Video/DVD Review: Wonder Woman (2009)
What Parents Should Know
Parents need to know that though this cartoon derives from a
vintage comic-book character, the script is pretty up-to-date
with the violence, including beatings, stabbings,
decapitations, and blood flowing from a human sacrifice.
Sexually suggestive lines include references to prostitution,
seduction, and Wonder Woman’s “rack”
(wonder-rack?). Some Amazon women are shown skimpily clad or
bathing, and Wonder Woman proves to have super-powers of
alcohol consumption. “Crap” is uttered (and treated)
like an obscenity. Viewers with little knowledge of Greek
mythology might be confused about fine details; ultra-religious
household might be put off by the trappings of pre-Christian
pagan worship.
Families can talk about the popularity of Wonder Woman, a
character practically as iconic as another DC Comics mainstay,
Superman. Ask kids if they think superheroines with idealized
bodies and skimpy clothing help the cause of women or set it
back. What other female costumed heroes are hot right now, and
why (besides the idealized bodies/skimpy clothing)?
A Herculean helping of Greek mythology explains the origin of the 20th-century comic-book heroine Wonder Woman. Her mother, Hyppolite, fought a ruinous conflict against Aries, the war god. Mighty Zeus decrees that the Amazons be given an invisible island on which to dwell unmolested, with Aries, deprived of his powers, as their prisoner. On this timeless island Hyppolite “conceives” (literally molding from sand, without a father) a daughter, Diana, who grows up to become a foremost Amazon warrior. When a macho, modern-day USAF fighter-pilot, Steve, crash-lands on the island, the outraged-but-intrigued Amazons assign Diana to take him back to his world (New York City, it so happens). But Aries simultaneously escapes, and to prevent an apocalypse Diana -- with Steve as a guide -- goes into the modern world with an emblematic breastplate, magic lariat, and tiara as Wonder Woman.
A Wonder Woman blockbuster had been on Hollywood’s drawing-boards for quite a while, but this action-crammed Warner Brothers/DC Comics cartoon feature reached the home-video marketplace first. Like the Amazon archers who come to the rescue at the end (who called them anyway? Oh, never mind) it hits it targets more often than not, despite the familiarly basic TV-level animation (some sequences, like a jet dogfight, are truly kinetic and exciting), and the script puts modern wit, battle-of-the-sexes dialogue, and feminism into a lively cauldron with the ancient Greek myth -- well, DC Comics’ selective notion of it anyway.
Setting Wonder Woman against a basically all-powerful god is bit of a stretch, even by the wobbly logic of superhero antics, and Aries is a one-dimensional baddie. But chauvinist Steve gets a zinger with his line that a nice-guy god would probably never even have a girlfriend, as Aries does. A sub-theme proposes that the self-reliant Amazon women go wrong by aspiring to remain chaste and aloof from romantic love; interestingly, the novelization (but not the movie) of Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith claims the Jedi Knights make the same mistake.
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