"Wonder Woman" DVD Kicks Some Serious Ass

DC seems to have smartened up with not only their direction in film but their execution. When I heard this year's direct-to-dvd was "Wonder Woman", I was less than excited. I gave "Superman: Doomsday" a stellar review last year and was expecting a lame follow-up. Was it because she's a woman? Probably. I'm a jerk. What of it.

I'm a little taken aback at how much "Wonder Woman" kicked ass. There are few movies with such a short run time (an hour and thirteen mins) that mix action, comedy and backstory so damn well. Nathan Fillion (Mal from "Firefly" or more recently known as "The Hammer", which is his penis by the way) made me laugh out loud. There is a running 'crap' joke, believe it or not, that I found just hilarious. It's first use by Queen Hippolyta was awesome since it was so blunt. It's final use and punchline near the end should have been more of a kicker but only due to Keri Russel's light delivery, a tiny bit more emphasis on the word 'crap' probably would have shot milk out my nose. But enough about crap because this movie wasn't! (zing!)

Any time I hear "origin story" I think 'yawn' but apparently if you throw a shitload of hot "supermodels in battle armor" shoving swords through people's stomachs and cracking their opponents necks, it actually turns out pretty damn good. The original story of how Diana (Wonder Woman) is sent from Themyscira to "Man's World" (in this case, eastern USA) is pretty much intact. During her origin, that comic readers like myself are so familiar with, some awesome backstory is layed out that makes the rest of movie completely engaging. Other Amazonian ladies, who I'm only lightly familiar with, are given not just interesting character but you see relationships develop that have a big payoff later on. This makes the action much more interesting because on the surface, it's lots of cartoony punching (ie, one punch might throw someone flying a whole city block). The climax jumps back and forth and never misses a beat, I was actually quite into it and everything they writers were throwing at me, I soaked right up.

But if you're still not convinced, Wonder Woman is 6' tall, long legs, black hair, blue eyes and has some huge melons (which even get a close-up...seriously!)

Next year we get an animated "Green Lantern" story, which I anticipate almost as if it were the feature film (which will be coming out late '10 or early '11). With great characters and action, I think they're testing the waters really well, and smartly have the original animated series writers, producers, etc on board that made their animation department a hit in the first place with Batman: The Animated Series. I'm not sure if they're setting up on cohesive universe, though, as the Superman film had Supes being kind of a veteran and now we're getting Wonder Woman and Green Lantern's origin stories but whatever.