Just as she did when faced with German machine guns across No Man's Land, Wonder Woman has kept on charging.
The DC Comics superhero movie set during World War I has taken more than $US700 million ($918 million) in just over four weeks. It has become the most successful release in what's called the DC Comics Extended Universe in the US – ahead of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, Suicide Squad and Man of Steel.
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Anatomy of a scene: Wonder Woman
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Anatomy of a scene: Wonder Woman
Director Patty Jenkins narrates a scene from her action blockbuster featuring Gal Gadot and Chris Pine.
As it's become one of the year's biggest hits, it shows us how the movie business is changing.
Remember Cate Blanchett saying movies centring on women were mainstream, not niche, when she won her second Oscar in 2014?
"Audiences want to see them and, in fact, they earn money," she said. "The world is round, people!"
Ticket sales prove she was dead right. According to Box Office Mojo, Wonder Woman is now the fifth-biggest movie in North America in the past year.
Topping the list are two other Hollywood blockbusters with women as central characters – Rogue One: A Star Wars Story ($US532 million) and Beauty and the Beast ($US503 million). If Wonder Woman reaches the predicted $US390 million, it will take over third place ahead of Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 2. That ain't niche business.
With the highest opening weekend for a movie directed by a woman, Patty Jenkinshas smashed the apparent glass ceiling for a female making an action-packed comic book movie.
The Hollywood Reporter called it "the most expensive film ever shot by a person with two XX chromosomes" with its $US150 million budget surpassing Kathryn Bigelow's $US100 million K-19: The Widowmaker.
What's less well known is how Jenkins' career has unfolded in unconventional fashion since she broke through as writer-director of the intense 2003 drama Monster, which starred Charlize Theron as serial killer Aileen Wuornos. After a follow-up movie fell apart when she became pregnant, Jenkins has spent most of the past decade directing television so she could spend more time with her son.
So that's a couple more breakthroughs – stepping up from an $US8 million independent movie to a $US150 million studio hit and becoming a top-flight Hollywood director while balancing motherhood.
From a storytelling perspective, screenwriter Allan Heinberg and Jenkins made a batch of smart creative decisions that have paid off.
As they had to, they kept the iconic elements of the comic book character – an Amazonian princess with bullet-deflecting bracelets and a golden lasso. But they made Diana Prince not just fierce but also conflicted, tender, emotional, curious, compassionate and impulsive. In other words, human.
While the movie is long at 141 minutes, there are variations of pace and tone and quiet moments that make it feel considerably shorter than the 151 minutes of Batman v Superman.
Amid the action, Wonder Woman has heart, too. The romance with Chris Pine's spy Steve Trevor is coy but warmhearted enough to work. And Jenkins nails a couple of genuinely emotional moments, including that stirring charge into battle.
You could quibble over a few plot absurdities – the short sail from the island of Themyscira to London, for example, or the apparent ability for Trevor to pass for a German officer by adopting an accent.
But to their eternal credit, the filmmakers have avoided the curse of the superhero movie – an uninvolving climatic battle between two CGI characters. Despite being fought by gods and heavy on digital effects, this showdown had a human dimension.
We'll never know what George Miller would have done with Wonder Wonder, played by Megan Gale, in his planned Justice League movie that fell over in 2008. But this version deserves all the success it's getting.