Wonder Woman

About the film

Contains story spoilers.

Wonder Woman begins in present-day Paris, where Diana Prince receives a photograph that takes her back to the First World War. The flashback starts on Themyscira, a hidden island inhabited by the Amazons, where Diana grows up under the protection of Queen Hippolyta and trains secretly with her aunt Antiope. The island's mythology gives Diana a reason to interpret war in absolute terms: she has been told that Ares, the god of war, corrupts humanity and that the Amazons guard a weapon meant for his return. Her courage is real, but her understanding of the world is still built from a story designed to keep her safe.

That protected world changes when American pilot and Allied spy Steve Trevor crashes near the island, pursued by German forces. The Amazons repel the soldiers, but Antiope dies protecting Diana. Under questioning, Steve reveals that a devastating war is consuming the outside world and carries a notebook stolen from chemist Isabel Maru, who is developing a more lethal gas for General Erich Ludendorff. Diana believes Ares is behind the conflict and leaves with Steve, taking armor, sword and lasso. Their arrival in London brings her into a crowded modern city and a war council where officials are more concerned with negotiating an armistice than believing an armed stranger's warning.

Steve recruits a small team—Moroccan spy Sameer, Scottish marksman Charlie and Indigenous smuggler Chief Napi—and heads toward the front in Belgium. Diana crosses No Man's Land alone, deflecting gunfire and advancing through the trench so Allied soldiers can follow her into the village of Veld. The rescue briefly turns the soldiers' outlook: the villagers celebrate, and Diana and Steve grow closer. The respite is fragile. At a German gala, Steve wants to locate the gas while Diana focuses on killing Ludendorff, whom she thinks is Ares. Steve stops her from disrupting the mission, but Ludendorff uses the gas to kill people in Veld, forcing Diana to confront the cost of that restraint.

Diana pursues Ludendorff to the base where the gas is loaded onto a bomber and kills him, yet the war does not end. Sir Patrick Morgan, a British politician who has supported an armistice, reveals himself as Ares. He argues that he has only offered humans ideas and that they choose violence themselves. The revelation breaks the simple equation Diana brought from Themyscira: killing one villain cannot make the entire world innocent or peaceful. Ares destroys the sword she believed was the god-killer and reveals that Diana herself, Zeus's daughter, is the god-killer. The mythology expands at the same time that Diana must make a choice grounded in human relationships rather than a single prophecy.

While Diana fights Ares, Steve's team destroys Maru's laboratory. Steve takes control of the bomber carrying the poison and flies it high enough to detonate away from the ground, sacrificing himself. Ares tries to turn Diana's grief toward Maru, but she spares the chemist and kills Ares by redirecting his lightning. She returns to the present after remembering how Steve and the others acted with courage and care in a world they knew was violent. The story's ending does not claim that one battle cures war; it shows Diana continuing to defend people because she has seen both cruelty and goodness at close range.

Patty Jenkins places Diana's movement through space at the heart of the film's visual language. The island's open sea and bright stone give way to London interiors, muddy trenches and the exposed stretch of No Man's Land, where Diana's direct advance contrasts with soldiers pinned behind cover. The film uses mythic objects—the lasso, armor and sword—as extensions of her worldview, then tests that worldview against an industrial war shaped by chemical weapons and political bargaining. The period setting is fictionalized through a superhero fantasy, so its invented Ares plot should not be read as a historical explanation for the First World War.

The intelligence mission gives Diana a practical contribution beyond strength. She can translate Maru's notebook when the British officers cannot, making the proposed new gas an identifiable danger rather than an alarming rumor. Sir Patrick offers covert support after the commanders refuse Steve permission to act, so the expedition proceeds outside the official strategy. Diana and Steve consequently disagree about how to use the same information: she wants to find the divine cause of the war, while he wants to stop a shipment before it can prolong the killing. Etta Candy supplies another kind of assistance, helping Diana navigate London and later supporting the team from a distance. Her matter-of-fact approach to clothes and social rules contrasts with Diana's literal questions about what women are expected to do. Those exchanges introduce the limits of civilian society before the trench scenes expose the limits of military obedience. The mission's eventual outcome depends on several people acting without any guarantee that their contribution will end the wider war.