★★★½
“A little short of truly Wonder-ful.”
Often forgotten in the critical acclaim for the live-action feature, is the animated film released by Warner Brothers in 2009. It wasn’t an enormous hit – plans for a sequel were scrapped due to its slow sales – but is worth a revisit in the the wake of Gal Gadot’s subsequent portrayal. There are some strong overlaps in the two films’ plots: in both, the crash-landing of pilot Steve Trevor (Fillion) kicks off the Amazons’ re-connection to mortal mankind, and Ares (Molina) is the common villain.
The most obvious difference is the time-frame; rather than the middle of World War I, this takes place in the present day. Additionally, Ares is initially in Amazon custody, escaping with the help of Persephone, an Amazon he has seduced to his side. Diana (Russell) is tasked with re-capturing the god before he can bring about Zeus’s first goal is to remove the bracers, put on him by Zeus, which limit his powers. They can only be removed by another god, and he seeks the help of his uncle, god of the underworld Hades (Oliver Platt). That done, he raises an army, including the Amazonian dead, and attacks Washington, which causes the President to launch a nuke at Themyscira, believing it to be behind the attack. It’s up to Diana to stop Zeus, and to Steve to stop the missile.
There are chunks of this which are really good, not least the action. Those scenes had to be trimmed down to avoid an R-rating (rumblings of that version getting a release, have yet to be proven true), and what remains is beautifully animated, yet brutal at the same time. This perhaps reaches its peak with the battle through Manhattan between Diana and Ares’s warrior-son, Deimos (below), which for my money is the equal of anything in the live-action film. The relationship between Steve and Diana is another strong suit, helped by strong voice-work from both actors. I think the contemporary setting helps, too, avoiding the rather obvious gender politics angle shoehorned into the more recent film, in favour of more subtle consideration of such points [I was impressed that even the traitor Amazon is given a philosophical motive for her betrayal, and it offers pause for thought].
However, there are other aspects which seem very poorly thought-out. After defeating Deimos, who commits suicide rather than reveal anything, Diana gets a medallion off the corpse. Next scene, they’re sneaking into Ares’s lair. Uh, what? It feels almost as if there was a chunk missing, a feeling enhanced by the relatively terse 75-minute running time. Perhaps this also explained the whole “invisible jet” thing – something wisely abandoned entirely by the live-action film, since it never made much sense. Here, it shows up with no explanation, later firing invisible missiles.
The final battle also relies upon too much contrivance (oh, look: someone pulls a spell out of thin air to free the Amazonian zombies), though at least Ares here proves a worthy adversary, unlike in the live-action film, where he was close to the weakest link. Still, even if it’s perhaps aimed at a younger audience than your humble author, and was missing the sense of awe generated by Gal Gadot’s sword-swinging, this was entertaining and well-made. Worth a look.
Dir: Lauren Montgomery
Star (voice): Keri Russell, Nathan Fillion, Alfred Molina, Rosario Dawson