Wonder Woman gets animated

While a long-discussed live-action Wonder Woman movie appears to be on hold, the Amazon princess is starring in a movie soon -- in animated form.

"Wonder Woman" will be released Tuesday on DVD and Blu-ray (Warner, $20-$30). It features the voices of Keri Russell as Princess Diana, aka Wonder Woman; Virginia Madsen as her mom, Queen Hippolyta; Nathan Fillion as Steve Trevor; Rosario Dawson as Artemis, and Alfred Molina as the villainous Ares.

"Wonder Woman" is an origin story, telling of Diana's unusual birth, her life on the island of Themyscira and her introduction to man's world. In the comics, Wonder Woman's origin has varied over the years. It fell on screenwriter Michael Jelenic to pull the various threads together.

"There are a lot of interpretations," he acknowledged. Although he's no stranger to superheroes -- he's the story editor on Cartoon Network's "Batman: The Brave and the Bold" and has worked on the animated "Legion of Superheroes" and "The Batman" -- he doesn't have a huge comic book background. So in writing "Wonder Woman," his first feature film, "I relied on a lot of people around me. I would ask them, 'What are the essential parts? What are the things we have to see?'"

There was no question, he says, that certain elements -- the lasso of truth, Diana's invisible plane, her bullet-repelling bracelets -- would be present.

"The fun part of writing the script is how do you take those iconic elements and put a new spin on them and do something fun with them. There are a couple of fun scenes with the lasso of truth in there, and we do something a little different with the bullets and bracelets thing."

Jelenic also had to reconcile Diana's role as an ambassador of peace in the comics with the fact that she comes from a line of warriors.

Fight they do, though, when a shocking betrayal unleashes Ares, the god of war, upon the world. Jelenic crafted a back story that opens the movie and reveals a connection between Ares and Queen Hippolyta -- a connection that explains why the Amazons live isolated from man's world. That isolation ends when pilot Steve Trevor crashes onto the island.

"Steve is a lot of fun," Jelenic said. "He represents man and the modern world in this story, and superficially he's a bit of a chauvinist, a bit of a jerk, but he sort of proves himself worthy of Diana's affections."

Ultimately, he said it's a movie of contrasts: between man and woman, between ancient and modern world, and between the humor of a romantic comedy and the ferocious action of a movie such as "300."