Welcome to The Not-So-New 52, your digital Swampflix comic book (adaptation) newsstand! Starting in 2007, DC Comics and Warner Premiere entered the direct-to-home-video market with animated features, mostly in the form of adaptations of well-received event comics or notable arcs. This Swampflix feature takes its name from the 2011 DC relaunch event “The New 52,” and since there are (roughly) fifty-two of these animated features as of the start of 2024, Boomer is watching them in order from the beginning with weekly reviews of each. So, get out your longboxes and mylar sleeves and get ready for weekly doses of grousing, praise, befuddlement, recommendations, and occasional onomatopoeia as we get animated for over fifteen years of not-so-new comic cartoons.
It’s a testament to just how starved we were for Wonder Woman content in the aughts that this animated movie, which came out in 2009, was so well received. It’s not bad per se—in fact, in many places, it’s quite good—but this movie’s version of Steve Trevor is gross in a way that was probably apparent even at the time, but which has become even more apparent in contrast to the way that the character was portrayed by least problematic Christopher in Hollywood, Chris Pine, in the live-action 2017 film that was released just a scant eight years later.
The 2009 Wonder Woman film starts in the distant past: Amazon Queen Hippolyta (Virginia Madsen) is locked in battle with god of war Ares (Alfred Molina), her former lover. As her warriors die on the battlefield, locked in combat with an army of mythical monsters led by her and Ares’s son Thrax, she turns the tides by beheading her own offspring. Preparing to do the same to Ares, she is stopped by Zeus and Hera (Marg Helgenberger), who tell her that they cannot permit her to kill a god, but they will bind his powers and allow her to hold him as her prisoner in perpetuity, granting her and her people a new home on the paradise-like island of Themyscira, safe from the dangers of “man’s world.” After she and her people build their new home, Hippolyta is granted another boon as she crafts a child for herself from the island’s clay, which the Olympians bring to life: a daughter, Diana (Keri Russell). Decades later, Ares remains under lock and key under the guardianship of Persephone (Vicki Lewis), a warrior who lost an eye when she jumped into the line of fire and took a blow that was meant for bookworm Alexa (Tara Strong) in the war against Ares in the prologue; this lack of interest in battle on the part of Alexa makes her the target of mockery for supposed cowardice by her older sister Artemis (Rosario Dawson), Hippolyta’s right hand general. When modern USAF pilot Steve Trevor (Nathan Fillion) lands on Themyscira after an aerial dogfight, a contest is held to determine which of the Amazons should travel beyond their peaceful oasis to return him to his nation. Diana wins this competition, but her excitement is short lived, as Ares’s escape while the island’s inhabitants were distracted by the contest means that she will not need to seek him out and return him to his cell.
There’s a tonal issue at play here that drags this one down a bit. It’s got a PG-13 rating, and at the time of release, there was some outcry about the level of violence in this one. I think that’s reflective of a systemic issue, as this film is no more violent than Superman: Doomsday, which didn’t receive the same kind of criticism, and I think it’s owed solely to the fact that the combatants here are women. There is a decapitation (in shadow), but in the earlier film, Doomsday murdered an actual child (although the “camera” cut away), but because Amazonians (read: women) are doing the violence, this one received more criticism. It makes sense that this would get the MPAA rating that it did because of this, but the dialogue remains very PG. There’s a recurring bit that starts because Trevor says “crap” in front of the Amazons, then has to explain that it means excrement; each time after this that he uses the word, the Amazons take this as further evidence of the crassness and baseness of mankind, until Diana finally uses it herself at the end as a demonstration of her becoming more acclimatized to man’s world. That’s all well and good (if a bit pat and trite), but its failure to push the boundaries of the film’s rating demonstrates that the franchise is still trying to bridge a gap between appealing to (and being acceptable for) children while aiming to attract an older audience through a novel, more mature approach to storytelling.
Once upon a time, I owned this movie on DVD, having obtained it for a mere $5 from the CVS on Leon C. Simon, when I was a student at UNO. I have a very clear memory of watching the special features, which included several talking heads from the film’s voice cast, and Rosario Dawson using the word “warriess” several times, which I always found endearing. Dawson is giving a great performance here in general, with a couple of quite badass lines—my favorite of which is when someone teases her about her giant sword, and she replies that it “is but [her] dagger.” Very little in the film stuck out in my mind, however, other than the speedrun through the stations of the Diana of Themyscira canon: born of clay, paradise island, crashed air pilot, championship to determine the ambassador to man’s world, crusader for truth and justice. Once Diana comes to the modern world, there’s a distinct lack of charm in her fish out of water story that acts as a demonstration of why this narrative works better as a period piece; the Patty Jenkins Wonder Woman movie sets its events during WWI while the Lynda Carter TV classic was set in WWII (at least initially), as the earliest comics had been. This allows for there to be some natural chemistry between this isolated demigod princess and a man who can be a little regressive but still likable in that he was more aware than average for this time. Here, Steve Trevor is a total hound dog, in a way that would have been obnoxious even for a contemporary guy at the time of the film’s release.
All of the stuff with Wonder Woman herself is great (minus a comment that she makes about Etta Candy that is supposed to shame her for being a stereotype), but I’d really rather not have heard Steve Trevor tell Queen Hippolyta that “[her] daughter’s got a nice rack,” even if it’s supposed to be a moment played for comedy (he’s bound with the Lasso of Truth). Later still, he tries to get Diana drunk with the implication that he expects to have the opportunity to take advantage of her! It’s vile, frankly. The rest of the film, as wonderful as so much of it is—the fight between the Amazons and the reanimated dead is a particular standout, especially as it exists both as set piece and as vehicle for closure on the Alexa/Artemis relationship—doesn’t make up for the fact that its male lead is an attempted sexual assailant by any other name. Edit all of that out and you have a 4-star animated flick, but it is in this film, and that leaves us where we are.
-Mark “Boomer” Redmond
Swampflix 
