Some of you may remember that I used to do movie reviews for our sister publication, Let’s Go.

Well, I still love watching movies and, yep, I still love talking about them.

Over the weekend, Jenn and I joined a group of friends in seeing an opening night screening of Wonder Woman. Don’t worry, I’m not going to don my critic hat and start diving into the ins and outs of the film. Instead, I will simply say that it was a very enjoyable superhero movie with as much pop and sizzle as any of the big-budget blockbusters that have come before it.

What I will talk about, though, is the many ways this movie defied expectations.

Leading up to Wonder Woman’s release, the project dealt with a lot of flak simply because of the gender of both its director and star. Many felt that a female director would not be able to “handle” a massive action film. Others felt that there was no way a female lead would be able to carry said project and, thus, questioned whether or not a movie like Wonder Woman would simply flounder at the box office.

Without diving too deep into the history of film, it’s no secret that female directors have had to fight tooth and nail for every project they could get their hands on. Wonder Woman is a perfect example of that. Director Patty Jenkins helmed the movie Monster back in 2003. Despite the fact that Monster won the Academy Award for Best Picture, along with a stack of other honors, it has been nearly 15 years before Jenkins was given the reins to her next big project, which just so happens to be Wonder Woman.

As for the leading role, many feared that an actress – Gal Gadot in this case – would not be able to offer a supercharged performance capable of keeping an audience glued to their seats for two-and-a-half-hours.

I’m happy to say that, on both counts, the naysayers were so very, very wrong. Thankfully, you don’t have to take my word for it.

Critically, Wonder Woman is resting at a 93 percent on review site RottenTomatoes.com, making it not only one of the highest-reviewed films of the year, but also one of the highest-reviewed superhero films; period.

Despite all of that, I feared that maybe the world wasn’t ready for a movie like Wonder Woman. I like to think we’ve come a long way since the 1920’s, but mankind still surprises me with a curveball from time to time. Thankfully, audiences did not disappoint in that regard, either. Wonder Woman had a $100.5 million debut, making it (by leaps and bounds) the biggest opening for a film directed by a woman in the history of cinema.

I know some folks still get uncomfortable when these types of conversations come up, and that’s fine. We’ll get there as a society one day. But what’s important to me is that girls like my niece now have another story of success paving the way to their own, hopefully brighter, future.

Wonder Woman was a great movie, but I appreciate that its success could mean much more than a high review score and box office take.