DVD Review – Wonder Woman Animated Movie
Written by Ian Cullen on February 23, 2009 – 12:21 pm -
Wonder Woman DVD
Synopsis: On the mythical island of Themyscira, a proud, strong warrior race of Amazon women lives in a Utopian civilization shielded from the corrupt world of man. But a betrayal within the Amazon sisterhood leads to the escape of Ares, the God of War, and Amazon Princess Diana must capture him before he unleashes global chaos and destruction.
With the aid of cocky fighter pilot Steve Trevor, Diana tracks Ares to the United States for a battle unlike any humankind has ever faced. A fabulous voice cast – Keri Russell, Nathan Fillion, Alfred Molina, Virginia Madisen, Oliver Platt, Rosario Dawson and David McCallum - infuses thunder and passion into this epic tale of the princess who becomes the World’s Greatest Super Heroine.
DVD Movie Overview: I’ve been secretly a fan of animated movies based on DC and Marvel properties for quite some time now. So when I was offered the chance to review this latest incarnation of Wonder Woman. I found it very hard to refuse, and after having viewed the movie I’m glad I didn’t, and it’s the double disk DVD set to boot.
UK readers should note that this is for the region one version only.
This isn’t to say that I didn’t have some issues with the movie, but more on that later.
The movie is basically a re-imagined version of the Wonder Woman origin story set in the here and now, but it starts in the past with a war between Ares the God of War and the legendary Amazon Warriors. When Queen Hippolyta defeats Ares in battle, and is about to finish him off. The great God Zeus puts a stop to proceedings and decrees that Ares must not be harmed. However the Goddess Hera has other ideas, and decrees that Ares should be stripped of his powers, and be held prisoner of the Amazons for eternity, and as reward the Amazons are given an island called Themyscira, where they can live undisturbed by the outside world, and rebuild.
Due to unexplained reasons Amazon Queen Hippolyta can no longer bear children, and is gifted with a child called Diana to raise as her own. As such Hippolyta is fiercely protective, even though Diana can best even the mighty Artemis.
Diana’s life is forever changed when fighter pilot Steve Trevor crash lands on the island, and inadvertently sets a chain of events into motion, which bring forth the betrayal of the Amazons by one of their own, and the release of Ares from his prison.
After winning a tournament to determine, which of the Amazons will take Steve Trevor back to New York, Diana is given the Wonder Woman outfit, and tasked with being the Amazon representative, but also has the task of capturing Ares.
Eventually like with most Superhero movies Wonder Woman, with a little assistance from Steve and her Amazon sisters manages to best Ares and bring stability back to planet earth.
There are some really nice voice performances in this movie. Artemis as voiced by Rosario Dawson does a fantastic job of bringing that much needed edge to the role. Keri Russell does a grand job of giving us a Wonder Woman who is both tough and fair, and Alfred Molina devours the animated scenery with a fantastic performance as Ares.
My one problem though was with Nathan Fillion as Steve Trevor. His interpretation just didn’t work for me, and have no idea why. In a way it almost felt like Fillion was putting on the breaks, because the performance seemed somewhat restrained. Granted he did have a rough time at the hands of the Amazons and the truth rope, but surely after awhile that would have worn off. Talking of the rope, that scene is perhaps one of the funniest of the movie, where Trevor while under the influence of the rope says that Diana has a nice rack. The trouble was the line came out like he’d put thought into it, as apposed to it being a flippant, thoughtless and misogynistic type of comment. Which kind of undermines the relationship between Diana and Steve Trevor in the movie somewhat.
It seemed that Diana was the more powerful, which physically she is. But with regards to attitude and stuff, I’d have liked to have seen Steve give her a bit more attitude so that the banter could have been a tad more combative, because it seemed to be a tad one sided.
There is a great scene later on though when Diana accuses Steve of being misogynistic for choosing to save her life, as apposed to carrying on with the mission, which leads to the moment where Steve and Diana start to gain some sense of an understanding about each other, but the build up to the eventual revelation that not all men are misogynistic pigs was paved with some really stilted dialogue and uncharacteristically weak delivery from Fillion who gave us more of a backbone as Captain Mal Reynolds in Firefly.
This issue aside, which I suspect was more to do with the writing than the actor. I still rather enjoyed the movie for what it was.
All this aside I have to say that I was really impressed with the animation and artistry of this movie. The depiction of the island Themyscira was beautiful, and all the characters were beautifully drawn.
Extras: One thing this movie isn’t short of is extras. It puts some feature length DVD’s to shame with the features, which are included.
Disk One includes a sneak peak at the forthcoming Green Lantern animated movie, which will be released in the summer, and also has a brief look at the origins of the character and how he has evolved over the years.
Disk Two gives us two very informal documentaries in the form of Wonder Woman: A subversive dream, which takes a look at what was going on in the real world when Wonder Woman was created, and how those real world events influenced the early adventures of the character.
It also took a look at Wonder Woman creator William Moulton Marston, and what influenced him to bring forth what was at the time a rather bold character.
The second documentary, which is called Wonder Woman: Daughter of Myth Historical Lore and Its Evolution into the Modern – Day Wonder Woman character takes a look at the role in which Greek mythology played in the creation of Wonder Woman, and how that foundation served to create what many consider to be the first truly strong female role model, which led to later strong female roles in movies, television, comics and literature.
Rounding off the extras are two episodes of the Justice League animated series, which feature Wonder Woman rather prominently, and illustrate the traits that have made her one of the best loved characters from the DC Comics range. Both episodes have been hand picked by Bruce Timm who has worked on many of the Warner Bros animated adaptations of the DC universe.
Overall: I rather enjoyed Wonder Woman, and think it was a fairly good adaptation of her origin story, in spite of the fact that Steve Trevor seemed to have been a little declawed in order to play up Wonder Woman’s strength. This was not needed.
I quite enjoyed the documentaries, and feel that Warner Bros should do more of these style of documentaries on their other releases.
Summing up. If your a fan of the DC range of Superheroes and Wonder Woman, or even if your just a casual viewer. Then this movie is well worth checking out.
Score 7/10
To pick up your copy of the double disk edition of the new animated Wonder Woman movie click here.
Related posts:
- Wonder Woman Movie An Original Story
- Wonder Woman DVD Gets March 2009 Release
- Doctor Who Season Four DVD Review
- DVD Review: Alien Raiders
- Avengers Animated Series Starts
Tags: DVD Review, Wonder Woman Animated Movie
Posted in Animation, Comic Book Corner, DVD, Merchandise, Reviews/Editorials, SF-TV & Movie News | 2 Comments »
By Shawn on Mar 3, 2009 | Reply
Nice write up and while I agree that this is a winner, I couldn’t disagree more on Nathan Fillion. He was amazing, the best voice on the disc, funny and yes, he did Diana a hard time. Loved the exchanges between the two. this was a well written tale.
I felt while Kerri wasn’t bad in the least, she sounded too much like some regular mid western gal, rather than an Amazon warrior who could go toe to toe with a God. I felt the female voices in general were a bit stiff and common sounding. Marg was terrible as Hera.
By Ian Cullen on Mar 3, 2009 | Reply
Thanks for the feedback. My feeling about Fillion is that he could have and really should have given Diana more grief. Agreed on the female voices being a bit stiff now that have had more time to think about it all in the cold night of day.
Perhaps the stilted delivery from the female cast members maybe undermined Fillions performance. But we’d really need to see the film with better performances from the female cast members in order to find that one out.
Rushed of my feet at the moment and have a few other things in the works. Looking forward to Green Lantern.