holding Steve Trevor’s arm is Etta Candy. Etta Candy! See, whereas Etta Candy in the comics is a capable if not slightly curvy Air Force officer who becomes Diana’s best friend and is a little Amazon-like herself, the version who appears in this movie is a skinny little bitch whose idea of flirting with Steve is pretending she can’t reach the pencil under her desk unless a big strong man moves the desk for her. Really?! THIS is the Etta Candy we’re given? They’ve ditched the friendly soldier with a love for chocolates for this?! Are they freaking kidding us? To make a comparison, I want you to picture Superman’s buddy Jimmy Olsen as a gun-toting maniac. Now picture Batman’s butler Alfred as an aging hipster. Seems weird and out of character, doesn’t it? That’s because you don’t do this shit to the superhero’s best friend!

Anyway, Steve and Diana get access to some computers at the Air Force base to try to track down Ares. They find a trail of escalated crime and violence, and figure that’s likely the general sense of fear and hate that Ares leaves in his wake just from walking by. A definite pattern hasn’t yet formed, however, so Steve and Diana will need to wait a while before they can pinpoint Ares’ location.

Until then, it’s time for tequila shots!

No, seriously.

With Diana holding her liquor like a champ, a sloppily drunken Steve tries to move in for a kiss, but instead misses and hits the floor. After thinking Steve tried to get her drunk to take advantage of her, Diana storms out of the bar and into an alley. Steve quickly follows, but the pair is confronted by a group of muggers. Diana tosses around the muggers a little, which turns Steve on a little. But if you thought the action in this scene ends with Diana kicking a few thugs around, you’re wr–

OH MY GODS, MONSTER!

For the next few minutes, Diana and the monster Deimos proceed to beat the living shit out of one another.

The fight ends with Deimos killing himself so he won’t have to submit to the lasso of truth. They find a medallion in Deimos’ remains that bears the symbol of Tartarus, the hellish portion of the Greek afterlife. Diana knows where the gate to Tartarus is, and that’s where they’ll find Ares.

Sure enough, Ares is at the gates of Tartarus, preparing to make a blood sacrifice to the god Hades to gain entrance. Diana and Steve try to stop him, but Ares casts a verbal spell to unleash the stone harpies in the temple. When Diana tries to fight Ares head-on, she’s taken by surprise from a harpy that sneaks up behind her. The harpy crushes Diana, but Steve saves her life by throwing a grenade in its mouth. With Diana already unconscious, Steve is knocked out by the explosion, and there’s nobody to stop Ares from entering Tartarus.

In Tartarus, Ares meets with his uncle Hades (god of the dead), who looks more like he eats the dead.

That is the ugliest transvestite I’ve ever seen.

Because Ares needs another god to remove his bracelets, he asks Hades to do it in exchange for more dead slaves once he sparks a new war on Earth that will surely kill millions. Hades agrees to do it, but not before taunting Ares by abusing the soul of his dead son (the guy Hippolyta killed at the beginning of the movie).

Elsewhere, Steve has checked Diana into a hospital. Diana wakes up to find that Steve didn’t stop Ares, and instead chose to save her life. She accuses him of being sexist, and says he wouldn’t have saved her life if she were a man. Steve gets fed up with all of the verbal abuse he’s had to deal with since he first crashed on Themyscira, and yells at Diana for making so many assumptions about men after having barely met any. He then lets it slip that he cares about her. Steve then moves in for another kiss, but is instead met with a hard slap across the face. Diana then gets out of bed, puts on her costume, and prepares to go into battle.

In Washington DC, Ares has assembled an army, and they’re ready to begin a war that should leave the entire human race… well, extinct. The US government notices this, and send the military to stop him. But that’s not all! Hippolyta and Artemis brought their own army as well, and an all-out battle is about to begin in DC!

The US president is informed that an island (Themyscira) has spontaneously appeared, and they (incorrectly) believe Ares’ mystical forces originated there. To retaliate, the president launches a nuke at Themyscira. Steve Trevor sees the missile launch, hops in the invisible jet, and chases after it. Not only that, but the launching of a nuclear weapon is an act so destructive that it fills Ares with more power than ever before, turning him into a god with the powers of other gods.

Ares uses his newfound abilities to command the dead, and creates a new army of undead Amazons. Among the undead Amazons is Alexa, who immediately finds and fights Artemis. As the two fight, Alexa keeps repeating a strange phrase. Artemis realizes this is a spell, and says it herself. The spell releases the dead Amazons from Ares’ control. It turns out Alexa learned the spell from the constant reading she did while alive, and even as a zombie she still had enough free will to tell it to Artemis so she could set her free.

And then Ares sends the dead Amazons back to the underworld.

Also, Ares is spending most of this battle kicking Diana’s ass with his new powers. Steve Trevor finds the missiles on the invisible jet and blows up the nuke before it reaches Themyscira. Hippolyta confronts the traitorous Persephone and slays her, but Persephone’s final words are a warning that the Amazons are still women, and they deserve to fall in love.

After getting slapped around for a while, Diana eventually comes up with a plan. She lures Ares into the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, and tricks him into being struck with one of his own bolts of lightning. While Ares recovers from the shock, Diana grabs a sword and leaps at him. Ares cries out for Zeus to save him like he did before, but…

That’s no way to get ahead in life.

The war is over! Ares is dead! Themyscira is safe! Steve Trevor finally gets his kiss! But most surprising of all, Hades has turned Ares into one of his dead slaves, satisfied as if he knew all along that Ares would get himself killed.

You clever old double-wide tranny, you.

Later on, we’re back at Themyscira. After realizing the value of reading, Artemis is forcing herself to go through some of the old books in Themyscira’s library. She and Hippolyta notice that Diana has been miserable ever since returning, so Hippolyta gets an idea. She tells Diana that she’s giving her a new mission to be Themyscira’s ambassador to the rest of the world, as it’s time to “open the lines of communication between man and woman.”

Look who got herself a secret identity.

Diana is back in New York, apparently living with Steve Trevor. She still has trouble accepting his chivalrous acts like holding a door open, though. But when trouble is afoot, she springs into action– now finally being referred to by the public as Wonder Woman!

So there you have it. The origin of Wonder Woman has been put to animation, and I’ve got to say it was pretty good. There were a few missteps along the way, and a lot of things were changed or just plain excluded like the origins of the Amazons. Overall, however, the whole package comes together nicely. The animation is smooth, the action is hard-hitting without getting gruesome, you get a pretty good idea of who most of the characters are, and the story moves along at a nice quick pace without moving too quickly. The whole “Amazons think all men are evil” thing gets old after a while, but the writers at least had the decency to break it up with Steve Trevor’s monologue.

If you like a good action movie (even an animated one) that isn’t mindless but also isn’t exactly complex in its story, and you don’t mind an action hero who’s “just a girl,” and for whatever reason you’re one of the few people who hasn’t seen this movie since it came out in March, then I definitely recommend it.

By the way, in case you were wondering, I totally ripped off that first line from Wonder Woman #14, as written by Gail Simone.