Wonder Woman’s Strengths and Weaknesses
After years of anticipating the DCEU debut of Wonder Woman, the world first met Gal Gadot’s incarnation of Diana in the 2016 movie, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.
While the movie focuses on her Kryptonian and Caped Crusader counterparts, the limited time that Diana spends on screen is used effectively, giving the audience glimpses into Wonder Woman’s past, personality, and values. With each scene that she features in, viewers learn a little bit more about this iteration of Wonder Woman.
We don’t need a golden lasso to know these things about Diana of Themyscira are undeniably true:
She is clever and mission-oriented.
With legendary weapons, the Lasso of Truth, and her iconic armor, it is easy to only consider Wonder Woman within the context of battle. Batman v Superman takes a different approach when introducing Diana; the audience, and Bruce Wayne, first catch a glimpse of Diana moving through a crowd in civilian clothes in the background at an event thrown by Lex Luthor. She is able to slip away from the crowd and ultimately outthink Batman himself.
Both Diana and Bruce want access to information Lex has on his network, but ultimately Diana is the one that walked away with the prize. Bruce follows her as she leaves the building, and she spares an unwavering look at Bruce before she gets in her car and departs.
In spite of her powers and abilities, Diana recognizes that sometimes a quieter approach without theatrics and super suits is the way to get the job done. Diana’s intelligence and ability to outwit even her most brilliant opponents is often overlooked, and she uses this tendency for others to underestimate her when she is acting as a civilian to her advantage.
She cannot be intimidated.
The next time the film features Diana is when she and Bruce have their first real interaction at yet another formal event. As the two survey a sword that purportedly had once belonged to Alexander the Great, Bruce tells Diana that it is a fake. As he begins to tell her where the real one now resides, Diana cuts him off to finish his statement, saying that it is now in the possession of the Sultan of Hajar.
For the rest of their interaction, Diana and Bruce are locked in a very polite power struggle. Bruce tells Diana that he had known women like Diana, to which she calmly replies, almost with pity, “I don’t think you’ve ever known a woman like me.” As the discussion moves onto the real topic at hand, the drive that Diana had “borrowed,” she reveals that she could not decrypt it and had returned it to Bruce’s car.
In spite of Bruce’s best attempts to gain control of the situation by using his access to intel and effort to get an accurate read on Diana, Diana proves that she cannot be intimidated. She was also, once again, one step ahead of Bruce by returning the drive to his possession without him even knowing.
She has an emotionally-charged past.
With his high-tech capabilities, Bruce is able to decrypt the drive that Diana returned to him. In addition to intel about super-powered beings much like Superman, Bruce also finds what Diana had been searching for: an old photograph featuring Diana in her full Wonder Woman armor from 1918. Bruce is stunned, and later sends this as well as all of the other data to Diana. This ends up being the first time that the audience sees Diana as Wonder Woman.
The photograph, taken during World War I, features a serious looking Diana surrounded by her loyal friends and brothers-in-arms, as well as her long-lost love Steve Trevor. For viewers, this photo also served as a glimpse into Diana’s past that would be more thoroughly explored in her debut film. Diana has what is arguably her first purely emotional reaction to something when she opens Bruce’s email attachment as she puts her hand to her forehead and stares at the computer screen. Although her reaction could be partially because her secret is not as secretive as she had initially thought, much of her response likely had to do with the fact that this was the first time she had seen the photograph in a very long time, and perhaps ever. Diana later sends an email to Bruce, saying, “Thank you for bringing him back to me.”
Up until this point, Diana’s past and emotional depth had not been touched upon in Batman v Superman. With just a single photograph, Diana’s history as Wonder Woman and all of the emotions that this entails begin to take shape and round Diana out as a character that fans would only get to know better and love more in the stories that would follow.
She is unyielding.
Having seen images from her past and witnessing the threat that is Doomsday on the news, Diana knows that it is time to come out of hiding and suit up. As Superman and Batman attempt to defend themselves against the Kryptonian monster, Diana makes her heroic appearance as Wonder Woman on the battlefield.
The three discuss the situation and plan amongst themselves. Superman tells Wonder Woman that their foe is not of this world, to which she assuredly replies, “I’ve killed things from other worlds before.” She demonstrates full trust in her capabilities as she stares unflinchingly ahead at her enemy. Throughout the battle, she unleashes her powers, wielding her sword, shield, the Lasso of Truth, the Bracelets of Submission, and her god-like strength to challenge Doomsday.
The most remarkable thing about Wonder Woman as a warrior, however, has nothing to do with weapons or super-powered abilities; it instead comes down to part of who Diana is as a person. From this first time that the audience sees Wonder Woman as a warrior and during every fight that follows in subsequent movies she features in, she cannot be kept down. No matter how hard she is hit, how many times she is knocked down, or the strength of the enemy at hand, she does not surrender and does not give up when engaged in a fight for what she believes to be right.
She is not perfect.
Although the audience now knows from Wonder Woman 1984 that Diana was not entirely inactive between the events of Wonder Woman and Batman v Superman, it is easy to ascertain that she was not functioning at full heroic capacity during much of that stretch of time. Bruce and Diana share a quiet moment following Clark’s funeral, and we learn what it is that made her more or less hang up her Lasso and tiara. She tells Bruce, “A hundred years ago, I walked away from mankind. A century of horrors.”
Canonically, one of Wonder Woman’s greatest strengths is the depth to which she feels everything from love to pain, from joy to horror. Following the loss of Steve and the terrors of the twentieth century, it is not difficult to empathize with Diana’s deep feelings of pain and perhaps even helplessness.
In Justice League, when the whole world was in danger, she would once again fully embrace her role as Wonder Woman to help save humankind. It can be easy to fault her for stepping away to the extent that she did for such a significant length of time. One of the benefits of being a demigod, however, is that important lessons can be learned over the span of decades, and even centuries. She does not get it right every time, which is part of what makes her so relatable in spite of all of the abilities she has at her disposal. Diana, although seemingly ageless, is a character in constant evolution and constantly learning about herself and her place in the world.
Wonder Woman, Justice League, and Wonder Woman 1984 would continue to flesh out and expand upon the Wonder Woman that audiences first encountered in Batman v Superman.
When viewed in hindsight, Batman v Superman, in spite of using Wonder Woman sparingly compared to Batman and Superman, did a remarkable job introducing the audience to Diana as a person and as a hero. With the foundation that Batman v Superman put in place for the character, future storytellers had solid ground upon which to continue to build and develop the beloved Princess of Themyscira.
What are your favorite strengths (or weaknesses) of Wonder Woman’s? Share your thoughts in the comments and don’t forget to Let Your Geek Sideshow!