1st Photos From Wonder Woman

So far, this year has been a pretty great time for female representation in geek media.  Supergirl had massive popular success and is easily the most successful the Superman franchise has been since the 1996 animated series, Mad Max: Fury Road gave us Furiosa, one of the all time most bad ass women ever, Jessica Jones is making major waves on Netflix, Agent Carter found a small but dedicated fan base, Hunger Games’ finished its series run, and in the world of comics we got hit new series like Prez, Paper Girls, Jem & The Holograms, Devil Dinosaur & Moon Girl, Spider-Gwen, and the continuing success of Ms. Marvel.  

In the midst of this expanding openness towards female characters in traditionally male dominated spaces it makes sense that Wonder Woman is on the cusp of returning to live action, first next year in Batman v. Superman and then in her own movie in 2017.  Now, we’ve got the first pictures of Wonder Woman from her upcoming movie and she looks amazing.

I wasn’t running this review blog when Wonder Woman’s costume in Batman v. Superman first broke so I’ll take this opportunity to comment on it to: it’s pretty great.  Of the many problems that have plagued DC Comics Man of Steel continuity bad visual design really isn’t one of them.  With the sole exception of Suicide Squad pretty much every visualization DC has put together has either been a shockingly faithful recreation like Affleck’s Batman or a pretty interesting idea using the original as a jumping off point, that’s where Wonder Woman’s design lives.  Most of the pictures we’ve seen of her redesign have had their color de-saturated and replaced with a kind of ugly sepia tone but at the same time the super bronzey coloring does have a kind of Greco-Roman aesthetic to it.  It reminds me most of the color correction used in 300, which would make sense given that was the last time Zack Snyder tangled with the iconography of Ancient Greece.  

A lot of folks have mentioned her design looks a lot like Xena the Warrior Prince and they’re not wrong though I’m hoping that’s more the color correction than a deliberate choice.  I like Xena’s design and there’s always been a lot of Wonder Woman to her visual but at the same time Wonder Woman’s colors have always worked as a perfect complement to her fellow heroes in the DC trinity.  Superman is definitively blue and red, Batman is predominately black, and she’s more of a yellow and white, both of which have really been lost in this version so far.  Though that’d be the perfect metaphor for the DC movie universe as a whole, swapping out the bright and defined colors of the comic for a dull and gritty variant.  I do really love the armored look she’s sporting and the tiara redesign is a big plus, speaking of which.

This single photo has actually got me extremely hyped for the Wonder Woman movie.  Firstly, it’s one of the first photos involving her that doesn’t feature Wonder Woman involved in a brawl and secondly there’s not terrible sepia tone color correction.  Seriously, about 40% of my elation at this photo comes from the fact I can look at it without hurting my eyes from all the dulled grays and browns, it’s long overdue that DC give us a vision of Wonder Woman that isn’t bathed in the dirt spectrum.  

This isn’t just about aesthetics either, the reason DC has favored this blend of washed out colors and gritty textures is because it allows them to downplay the more fanciful elements of their characters, something they’ve always felt decidedly ashamed of.  It’s the same reason Batman has always been such an easy adaptation for DC, his only color is black so they’re infinitely more comfortable sticking with that palette.

Aside from the color I really like the mystery of this photo.  I’m fairly certain the setting is England given that’s pretty clearly Big Ben in the background but I could be wrong.  If that is the case it would imply Wonder Woman is moving through the world of men in secret, which would actually gel pretty well with her character.  It’s been heavily suggested the film will take place over multiple time periods and the fact that Chris Pine’s Steve Trevor seems to be dressed as an Indiana Jones type adventurer seems to confirm that.  If that’s the case my guess is that Diana has been sneaking off her home of Paradise Island for years in the past to secretly observe and aid the world of men where she can.  

Like Superman Diana has always been portrayed as a visitor to our world who’s eager to help, the main difference is that her home and family still exist and her visitation to our world has been in order to spread the values of her home.  I wouldn’t be surprised if in the film she’s been carrying out this mission in secret for decades.  At the same time, the time jumps would allow the film to break free from Wonder Woman’s role in Batman v. Superman by taking place around it rather than just in the aftermath of it. 

Wonder Woman has proven a deceptively difficult character for DC to get a handle on over the years and but I’m hopeful that her first film outing will prove a major slam dunk for a studio that’s been in desperate need of them lately.  The directing team seems game for the material and at the very least it looks spectacular.  It still remains to be seen if the movie will really GET Wonder Woman, which is sort of a perplexingly difficult task given Wonder Woman’s undergone so many changes that the few consistent parts of her mythos shine through all the clearer.  The DC Movie universe has so far been a mangled mess of great visuals wrapped around shallow ideas and insecure relations to the source material so I’m not totally onboard with the Wonder Woman movie yet but I’m a lot closer than I’ve ever been before.  

Wonder Woman is scheduled for release on June 23, 2017


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