Wonder Woman

Some movies announce themselves with noise; Wonder Woman (2017) prefers to earn its reputation the slow way, one convert at a time. Even the marketing knew what it had: the tagline “Power. Grace. Wisdom. Wonder.” sets the mood before a single frame plays.

The story kicks off from a clean, almost deceptively simple place: An Amazon princess comes to the world of Man in the grips of the First World War to confront the forces of evil and bring an end to human conflict. Gal Gadot anchors the film, backed by a supporting turn from Chris Pine, Connie Nielsen, Robin Wright that adds real weight to the quieter scenes.

Beneath the action scaffolding, Wonder Woman is quietly working through some heavier material. The film keeps circling back to based on comic and empowerment — not as decoration, but as the actual engine of the story. You can also feel feminism and greek mythology working in the background, quietly shaping how later scenes land even when they’re not the explicit focus.

The action, adventure and fantasy classification undersells it a little. Wonder Woman uses those elements as a foundation, then builds something more particular on top — a film that’s easy to categorize and a little harder to fully predict.

Patty Jenkins’s handling of tone throughout Wonder Woman deserves particular credit — it would be easy for a film juggling this many ideas to feel scattered, but the direction keeps everything pointed in the same direction. It also helps that Connie Nielsen, Robin Wright, Danny Huston are given real material to work with; none of them feel like they’re just there to round out a call sheet.

Clocking in at 141 minutes, the pacing rarely sags, which is no small feat for a film juggling this many ideas. Atlas Entertainment, Cruel & Unusual Films, DC Films, Warner Bros. Pictures produced the film, and the polish shows in every frame. Produced for roughly $149,000,000, Wonder Woman eventually pulled in $823,970,682 at the global box office, well beyond what anyone expected going in.

Newcomers to Patty Jenkins’s filmography could do a lot worse than starting here; it’s an accessible, confident introduction to what makes the director’s work distinctive. Whatever else changes about how audiences watch movies, Wonder Woman seems built to keep finding new viewers. It’s a detail easy to miss on a first viewing of Wonder Woman, but it rewards anyone paying close attention. That kind of craftsmanship is easy to take for granted until you watch a lesser film try the same thing and fail. Little touches like that are why the film keeps finding new defenders long after its initial release. It’s the sort of small decision that separates a good action film from a merely competent one. None of it feels accidental — Wonder Woman is the product of choices made with real intention, and it plays that way from start to finish. That’s ultimately the difference between a film people watch once and one they keep coming back to, and Wonder Woman lands closer to the latter.