What is the extent of Wonder Woman's powers?

Question

Spoilers ahead for the Wonder Woman film, proceed at your own risk.

In most comics and animated shows Wonder Woman is one of the physically strongest members of the Justice League behind Superman, however in the new movie it looks like her strength/abilities are a bit inconsistent and here's why I say this.

• While she can hold a tank over head and throw it effortlessly and is presumably the second strongest being in the Justice League, she has to use a shield or her gauntlets to avoid bullets, where Superman can take (presumably 50 caliber) bullets from machine guns without flinching
• In the final scenes after the fight with Aries, she seems to fly, but it is unclear if she is floating down, or falling in slow motion
• In the final scene where she jumps off the tower, the same issue, she could be jumping very far (as shown earlier jumping far out of the trenches) in slow motion

Some questions I have are,

Can Wonder Woman fly? If she can fly at the end, why couldn't she fly earlier? If she can fly, how did she learn to in her fight with Aries? Is she bulletproof, or can bullets hurt her?

Answer 1

The extent of her powers so far are actually unclear, though as a demigod she appears to be on par with Superman in many ways, but not all of them.

Keep in mind that, for the bulk of the movie, Diana didn't know her own powers as a demigod. In fact, that was exactly the thing Hippolyta tried to hide from her for her own good. Only at the end, after Steve Trevor's sacrifice, do we really see Diana in the full extent of her power, and only briefly. We can also look to her brief fight scene in Dawn of Justice against Doomsday.

So far, we know for sure that she has superhuman speed, strength, and reflexes -- she can make amazing leaps, lift tanks with ease, and deflect bullets. She seems to be pretty resistant to bodily harm as well (she was thrown around a lot in the Doomsday fight). She also apparently has the ability to absorb energy -- lightning, heat vision, etc -- and redirect it using her wrist bands.

On the other hand, unlike Superman, she doesn't appear to be completely invulnerable. On Themyscira, we saw her take a wound during the beach fight, though it healed extremely quickly. She uses her shield and wristbands because getting shot would hurt her, though it's unclear what it would take to actually kill her.

The subject of flying is a tricky one. There is one scene in the movie where she appears to be hovering in the air for a few moments, but it's not clear if she's actually flying. She doesn't seem to show any aptitude for flying any other time in the movie, though she does show very good control over her high jumps (including appearing to slow her own descent when needed). My personal opinion is, she can't fly, and that scene was just shot in a somewhat confusing way.

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In the source comics, most versions of Wonder Woman did have the power of flight, so its possible we'll see that in a later movie. I find it a bit unlikely, though -- if she could fly I can't imagine why she didn't use that power to fight Doomsday.