Finally Watched…Wonder Woman (2009)

Banking a bunch of Finally Watched reviews was helpful before, so why not do a few more? This time I have the advantage of access to free streaming sites with a large on demand library. I can put up with a few commercials.

When you think of a Wonder Woman movie, you probably go to the Snyderverse adjacent ones because Diana has had so few appearances outside of Justice League related shows. There was her excellent 1970s series with Linda Carter, Super Friends, the various Justice League and DC Super Hero Girls cartoons, a failed pilot or two, and that time she time traveled with the Brady Kids. Yes, that was an actual episode of the Brady Bunch animated spin-off. She’s also the only DC hero to show up on the Ruby-Spears Superman outside of the Man Of Steel himself. (Who also showed up on The Brady Kids…as did The Lone Ranger and Tonto–it was a weird show).

And yet we’re told that she’s too important to screw up in adapting to a live-action movie…before giving us Wonder Woman 1984 and totally screwing it up. The first movie, a previous Finally Watched, had to be set in World War I rather than World War II in order to avoid comparisons with Captain America: The First Avenger (which I don’t seem to have a review for but I know I saw it) because apparently nobody can tell the casual viewer about comic history or the first season of Linda Carter’s series…where she fought Nazis in World War II.

Back when DC Entertainment made animated movies based on the comics and not some director’s fever dreams, There were two Wonder Woman solo films, and as I write this I just finished the first of those. It’s been a long time coming, but was it worth doing?

RELEASE DATE: 2009
RELEASED BY: Warner Brothers Animation and DC Entertainment
RUNTIME: 1 hour 14 minutes
RATING: PG-13
VIEWING SOURCE FOR THIS REVIEW: Tubi
STARRING: Keri Russell, Nathan Fillion, Alfred Molina, and and Vickie Lewis
SCREENWRITERS: Gail Simone and Michael Jelenic, with a creator credit to William Moulton Marson
DIRECTOR: Lauren Montgomery
BOX OFFICE: inapplicable as this was a direct-to-video movie
ESTIMATED BUDGET: $3,500,000 according to IMDB

The Plot: When Ares, God Of War, betrayed Hippolyta (Virginia Madsen) and was ultimately defeated, it was Zeus who saved him from death, but Hera who insured he’d be punished, with bands that blocked him from absorbing the psychic energy of war. The Amazons, now without husbands, were given their own land, immortality, and kept Ares a prisoner for his actions. Fast forward to present day, when the arrival of US fighter pilot Steve Trevor (Fillion, and not his only DC animated role before becoming the Gunniverse Guy Gardner) coincides with Ares (Molina) making his big escape, having wooed his guard, Persephone (Lewis), into helping him escape. You should know the rest by now. To escort Steve back to man’s world and stop Ares, a contest is held, with the winner being Hippolyta’s clay daughter, Diana (Russel), and she travels to New York to track down Ares and learn about man’s world…and maybe a bit about herself.

Why did I want to see it: I’m a DC fan, and Wonder Woman is a character I’ve enjoyed since her Super Friends days and syndicated reruns of her live-action series, so I wanted to see what she’d be like in a proper solo adventure (unless you count Steve) in animation. An issue of her comic was one of the first I got…and one mom made me use as wrapping paper as a kid because she didn’t understand comics. They were disposable when she was a kid. Someday I hope to reclaim an issue of that comic and the next one to see how that arc ended. It was one with Artemis, who is a supporting character in this movie, voiced by Rosario Dawson, who gets her own character arc involving her sister, Alexa (Tara Strong), a cute redhead bookworm…a girl after my own heart. Shame she doesn’t make it past the first act but she does play a big role in the final battle. Bookworms rule, baby!

