I am not a comic book person, nor do I particularly care for action movies. This movie, however, kicked ass.

• Release: 2017
• Director: Patty Jenkins
• Starring: Gal Gadot, Chris Pine, David Thewlis
• Spoilers below? Yes, lots.

If you want a basic plot summary, read Wikipedia’s entry.

I watched this movie twice (and no, I only count it once in this campaign). My husband asked me why I liked it, since I don’t go with the others in the house to view whatever Marvel movie is on at the multiplex (yeah, I understand Wonder Woman is DC; let’s not do this, shall we?). So here’s the rundown:

Why Wonder Woman Beats the Crap Out of Other Superhero Movies

Sure, it’s partly because the hero is a woman. In the superhero/comic book adaptations I’ve seen before—that I can remember—the female characters are at best ancillaries (yawn); at worst, objects (ugh); or otherwise unmemorable. Here, women take the roles of the principal hero and a primary villains is a woman, as well as a nation’s worth of supporting-role women warriors thwarting the invading Central Powers with flaming arrows. This isn’t that hard a notion to follow: It’s nice to see someone like you (or a better version of you, like after you hit the gym on January 1) on the screen kicking ass once in a while.

The movie was physically easier to watch than others in its genre. The action sequences are not as rapidly cut, and they make effective use of slow-motion to help the viewer follow the fates of the multiple combatants in a scene. Maybe I’m showing my age, but the last time I saw a superhero movie, the action sequences were cut so fast I literally couldn’t follow the action. The young gamers in the audience, including my own teenagers, probably had no trouble registering who was doing what to whom, but my eyes aren’t accustomed to processing images that quickly, and the rapid-fire sequences led to overload. At some point, I just gave up trying to follow the story. I sat there, poking my husband in the ribs and pulling my best Jerry Seinfeld.

But mostly, the story was better.

At the risk of stating the obvious, most superhero stories involve a hero breaking in to save the day. That is to say, they intervene to save humanity from itself. Wonder Woman’s theme, on the other hand, represents a fight each one of us can actually take on. What sold the movie for me was the final scene (start at 1:00).

We watch superhero movies to try to catch a glimpse of the heroic in ourselves. We identify with the hero; we want to fight the fight s/he fights. With most stories, the hero remains elusive, retains the “super,” stays unattainable. In Wonder Woman, we see how to tap into the heroic for ourselves.