Wonder Woman

DC Comics’ most famous female superhero, Wonder Woman, comes to the big screen in this mediocre adventure directed by MONSTER’s Patty Jenkins. Created by psychologist William Moulton Marston in 1941 and continuously published by DC since, Wonder Woman has previously been depicted on television — most notably by Lynda Carter in a 1970s series — and direct-to-video animated features. Technically, star Gal Gadot (FURIOUS SEVEN) cameoed as Wonder Woman in 2016’s BATMAN V SUPERMAN: DAWN OF JUSTICE, but this WONDER WOMAN is all her own.

Written by Allan Heinberg, a veteran of television soaps (PARTY OF FIVE, GREY’S ANATOMY), the plot plops Princess Diana into World War I, where she hooks up with dashing spy Steve Trevor (STAR TREK’s Chris Pine, game as the sidekick) and his flustery secretary Etta Candy (Lucy Davis as Hermione Baddeley) to fight the Germans. The plot is something something about poison gas developed by dull German villains Ludendorff (Danny Huston, likely the ninth or tenth name on the list of potential hires) and scarred scientist Dr. Poison (Elena Anaya, doing her best with an undercooked role).

Because the action scenes are completely concocted by Dew-doing dudes with keyboards and mice, it’s impossible to say how well Gadot performs in them, but she looks great in the suit (an important first step for these pictures) and presents a believable, sincere, likable hero for which to root. Likewise Pine, turning in career best work in a period haircut few stars of his generation could pull off. He and Gadot are a charming couple that provide WONDER WOMAN with enough goodwill to partially forgive the dull parts, which is basically everything comic-booky. The climax is a confusing melange of cartoons shooting electricity at each other without explaining why or how.

Connie Nielsen (THE DEVIL’S ADVOCATE) and Robin Wright (THE PRINCESS BRIDE) appear as sisters Queen Hippolyta and General Antiope, respectively, who raise young Diana on Paradise Island, hidden from the world by an invisible shield that proves remarkably easy to penetrate. Early scenes of Diana training as an Amazon warrior are familiar, but well handled by Jenkins, as are all scenes between Gadot and Pine, as their characters not only fall in love, but also in mutual respect as both people and soldiers.

Fighting For Your Rights In Her Satin Tights

When Lynda Carter became Wonder Woman, the DC Comics superhero was no stranger to the television airwaves. William Moulton Marston's 1941 creation had already been essayed by Cathy Lee Crosby (COACH) in a woeful pilot that ignored everything in the comic books, voiced by Shannon Farnon in the hit Saturday-morning cartoon  SUPERFRIENDS, and played for laughs in an unaired presentation film for BATMAN producer William Dozier by Ellie Wood Walker (THE NEW INTERNS). 

What sold the 1975 ABC pilot was most likely its star: a stacked six-foot brunette who not only looked dynamite in Wonder Woman’s red-white-and-blue threads, but also portrayed an earnestness and likability that clicked with audiences. The inexperienced Carter (whose biggest role to date was BOBBIE JO AND THE OUTLAW, a drive-in flick in which she appeared topless) may not have been a great actress, but she was a great Wonder Woman. If only the series had offered her scripts to match.

The pilot, titled simply WONDER WOMAN and directed by TV stalwart Leonard Horn (MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE), aired in a 90-minute time slot more than five months before the series premiered. An origin story penned by Stanley Ralph Ross, who wrote for the 1960s BATMAN series, WONDER WOMAN (as the pilot movie is titled) can’t quite decide whether it wants to be a lighthearted adventure or go all the way into camp territory. It’s cast and shot well, and the idea by Ross and producer Douglas S. Cramer (BRIDGET LOVES BERNIE) to set the series in its original World War II setting opens the series up to interesting story ideas.

Diana (Carter) is Princess of Paradise Island, a hidden land located in the Bermuda Triangle that is ruled by Queen Hippolyta (Cloris Leachman) and populated only by sexy immortal women. The first man any of them have seen is Steve Trevor (Lyle Waggoner), a United States Air Force pilot who is shot down by a Nazi and parachutes to Paradise Island. Hippolyta holds an athletic competition to determine which Amazon will accompany a recuperated Trevor back to America and is disheartened to learn the winner is her daughter Diana in disguise.

With Steve still recuperating in a Washington, D.C. hospital, Diana uses her new Wonder Woman identity to thwart a Nazi plot to divebomb a secret air base on American soil. She susses out that Trevor’s secretary and girlfriend (Laraine Stevens) is actually a Fifth Columnist communicating Air Force secrets overseas to Colonel von Blasko (Kenneth Mars). Except for a slightly soggy middle act that turns Wonder Woman into a shortlived carnival attraction to earn money, Horn keeps the story moving right along and does a very nice job with the action scenes (even though he’s unable to disguise the fact that Stevens’ fight double is a man in drag).

The movie was a success, leading ABC to commission two episodes for the spring of 1976 and a (more or less) weekly series in the fall. Why ABC chose to schedule WONDER WOMAN irregularly is lost to the ages, I imagine, but after thirteen episodes, Cramer took the show to CBS, where it received a weekly berth and a setting change to the 1970s (with Waggoner playing Steve Trevor Jr.!).

Action! Adventure! Nazis! Cyborgs! Nuns! Timothy Agoglia Carey!

Yup, ABC kicked ass in the 1970s. Here's Ernie Anderson to prove it:

In Her Satin Tights

Can you believe it, Lynda Carter is 57 years old today? I keep hearing rumors of Hollywood trying to put together a new Wonder Woman movie, but I can't imagine any actress being cast that could compete with Lynda Carter. Say what you want about the 1970s WONDER WOMAN TV series, but she was just about the most perfectly cast superhero in TV history. Obviously, she was beautiful, athletic and stacked, which are probably the three main attributes any Wonder Woman actress must have, but she also struck the perfect note of earnestness and sweetness. The show may have been camp, but Lynda Carter never was.
Those interested in the tall, voluptuous ingenue may appreciate her first feature film, BOBBIE JO AND THE OUTLAW, which was filmed before, but released after, THE NEW ORIGINAL WONDER WOMAN (sic) debuted on ABC. Chances are if you’ve sought out this American International drive-in flick, it’s because you heard that Lynda goes topless in it. Well, she does, and it makes watching this violent BONNIE & CLYDE ripoff worthwhile.

Carter, who filmed this just after making the WONDER WOMAN pilot, plays Bobbie Jo, a small-town waitress looking for thrills who hooks up with Lyle Wheeler (Marjoe Gortner, seen above with Carter), a fast-draw artist and small-time thief who graduates to bank robbery and murder with Bobbie Jo as part of his small gang of amateurs.

This was actually junk actor Gortner’s first leading role in a feature as well, after some television parts and an earlier career as an evangelist. He was only slightly more experienced before a camera than Carter, who demonstrates the breezy personality and stunning physicality that earned her television stardom. It’s good for her that she nailed that elusive Big Break—the lead on a successful TV series—that eluded so many other young women who slogged through breast- and bullet-oriented exploitation movies of the 1970s. Director Mark Lester, whose oeuvre also includes CLASS OF 1984 (which I like) and TRUCK STOP WOMEN (which I don't), makes the film slightly entertaining with some good stunts, but is really only worth watching for Lynda.