‘Wonder Woman’ lives up to its name

While the Mediterranean-like vistas are appealing to look at, this origin portion of the movie feels clunky and rushed.

Additionally, because lead actress and Israeli supermodel Gal Gadot has an accent, the moviemakers utilize a strategy of giving everyone else on her home island a similar accent to help normalize it.

While a clever idea, the other actors such as Connie Nielsen and Robin Wright don’t really pull it off. Trying to act with seriousness in a comic book movie is hard enough, without having to fake an accent.

Once we get off the island, things get much better. What triggers Wonder Woman’s exodus is a crash landing on the island by a World War I era British intelligence officer named Steve Trevor.

As literally the first man that most on the island including Diana have seen, the results are predictably interesting and full of humorous moments. Trevor, played gamely by Chris Pine (“Star Trek”), tells the princess that there is a “Great War” going on and that he needs to get back to London to report to his superiors about a grievous danger that threatens the world.

Somehow, our heroes extrapolate that Ares, the god of war, is behind the carnage of World War I, and Diana strikes a deal to shepherd Trevor back to London so that she can find the deity and slay him. So our protagonists leave one no man’s land of an island paradise into another kind of no man’s land of trench warfare and mustard gas.

The scenes of 1918 London are jaw dropping. We know it’s all CGI fake, but the scale and scope are amazing. And when the movie marches on to the war front in Belgium, we are treated to another immersive, authentic-looking set design. The action scenes and hand-to-hand combat are worthy of the genre. Gadot shows off impressive fake fighting skills. And yes, fangirls, there is a golden lasso that makes you tell the truth (but no invisible jet, dang it).

Like most superhero movies, the movie’s style supersedes its substance, but the writers have given Wonder Woman an excellent treatment through an origin story that exemplifies summer movie going fun.

In fact, the DC Extended Universe (the comic movie franchise division of Warner Bros which is equivalent to Disney’s Marvel Cinematic Universe) has finally broken its curse of heavy-handed, morose movies with all the vitality stripped out. “Wonder Woman” is genuinely entertaining.

And while so far the team Marvel has been crushing DC on the big screen, this movie actually is a double win — It’s good, and there’s a woman’s name at the very top of the marquee, something Marvel has sadly failed to do since it started doing these movies in 2008.

Of course, while it’s refreshing to see a female-led blockbuster, notably a superhero movie at that, it’s still impossible to escape the 15-to-35-year-old-male-centric focus. For example, Wonder Woman is played by a gorgeous model. She wears a skirt. All the women on her home island are slim and gorgeous. To be frank, it’s an island of Victoria’s Secret models wearing bikini armor.

So we’re not exactly conquering the industry’s sexism here. But at least a flag has been planted. “Wonder Woman” passes the so-called Bechdel test (an unscientific gender portrayal analysis of movies) within minutes. And we have another unicorn, a female director of a big studio blockbuster, Patty Jenkins (“Monster”), who gracefully incorporates producer and writer Zack Snyder’s visual panache into the film without letting the story get overwhelmed by it.

But really, the true sign that the battle against sexism in Hollywood has ended will be when dumb reviewers like me won’t spend half their stories alluding to the women’s movement context in a film. And there will be a summer movie about a real-life superhero duo, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Stanton. It’ll be called the “Suffragette Girl and Agent 19th.”