The ten-minute tournament — an over-produced Decathlon after the fashion of TV’s American Ninja Warrior — does nothing but rehash past glory and pad a hulking two-and-a-half hour (!) running time. Diana Prince (Gal Gadot) now works as a high level anthropologist at the Smithsonian. It’s here that she meets unctuous new hire Barbara Ann Minerva (Kristen Wiig), a degreed geologist with a minor in prehistoric comic relief. Her comic magazine origins peg Minerva as a DC Comics LGBT supervillain, but you can’t prove it by what’s on screen. The closest writer-director Patty Jenkins gets to addressing gender identity is via double-entendre. Commenting on Diana’s ebullient personality over lunch, the vestal, clearly smitten Minerva lets slip, “You seem to be the kind that’s always out.” Wiig’s “from not to hot” transition is a small matter of an exchange of nervous laughter (her one and only character trait) for a Cheetah suit that would feel right at home on a background extra in Cats. The movie liberally “borrows” from Superman II, right down to Minerva’s return for revenge and the parting shot of Wonder Woman in flight, minus the American flag three times the size of the one raised at Iwo Jima. Unfortunately, she chose to trace Richard Donner’s donnish vision rather than follow Richard Lester’s enormously appealing path to wit and emotional intelligence. (2020) — Scott Marks
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