Speaking of Wonder Woman

I downloaded Wonder Woman from iTunes. And it is my new favorite movie!

I mentioned earlier that I finally saw the movie Wonder Woman starring Gal Gadot.

A couple weeks ago, a reader sent Patriot Retort a donation with one caveat – I was to spend some of that money on myself for something fun. Ordinarily, every last dollar donated goes to the expenses of running this website. So it was unusual to have a reader instruct me to buy something fun for Christmas.

But hey. A deal’s a deal.

So since I pretty much live like a hermit, I decided to buy a few movies from Apple iTunes. So I downloaded Lone Survivor, the original three Star Wars movies, and Wonder Woman.

Now, I’m not one for these DC Comic superhero movies. Of course, casting Ben Affleck as Batman is reason enough to avoid them.

But after seeing the preview for Wonder Woman when it first came out, I knew I wanted to see it.

And you know what?

It’s really good!

Sure, it starts off kind of slow, but it picks up the pace quickly.

What really makes the movie is Gal Gadot. Gadot's Diana Prince is so captivating, it’s hard to take your eyes off her when she’s on screen.

She plays Diana with such depth and complexity, you almost forget that this is a comic book character.

And Chris Pine is terrific. I love him as Captain Kirk. But he is great in Wonder Woman too. Plus, he’s really easy on the eyes.

In a lot of ways, the plot reminds me of the original Indiana Jones movie. But it’s hardly what I would call a rip-off.

As a fan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, I love watching female heroes who manage to kick serious ass while maintaining their femininity. And Wonder Woman, like Buffy, does that.

There’s a great scene when Pine’s character first brings Diana to London and takes her to a clothing store so she isn’t dressed like her Amazonian self. Diana tries on an outfit and attempts some fight moves to see if the clothes can be worn in battle. It’s pretty funny.

That scene made me think of Buffy at the bank in Season Six discovering that she can’t do her flying kick in the skirt she’s wearing. “Stupid skirt!”

Wonder Woman combines the mythological world in which Diana lives with the gritty reality of World War One. And it does it seamlessly.

The fight choreography is brilliant – better than anything I’ve seen in quite some time.

Like this scene:

I have zero interest in seeing the Justice League – mostly because having someone of Gal Gadot’s talent sharing the screen with a doofus like Ben Affleck would be hard to watch.

But I am thrilled to know that a second Wonder Woman is in the works.

I don’t know if it will hold up to this one. We’ll see.