No, not the upcoming live-action version that may be DC's first acceptable superhero movie, but the animated feature of the same name. I'm not the biggest WW fan, not because I think the character is poor but rather I feel most interpretations of her miss the mark, even more so than with her male counterpart Superman. Partly, I feel her attire is to blame: it's hard to tell a truly feminist, sensitively female yet utterly kickass story when your main role model is permanently bedecked as a 50's pin-up. On top of that is a desire to keep WW as a major player in the DC universe, but never one truly greater than either Batman or Superman, whose shadows she's rarely allowed to eclipse.
Despite these misgivings, I'd heard good things about this particular rendition and I'm always a sucker for anything featuring Nathan Fillion so I thought I'd give it a shot. The result is a film that I enjoyed, which treated the source material reasonably but that ultimately lacked any emotional punch. Voice acting, animation, sound and even storyboarding are all on point throughout but the plot felt like it asked for slightly too much suspension of disbelief.
I genuinely enjoyed that Ares was cast as the villain and that they didn't sugar coat his or Diana's origins: Ares is clearly a god and both the pantheon and magic definitively exist, albeit as forgotten relics of an ancient era by the majority of the world. I've always enjoyed DC's take on magic and classical mythology more so than Marvel's, but in more recent years the latter's rendering of Thor and the Norse gods has utterly stolen the limelight. Here then, with a strong cast and plenty of excuse for magical or mythical moments, Wonder Woman should have shone. Unfortunately, the film spent too much of its time dealing with the 'blossoming' romance between our dashing fighter pilot and the titular hero to really explore these avenues. Even when the Greek myths were mentioned, the focus was predominantly on the Amazons themselves, who were rather flatly portrayed and frequently appeared more like stroppy teenagers, bitching about everyone and everything when they weren't looking, than the finely trained, intellectually superior warriors that they ought to be.
As a result, key plot points were often ignored. Diana's infamous invisible jet appears in distinctly modern form without any explanation or reasoning; indeed, we're given to believe that the Amazons haven't even cast their gaze at the outside world until a few days earlier. The lack of explanation is just about manageable whilst the craft serves as a method of getting the main characters back to "man's world" but when the plane later comes equipped with "invisible missiles" not even Fillion's dry, sarcastic voice work can keep you from sighing audibly. After all, if the citizens of Themyscira can make genuinely explosive missiles out of thin air than Ares' battalions of demon-spawn don't really pose that much threat...
Speaking of which, why does Ares decide to attack from a (strangely ocean adjacent) White House? And where do all of his minions come from? Have they just been chilling in some alternate dimension all these years? Plus, he's clearly shown to still have a cult following somewhere in the Middle East who were armed with modern weaponry, yet come the final showdown Ares' armies are as primitively outfitted as the Amazons themselves. Very little about the villain's plans or even powers are explained. Sure, he thrives off warfare, but then he also seems to get psychic power from simply launching a nuclear missile, so actual conflict seems not to be required? Gah! Nothing is ever cleared up!