Comic-book origin stories don’t get more fascinating and downright kinky than the story behind the creation of “Wonder Woman,” which writer-director Angela Robinson tells with verve and style in the drama “Professor Marston and the Wonder Women.”
The professor of the title is William Moulton Marston (Luke Evans), shown in 1945 having to defend his brainchild, the Amazon princess Wonder Woman, to a Catholic-sponsored bluenose (Connie Britton) investigating salacious material in comic books. Marston argues the books’ bondage and sadomasochistic material — think of what Wonder Woman does with that lasso — are part of her superpower.
Wonder Woman’s story is rooted in Marston’s work two decades before as a psychology professor teaching at Harvard’s Radcliffe College.