The DC Extended Universe finally finds a balance between troubled philosophy and thrilling action through Wonder Woman.

Rating: 9/10 (25 July 2017)

Like it or not, 'Wonder Woman' kicked some serious asses this year as Cinematic justice was served with a female-lead movie, and by a Woman!
The few critics who have written sexist/poor reviews of the film (for reasons that are generally nothing to do with its calibre just FYI) have been roundly dragged by the Wonder Woman fans online. The worst of which came from the fans of DC's rival itself and those who are mostly blog writers, garnered a fair amount of negative attention for his scathing, salivating review of the film, in which they criticised Gal Gadot (Because the film's star is Israeli, duh!) and accuses positive critics of "grading on a big curve" (um, ouch!).
Meanwhile, Wonder Woman continued (still continues) to smash the pitifully low critics and the expectations of every film industry out there.
(Sidebar: The two best and utterly shockingly genre-shifting superhero films of this year: Logan and Wonder Woman both will go down in history as comic-book genre landmarks).
Wonder Woman, the film represents a number of delicate balancing acts: between humour and gravitas; angst and adventure; full-blown, unvarnished superhero fantasy and the DCEU's usual unpacking of what those fantasies mean. But its most impressive balancing routine may be the one that plays out between Steve and Diana over whether the Ares myth is real, and whether the histories of gods, Amazons, and magical hidden islands have any place in the modern world. The movie's opening act on Themyscira is out-sized and mythic, but once the story returns to Steve's familiar, grubby world, Wonder Woman seems like a surreal figure, a children's story brought to life. The people who see Diana seem to recognise that she's larger than life, no less startling than a unicorn walking through 1918 London.
And yet there are no heroes yet in their world, so the characters have a strong urge to treat Diana as just another strikingly beautiful woman — in other words, to protect her, sideline her, and politely diminish her. And without making a fuss about it, she is in no way willing to be diminished. She's a fish out of water in 1918 London, which gives Wonder Woman a fair number of comedy pegs and opportunities for banter — and also its strongest feminist leanings, as Steve tries to control and contain Diana, and she shrugs him off and does whatever makes sense to her instead. But she's also the ultimate home-schooled kid, confidently operating under assumptions that have never come up against real-world facts. Wonder Woman gets its philosophical bent from the conflict between her pure, untested idealism and the actual gruesome realities of war, and it finds rich ground in the gap between them.
Such high stakes for women filmmakers and female superheroes — Jenkins' Wonder Woman is being hyped as a litmus test for whether modern cinema audiences will pack theatres to watch a superhero movie with a woman protagonist, and whether a woman director can bring the blockbuster action. But while Wonder Woman is supremely calculated in its gender politics and its gender role reversals, the question of how a female hero sees the world winds up being less interesting than the question of how an entirely self-assured hero sees it. The DCEU's Batman and Superman are both tormented by their solitude and their histories; as a one-of-a-kind being, Wonder Woman takes her solitude for granted, and her history is almost entirely of her own choosing. Her femininity is part of the story, for the way it makes even the other heroes in the movie underestimate and discount her. But her gender is never the story's primary thrust.
Instead, Wonder Woman focuses on the horrors of war, the pleasures of camaraderie, and plain, old-fashioned super-heroics. The DCEU's Batman tortures criminals and tries to murder Superman, while Superman himself accidentally destroys cities, and is forced to murder villains. Wonder Woman simply fights injustice and saves lives. It is, frankly, a relief.
This is indeed a tremendous win for a franchise that desperately needed one. Doesn't matter whether you're a Marvel fan or a DC fan, this isn't about you or your fandom, it's about the industry and the whole comic-book genre itself.
This DC movie has the charm to burn. And that's no back-hand compliment. It's genuine praise. This is nit-picking of the highest order. Wonder Woman is a solid Crowd-Pleaser, so go join the crowd!