I'll start with a spoiler alert if you haven't seen the film, and a confession that I've only seen the Gal Gadot version of Wonder Woman, and nothing else in the DC extended universe, or the comics for that matter. I simply went to the cinema, sat down, and watched the film through my Deep Fantasy-inclined eyes. And this is what emerged.

This could equally be Chris Pine's story. He flies along in his plane (mechanical/non-instinctual/logos/higher-rational thought) and is shot down. He plunges into the sea (water is commonly the unconscious). He cannot free himself from his rational/logos self. His mechanical device (linked to this rational state) traps him.

Diana Prince releases him, but both are in the unconscious. She is his anima. The unconscious (ocean/hidden island in the ocean) is her realm.

When he is shot down, she is on the cliff, gazing out to sea. Yearning for what? (Her animus, in fact). She is ready for change. Think Luke Skywalker stuck on his desert planet before the droids turn up.

The aim of both Diana Prince and Chris Pine is to become whole - integrate their anima and animus, that is, transcend them.

On the island, Chris Pine is literally stripped bare. Even his father's watch ceases to tick (father/animus/mechanical device/conscious time).

They leave the island via windpower and water. They enter the animus world via engines/mechanical devices. The pristine blue of the natural instinctual world (anima) gives way to the grey military world of the animus.

Both the female hero (Diana Prince) and the male hero (Chris Pine) are heroes because they undertake the hero journey of becoming whole. The dichotomy is spelled out clearly for Diana Prince. Made of clay, animated by divine breath (ground and sky). Chris Pine is a flyer (air) but also a spy. He moves between realms as Diana does, appearing differently to different people.

Their missions are different, but they come together when they dance in the ruined town. It's suggested they join physically but it's not important, the dance does the same thing. They are in accord; they are one.

When Chris Pine flies off in the gas-laden plane, I thought he was going to crash it into the water, return to the unconscious, but of course he doesn't. He smiles before he detonates his flying bomb. He has transcended both anima and animus by bringing them together.

Diana Prince also destroys Ares from the air, but she retains Chris Pine's watch. Her hero journey is not to transcend, at least not yet. Love endures and like a true female hero, she fights for it beyond the individual level.

The dichotomy of Dr Poison is also of interest, the mask/mechanisation element covering her human frailty (scarring). Even her name is dichotomous, Dr's usually associated with healing. Lots of other lovely elements too: the sniper killing people from a church tower (that Diana Prince demolishes - gods v. religion?) and the cross-over on the gangplank of shattered men returning from the fight our male and female heroes are heading into.

And yes, I loved the film. Diana Prince was not the male hero in drag I feared she would be, and nor was Chris Pine the usual brash, over-confident, caricature of a male hero. His inarticulateness annoyed me at first, but it brilliantly illustrated the difficulties of explaining the madness of war.
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