Additionally, Mayling Ng, Florence Kasumba, Madeleine Vall Beijner, Hayley Jane Warnes and Ann Wolfe portray Orana, Acantha, Egeria, Aella and Artemis, respectively, all of whom are Amazons.[60][61][62][63] James Cosmo appears as Douglas Haig, Steffan Rhodri appears as Darnell, and Dutch supermodel Doutzen Kroes portrays the Amazon Venelia.[62] Samantha Jo was cast as the Amazonian Euboea, and previously played the Kryptonian, Car-Vex, in Man of Steel.[64] Zack Snyder also makes a brief cameo appearance in the film as an unnamed soldier.[65]
Before she was Wonder Woman, she was Diana, princess of the Amazons, trained to be an unconquerable warrior. Raised on a sheltered island paradise, when an American pilot crashes on their shores and tells of a massive conflict raging in the outside world, Diana leaves her home, convinced she can stop the threat. Fighting alongside man in a war to end all wars, Diana will discover her full powers…and her true destiny.
Pallas Athena, the goddess of wisdom and war, granted Diana great wisdom, intelligence, and military prowess. Athena's gift has enabled Diana to master over a dozen languages (including those of alien origin), multiple complex crafts, sciences and philosophies, as well as leadership, military strategy, and armed and unarmed combat. More recently, Athena bound her own eyesight to Diana's, granting her increased empathy.[182]
Wonder Woman’s powers are a result of the blessings she received from the gods (or presumably in the modern version by her divine ancestry), but originally came from her "brain energy" training. Her abilities in large part come from her upbringing in the martial society of the Amazons. She is one of the most powerful superheroes in the DC universe.
Diana was born circa 5000 years ago on the newly-created island of Themyscira to Zeus and Hippolyta, the Queen of the Amazons, mere months after the War of the Gods. Zeus intended for the child to one day grow strong enough to defeat Ares, the God of War. Fearful for her daughter's safety, Hippolyta lied to Diana about her true parentage, instead telling Diana that she'd sculpted her from clay and prayed to Zeus to bring her to life. Diana would believe this story for most of her life.
At the time of her debut, Wonder Woman sported a red top with a golden eagle emblem, a white belt, blue star-spangled culottes, and red and golden go-go boots. She originally wore a skirt; however according to Elizabeth Martson, "It was too hard to draw and would have been over her head most of the time."[189] This outfit was entirely based on the American flag, because Wonder Woman was purely an American icon as she debuted during World War II.[194] Later in 1942, Wonder Woman's outfit received a slight change – the culottes were converted entirely into skin-tight shorts and she wore sandals.[194] While earlier most of her back was exposed, during the imposition of the Comics Code Authority in the mid-1950s, Wonder Woman's outfit was rectified to make her back substantially covered, in order to comply with the Authority's rule of minimum exposure.[194] During Mike Sekowsky's run in the late 1960s, Diana surrendered her powers and started using her own skills to fight crime. She wore a series of jumpsuits as her attire; the most popular of these was a white one.[194]
Perhaps due to her Amazonian background, Diana greatly respects other noble selfless warriors, as evidenced when she attended Superman's funeral in Smallville and spoke of how he had been much more than a soldier (adding to what Batman said about Metropolis burying an empty casket). As a result of her great posthumous respect, she was, therefore, more than willing to aid Batman in honoring the heroic death of Superman, by helping round up the metahumans from Lex Luthor's files to form a team of superheroes (later known as the Justice League) to protect the world from the imminent mysterious alien invader Steppenwolf and his Parademon minions after Superman's death left the world vulnerable.