With equal parts trepidation and excitement, Loverboy’s BB checked out perhaps the most important mainstream potentially-feminist movie for years about the woman of wonder who is in her satin tights, fighting for our rights. 

In the world of Hollywood, it is almost an act of bravery and audacity to make a Wonder Woman film.  There seems to be a feeling that superheroes, while somewhat diverse in their natural home of the comic book, are on the big screen a specifically male orientated sphere.  A place where mainly men sit down in cinema seats to watch mainly men blow things up.  Sure, there are super women, but the idea, the very notion that they should have a film all of their own, seems to generally be excepted as a tricky beast to unleash.  In a recent magazine, a whole section was given over to investigating ‘the difficulties of not just getting the Wonder Woman movie made, but any female-led superhero movie at all…’

Who would envy any of the folk tasked with bringing this character back into the mass consciousness, for the first time since Lynda Carter span and span and didn’t fall over?  Principally, this heroic role fell to Patty Jenkins (Monster) and Allan Heinberg (Sex & the City, Gilmore Girls) to condense 75 years of history (a lot of it dull, some of it inspired) into a two-hour summer ‘tent pole’ movie.  They had to do justice to a character who had been a teacher, healer, scientist, warrior and just a little more than kinky (and that was just in her first two debut issues back in the 1940s).

I consider myself a Wonder Woman fan.  I have read a lot of her adventures and I have read a lot of books about her.  I guess that makes me what they call ‘invested.’  What I had seen of the trailers had not filled me with happiness, but a troubled sense that, yes, there was going to be a Wonder Woman movie but, no, it was going to be goofy and dull and loud.  Presenting a manufactured charm and a disjointed narrative that would ultimately descend into Things Blowing Up.

Perhaps it is because my ears still hurt but having left the theatre some time ago, I am still struggling to make a meal of the morsels I have been given.  However, I can say this; the charm was not manufactured.  The two leads (Gal Gadot as Diana and Chris Pine as Steve Trevor) were brilliant.  The film presented something really natural and genuine.  Which made the inevitable Things Blowing Up feel, for once, like it had some sort of significance.  My geek side noticed some subtle nods to source materials, the pacing of the movie felt efficient but, sadly, some of the character potential was let down somewhat by the story.

However, my biggest regret for the film, and all those brave participants in its conceptualisation, was the almost audacious way it avoided being brave.  Before going in, at the forefront of my mind was, how are they going present the Amazons?  It has been widely reported in the last year that Wonder Woman is bisexual.  So what would her first live action solo feature film have to say on the subject?

Nothing.  In fact, that’s not true.  It did have something to say.  It said that for 3000 years (at least) the Amazons had spent all of their time getting ready to fight a God of War (and when it looks like he’s actually turned up they are a bit ‘meh, might not really be him.’)  And during that time, that was the only thing they seemed to have been doing.  Sure, they tended the fields – there was some very nice green in the film – and built buildings and statues but, from what their princess said and her actions, they didn’t dance or kiss or even freaking hold hands.

To say that this film avoided any form or theory of ‘queerness’ on Paradise Island is pretty much the understatement of the 21st century.

So, while the actual creation of a female-led mainstream Superhero movie was a brave move (read: box office bankability), that was where the moxie stopped.  Clearly folk behind this film knew they had something important on their hands (a film for multiple generations of Wonder Woman fans) and they embraced this.  However, when it came to some of the finer, but no less crucial details, they either lacked the imagination to push it little bit further or simply lacked the courage.