Warner Bros., along with their sister company DC Comics has, as of late, been releasing a series of animated films based upon their most popular and well-known superheroes. Aimed at more mature audiences than the Saturday morning kiddie crowd, they are rated PG-13, are voiced by big name actors, and are only released on DVD. So far they’ve been a mixed bag. Some have been really fantastic, like Superman Doomsday and New Frontier, while others like Batman: Gotham Knights have been somewhat lackluster. Sadly, the new film Wonder Woman is closer to the latter.

Retelling the classic origin story (while somewhat retooling it) are the two main characters: Diana (voiced by Felicity star Keri Russell), the daughter of the queen of the Amazons, a race of women who fled from man 2000 years ago and live on a mysterious island gifted to them by the gods of Olympus, and Steve Trevor (Nathan Fillion), a gung ho, cocksure ace pilot on a dangerous mission for the U.S. military. When Steve gets shot down over Diana’s island he is quickly captured and interrogated, but finding no ill will in him, the Amazons choose to send him home. But such a dangerous mission requires only the best and bravest Amazon, so they hold a competition — which Diana wins. Meanwhile Ares, the God of War (Alfred Molina), is released from his 2000-year prison and aims to regain the powers stolen from him by the Amazons. As Diana begins to learn about our world, her world makes a decided attempt at bringing the two together … in the worst way possible.

The bulk of the film is great. The voice work is solid and the animation is stark and evocative. And the story is pretty classic. It’s something of a romantic comedy, set against the classical Greek mythological world. But its problems are twofold. The first is length — the film is simply too short, coming in at roughly 75 minutes. Just as you feel like you’re in the middle of the second act, the film comes to a sudden and rapidly concluded climax. While most everything here is good, we’re never offered the character development we need to fully invest in our characters and thus feel like the ending is not entirely earned.

The second problem is that the film is incredibly heavy handed. Yes, Wonder Woman is the very essence of feminine empowerment. She was a construct to help cement the idea of equality in a time when the sexes were not equal. But we live in different times. We hold these ideals to be essential to our culture. So to have a movie put a nearly misogynistic womanizer up against the world’s most capable and strong willed woman, and then have that woman constantly remark upon the evils of a male-driven society is a bit much. There are some great bits pertaining to this that would have been best had they been toned down. The film is PG-13; the intended audience should be able to think for themselves and get what you’re trying to say without you having to spell it out with cinematic skywriting.

But it is worth a look if you’re a Wonder Woman fan or comic book junkie in general. In fact, like all of WB/DC’s releases, this disc is loaded with historical perspective pieces and plenty more to devour. The biggest and best parts of the disc are the two 25-minute documentaries on the history of Wonder Woman and her influence on our culture. Lots of interviews are blended together in the usual fashion to give a narrative of how Wonder Woman came to be who and what she is. There are also two of the producer’s (Bruce Timm) favorite Wonder Woman-centric Justice League cartoons, the 10-minute promo featurettes for Wonder Woman, A New Frontier and Batman: Gotham Knight, and a NEW featurette for the upcoming animated Green Lantern animated release.

All told, this is exactly the kind of release we’ve come to expect from DC and Warner Bros. A great disc and a solid (if flawed) feature.

Tags: dvd reviews, keri russell, nathan fillion, wonder woman animated movie