'Wonder Woman' a sign Hollywood sexism outdated?

With "Wonder Woman" blazing a trail at theatres across the United States, the female superhero is being hailed as a powerful new role model for girls and a break away from sexism in Hollywood.

The film, starring Israeli actress, Gal Gadot, smashed box office records on its opening weekend, raking in more than $103 million in the United States - a record for a movie directed by a woman, Patty Jenkins.

The film broke the previous record for a movie directed by a woman held by Sam Taylor-Johnson for "Fifty Shades of Grey".

Online debates ahead of the film's release about the Amazonian superhero's lack of armpit hair and the furor surrounding her selection last year as a U.N. honorary ambassador, have only served to boost box office takings.

But it is above all the depiction of the sword-wielding, lasso-tossing character as an empowered woman that accounts for the film's triumph, said Melissa Silverstein, founder of the Women and Hollywood blog and co-founder of the women-focused Athena Film Festival.

"It's almost an exclamation point on what women have been saying for a long time - in the industry, outside the industry; that our stories matter, we are the heroes of the stories, we can kick butt as well as anyone else and we're equal," she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in a phone interview.

“Wonder Woman” was first imagined in 1941 as an icon of female empowerment - even appearing on the inaugural cover of the flagship feminist publication, Ms. magazine, three decades later.

But her modern portrayal has been criticised for shifting to a sexualised buxom character, typically clad in a red, white and blue body suit.

The United Nations dumped Wonder Woman less than two months after naming her as an ambassador for women's and girls' empowerment amid criticism that her pin-up image sent the wrong message.

Silverstein said the blockbuster should herald a new era in a Hollywood film industry skewed in favour of male characters and filmmakers.