The way it’s shot, Wonder Woman’s “Fury of the Gods” cameo just amounts to misguided fan service. For the big reveal, the camera pans up from her neck as her theme music plays, as if it’s realizing — long after the audience has put two and two together — that this isn’t just some random gal — it’s the Gal Gadot.
However, since we’re one step ahead of the movie already, it’s not nearly as impressive as it thinks it is when it pulls this ka-ching move (as if to say, “Oh, ho. Look who we got. The real Gadot!”) And it’s especially awkward to see Wonder Woman used as a plot device to resurrect the hero of the movie, Shazam, after it’s gone about the pretense of having him sacrifice himself to save the world.
Webster’s defines a deus ex machina as “a person or thing (as in fiction or drama) that appears or is introduced suddenly and unexpectedly and provides a contrived solution to an apparently insoluble difficulty.” There’s not a picture of Wonder Woman in “Fury of the Gods” under that definition, but there might as well be.
After a few seconds on screen, Gadot settles back into her old charm, radiating the nobility of Christopher Reeve’s Superman, but since “Wonder Woman 3” will officially not be moving forward, this botched, somewhat ham-fisted cameo could be the last time we see her as Wonder Woman. If so, that would mark an ignominious end to her DC tenure. The first “Wonder Woman” was arguably the first good film in the DC Universe. It saved us from the likes of “Suicide Squad” and “Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice,” and the American Film Institute even recognized it as one of the 10 best movies of 2017.