Wonder Woman (2017) Review: The DCEU's Absolute Finest Hour

🦸 This review is part of the The Old DCEU – Every Film Reviewed – watch every DCEU film from Man of Steel to the finale (2013–2023).

There is a moment in Wonder Woman that does something no superhero film had managed to do in quite this way before it. Diana Prince climbs out of a trench — over the protests of every soldier around her, men who have been fighting this war long enough to know that the open ground in front of them is a kill zone — and she starts walking. Then she starts running. And then she’s charging across No Man’s Land alone, shield raised, absorbing an impossible volume of fire and advancing through it. The sequence lasts barely three minutes. It is one of the most powerful images in the genre’s entire history.

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The definitive format for the Themyscira training sequences and the No Man's Land charge. Visually stunning throughout.

Wonder Woman arrived in June 2017 as the DCEU’s third film in a year that had given audiences the divisive Batman v Superman and the frustratingly compromised Suicide Squad. The franchise needed a statement. It needed proof that the universe Zack Snyder had built on Man of Steel’s foundation could sustain something genuinely great. Patty Jenkins and Gal Gadot provided that proof. Wonder Woman is, without question, the finest film in the DC Extended Universe — and one of the best superhero films of the past twenty years.

What makes Wonder Woman work where the previous DCEU films had struggled to varying degrees is deceptively simple: it has faith in its protagonist’s emotional journey. Gal Gadot’s Diana Prince believes, entirely and sincerely, that humanity is worth saving. She has grown up on Themyscira reading about humanity’s potential and has never encountered its capacity for systematic cruelty. When she crosses over into WWI Europe, the horror she encounters is genuine — and it is the film’s central dramatic engine. This is not a superhero who has seen everything. This is a superhero confronting the worst of humanity for the first time, and Gadot plays every beat of that collision with a honesty and emotional precision that the role demanded.

Narrative Architecture: Love in a World of War

The WWI setting is the film’s masterstroke, and Patty Jenkins fought for it over studio suggestions of more contemporary alternatives. World War One is the correct war for this story: it was industrialized slaughter on an unprecedented scale, a conflict in which millions died in the mud of a few hundred yards of Belgian and French countryside, and it stripped any remaining European romanticism about the nobility of war down to its bones. Diana arrives in this world believing that Ares, the god of war, is the cause of all human conflict — that if she can find and kill him, the war will end and humanity will be free. The film is, at its core, a story about the devastating process of learning that evil is not so simply sourced.

Chris Pine’s Steve Trevor is the film’s human heart. He’s a spy, fundamentally decent, who has just witnessed the development of a chemical weapon capable of killing thousands and is racing to stop it. Pine’s performance is warm, grounded, and specifically heroic in a human-scale way that provides perfect counterbalance to Gadot’s divine confidence. The dynamic between Diana and Steve — her total command in any physical confrontation, his expertise in the human world she’s entering — creates a genuine partnership rather than a traditional gender-reversed dynamic played for laughs.

The relationship is built on respect that becomes love without losing its intellectual foundation, which is rare in superhero films. They argue about tactics. They debate ethics. They listen to each other. And when the film reaches its devastating conclusion — Steve’s sacrifice is not a plot twist but an emotional inevitability the film has been building toward since his introduction — it lands with genuine force because the relationship that preceded it was real.

The No Man’s Land Sequence: A Masterclass in Heroism

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Gal Gadot's armored design from the film is the definitive modern Wonder Woman look. Excellent detail and shelf presence.

It would be easy to spend this entire review discussing that three-minute sequence. The setup is tight: Diana has been told the village ahead is in German hands, that the civilians there are starving and dying, and that the allied command considers their liberation impossible given the entrenched German positions. Every soldier in the trench with her agrees: you don’t cross No Man’s Land. It can’t be done.

Patty Jenkins shoots the sequence in three distinct phases. Diana descending from the trench and taking her first steps onto the open ground. The German machine guns finding her and opening fire, and Diana deflecting every round while advancing. And then — the moment that made cinemas cheer worldwide — the allied soldiers, watching this impossible thing happen, rising from their trench and following her. The sequence captures heroism not as invulnerability but as will: it’s not that Diana can’t be hurt, it’s that she advances anyway, and in doing so makes it possible for others to advance with her.

Three craft decisions make it extraordinary:

1. The slow-motion timing: Jenkins uses speed ramping deliberately — fast as Diana leaps from the trench, slow as she absorbs the initial fire, fast again as she reaches the German line. It mirrors the emotional experience of watching her.
2. Rupert Gregson-Williams’ “No Man’s Land” cue: The Wonder Woman theme — that electric cello and distorted guitar motif from Batman v Superman, now given its full orchestral context — arrives here for the first time in this film. The timing is perfect.
3. The decision to keep it on Diana: Jenkins never cuts away to reaction shots during the main charge. She trusts Gadot’s physicality and the sequence’s visual logic to carry the emotional payload without underlining it.

A Note on the Third Act

The film’s weakest element is its third act, in which the real identity of Ares is revealed and Diana must fight him in a CGI battle that cannot match the human-scale intimacy of everything that preceded it. This is a known flaw of the film and a genre-wide problem: superhero third acts default to god-mode combat that removes the emotional stakes built over two hours. Wonder Woman’s villain reveal is thematically rich — but the execution of the final battle is generic.

It is not enough to significantly damage the film. But it is enough to note. The film earns a 9 despite this, not because it doesn’t have the problem.

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Wonder Woman (Blu-ray) (opens in a new tab)

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Is Wonder Woman (2017) the best DCEU film?

Yes. By emotional depth, craft, and pure impact, Wonder Woman is the DCEU’s finest achievement. Man of Steel comes closest, but this film has the No Man’s Land sequence, which is singular.

Who directed Wonder Woman (2017)?

Patty Jenkins. She had previously directed Monster (2003) and brought considerable craft and emotional intelligence to the superhero genre. The film’s success made her one of the most sought-after directors in Hollywood.

What makes the No Man's Land scene so famous?

Diana charges alone across an impossible stretch of open battlefield, deflecting machine gun fire with her shield and bracelets, until the allied soldiers watching her rise and follow. It is the clearest visual definition of heroism in the genre: not power, but will. Three minutes of screen time that cinema will remember for decades.

Is Wonder Woman suitable for kids?

PG-13. The WWI combat is intense and the film’s central tragedy — Diana discovering that humanity’s capacity for war is not externally caused — is heavy. Good for 10+ with parental discussion. The film’s values are unambiguously positive and worth sharing.

Where can I watch Wonder Woman (2017)?

Available on digital platforms and physical media. The 4K Blu-ray is the recommended format for the full visual and audio experience.