What did I think?: Plot wise it’s quite good. Ares’s plot of reaching his uncle Hades (Oliver Platt), so he can seek revenge on the Amazons and the Olympian gods (mostly daddy Zeus), is a decent one, with Diana and Steve having to work together to stop him. There’s a lot of good action, though the violence is a bit unstable to stay in the PG-13 range. Beheadings happen in silhouette, one dude is sacrificed on an alter but we don’t see the stabbing, just the blood running into the trough to do the spoiler. “Crap” is the hardest word in the story, there’s no nudity even when Steven stumbles upon the Amazons bathing, and the only time we see a sword in someone they’re a zombie.

Russel does a good job as the voice Wonder Woman. In fact the only really notably bad voice acting is Hera and to a lesser extent Zeus. David McCallum is at least trying as Zeus, while Marg Helgenberger sounds bored as Hera. I saw some trivia that they wanted to get Carter as a nod to her place in Wonder Woman history but scheduling got in the way. I wish they had worked that out for her one scene. Meanwhile Fillion and Molina do their roles justice as do the Amazon voices. Andrea Romano (who gets a short voice role along with producer Bruce Timm) is a legend of voice casting for a reason.

Where the movie is most lacking, however, is the character subplots. Diana does not see the best of men even in Steve, and while during the obligatory fallout moment (which thankfully doesn’t build on the cliche by having them storm off and part until forced back together by the plot) it’s the only time Steve defends actions that we don’t see him do, like holding the door open for a lady, nor does he bring up advances in women’s rights, like being a CEO, or mentions that he just lost two of his fighter team, one of which was a woman, and didn’t want to lose someone else he cared  about. Maybe there’s an extended cut that shows more of them together and builds both the romance and the gender role conflict. Show us that Diana is one-sided in her perspective, but that doesn’t mean her perspective doesn’t have merit, while Steve doesn’t seem to see the mistakes because he’s an admitted (thanks to the lasso) womanizer, but defends the gender roles that we see and notes there are advances that Diana just hasn’t been exposed to. The romance between the two kind of suffers for it. I wanted to root for them but the only personal moment is when his attempt to get her drunk backfires.

Then there are the other subplots that are barely in the story. I already mentioned Artemis and my dream girl…I mean Alexa’s arc. (I wonder which of us would qualify as “too old”? I guess it doesn’t matter since she’d dead. And fictional.) Alexa likes to read and Artemis wants her to be more of a warrior. It’s after Alexa’s passing that we get to see both of their arcs worked out, but there isn’t a lot of room to really build it. And yet it somehow is more thought out than the Diana/Steve romance. Meanwhile, Hippolyta’s arc about whether or not to return to the outside world is kind of stunted and I don’t feel the impact I want until Persephone gives the reason for her betrayal. Frankly I don’t know why they didn’t just all make clay babies at this point. There’s also the appearance of Ares and Hippolyta’s son Thrax, which adds absolutely nothing to the story beyond a couple of shock moments lacking in the emotional impact because I don’t even think he had a notable line. Jason Miller’s role could only be easier if the dude was mute, and he might as well be.

Even the post-Crisis version of Etta Candy (Julianne Grossman) has more influence and all she does is create an aborted rival subplot while showing Diana a woman who gets by on her femininity when she tries to woo Steve into moving a desk to get her pen. I couldn’t tell if she was trying to manipulate him or deal with a potential rival in Diana but she never shows up again. At least it isn’t like the post-Crisis comics where she kept the pre-Crisis Diana/Steve romance apart by having them already be a couple. It comes off as one of the humorous moments, and the movie uses them properly, to relieve the tension from building up too much rather than keep it from building at all and ruining the drama like too many 2024 superhero movies.

And what the hell happened to Hades? It’s the first I saw him depicted as “what if Nero was played by white Fat Albert…and reeeeeallllyy let himself go”. Get this boy a treadmill. Or two, since he might be too big for one to hold him.

Was it worth the wait?: There’s some missed potential here that makes a rewatch unlikely but overall it was worth seeing once. The action is good. It’s just the subplots that need more time to be properly developed along with the characters. I hope to see the sequel before the Tubi license expires (as it is you might see this after it expires unless they renew it or I drop it from the bank faster than planned) but while this was good, it wasn’t great. Catch it if you get the chance, though.