This struck me as weird throughout the movie since usually “wishes” in stories require you to actively make a declaration of wishing for something. “Ok, I wish that I had a million dollars…” sort of stuff. But here, Max just grabs people’s arm and says “Don’t you wish it was nicer out today?” and they say “Uh, I guess…” and there ya go. To be fair, this wasn’t breaking any internal rules in the movie on how wishes operate within WW84. Still felt weird though.
Because she’s just that strong? As much as I didn’t like this movie, that part didn’t bother me. We never really got any internal indications just how strong Barbara was in her Cheetah form, nor what her claws can cut through. And she only shredded the “wings”, not the breastplate, which seemed thicker, and wasn’t even scratched. Wonder Woman only wins the fight by electrocuting her, so Cheetah actually seems to be stronger than Wonder Woman, who in turn is a demigod and is much stronger than an ordinary Amazon. And the armor apparently was only designed to defeat bronze-age human weapons - Asteria used it to hold off ordinary Men, not the forces of Apokalypse.
Barbara’s wish, as I remember, was to be as powerful as Diana/WW, so perhaps that explains her ability to destroy the armor?
That and, as discussed in a few posts upthread, Max Lord channels the rage and power of wishers around the world into Barbara, making her even more powerful, and for no apparent reason changing her into a catwoman.
They made a wall magically appear out of nothing, having him take over that guys body seems intentional. Of course they then completely ignore all the moral questions and act like it’s nothing for the rest of the movie, even having sex with him and putting his body in mortal danger, not to mention committing lots of serious crimes.
With everything else in the movie, that one didn’t really occur to me, but, yeah, Diana sees him as Steve Trevor, but he’s actually got Handsome Guy’s face. And he assaulted multiple Secret Service agents as part of an assault on a designated protectee, in the White House.
Fortunately, no one seems to remember that by Christmas time. More evidence for my “it was all a waking dream and everyone forgot what happened” fanwank upthread.
Just watched it. Very disappointing. A few points that others haven’t covered:
-I find it ironic that by a good margin, the least interesting of the main characters was Diana herself. I actually really liked Maxwell Lord. Pedro Pascal is a great actor, and the idea of literally becoming the monkey’s paw is a great one (although as others have pointed out, the rules were never all that clear, and why was he having health issues? too much power flowing through him? or was the drawback of his initial wish?). Steve got to have some fun fish-out-of-water comedy. And Cheetah at least had an arc. Whereas Diana just… what was her arc? How did the lesson she learned as a child apply?
-(Admittedly speaking as a man, but…) it also struck me as weirdly regressive that she has spent all this time pining after Steve, he’s the only one she could ever love, etc. Now, maybe her arc is getting over that, but it’s very 1800sy for her to have met her one perfect man, and just kept her love for him pure and pristine over the decades.
-One other thing that really bugged me was how weirdly overpowered her lasso was. In the initial fight in the mall, she just seemed bored, because all she had to do was wave her arm around and her lasso would just go do things. It’s not supposed to be Dr. Strange’s Cape, is it?
-Did “my lasso is made of truth, what is this stone made of” ever pay off?
-I also don’t really know if her big final speech really holds up, although I admit I was kind of zoned out by that time… sure, it’s one thing to say to someone “you don’t really need to be popular, you should renounce that wish”. But what about the parents who wished their children would be cured of incurable cancer? Wishes wouldn’t just be selfish shortcuts.
-The action scenes were not particularly well shot. During the big car chase scene, could you really keep track of who was in what car, and where?
Overall, I think whoever commented that the movie felt like it had been pulled apart and reassembled from lots of people’s ideas is dead on. At some point, it was important to the script that Steve take over someone’s body. At some point it was important to the script that the stone be made of some pure elemental force. At some point it was important to the script that she learned to fly. Etc, etc.
The more I think about the wishes thing, the more it just seems half-baked. When Max tries to use the Egyptian leader’s wish to steal his oil, the Egyptian guy says “haha, I don’t even have any oil”. That feels like it could have been something interesting, like Max got swindled out of his own counter-wish but instead he just calls a do-over and gets the guy’s security team instead.
Although, in further retrospect, it seems like “Egypt has no claim to their oil” feels like the sort of thing a guy who owns an oil company should have known. Maybe if Max had spent half the time researching how to run an oil company that he spent on how to locate esoteric forbidden artifacts, he wouldn’t have needed the Wish Stone in the first place and could have come out ahead. The funny thing is that THAT would have made a nice wrap around for Diana’s initial prelude lesson except instead Lord doesn’t seem to take that from the whole thing but rather “Hey, it’s cool if I’m a loser because my kid likes me”
I haven’t (and won’t) watched WW84 but the rape angle was mentioned in this video and it really hammers the point on. “Handsome guy” is possessed and taken control off without his permission and then his body is used for sex without consent. WW raped “Handsome guy” and she even says so and it’s handwaived.
I saw the movie on HBO Max over my two week break. I loved it!
Child Diana took a shortcut and cheated. Antiope told her it didn’t matter if it was “fair” that she didn’t win, the fact was that she didn’t win, because she wasn’t ready to win, because Truth is the most important thing a Hero has. Which actually does tie into the Steve Trevor resurrection plotline. It’s a shortcut, it’s cheating, and it’s not True. Which actually makes the possession plot point relevant. If he’s just back with no cost but her powers, maybe that’s a trade she’s willing to make. But he’s not really back, he’s actually a random Handsome Guy that the Dreamstone has re-made to fulfill her wish. But the movie itself seems to just forget about all that, and never actually ties the Steve Trevor plot back into the intro.
Sort of? They find out the Dreamstone was empowered by the [name I couldn’t quite catch even after two viewings], who is the God of Lies, so the “wishes” are all Lies. Except…they aren’t, really. They’re tricks, but not lies. But when Diana does win by using the Lasso of Truth to show everyone the Truth of what their wishes are really costing them and the world. Again, though, the movie itself never really ties that together.
Agreed. The original Dreamstone cost the wisher that which they valued most - sort of. So, even a selfless wish would cost the wisher more than they would be willing to pay (the cost of a child cured of cancer might be their other children dying). But Max Lord is just taking the wishers’ strength and health (and rage and power for Cheetah). A lot of wishers would presumably be willing to give that up for their child to live, or their oppressed people to be free of genocidal pogroms, or…
Thanks, I’ve watched a few of Shad’s videos before and enjoy him. I love his enthusiasm.
I’ll say again that this would have been a much better lesson for Max Lord. He picked the “easy” route of the Stone (ignoring the effort of tracking and getting the stone) and wound up with nothing whereas he presumably could have built at least a decent life for himself via hard work. But this lesson is never expressed to Max. Diana never says it to him and he doesn’t come to any realization on his own.
On the other hand, it’s not as though there’s a way to raise the dead via sweat and moxie. Divine wish stone magic seems as valid a way to accomplish that as any. And it seems unfair to pin Diana too hard for her wish – when she makes it, it seems more like a wistful thing and she had no reason to believe the stone was authentic. It was more like wishing on a turkey wishbone or tossing a coin in a fountain, not spending years finding a forbidden way to subvert the laws of reality.
I think the line was something about how the Egyptian guy had just sold his oil. He was the dude on the cover of “Petrobillionaires Weekly” or whatever it was called. Lord had definitely done his research in targeting this guy; he just didn’t have access to the information about the deal the guy had just struck with the Saudis.
Not to say that this plot-line worked. It didn’t make much sense or move the movie forward, except that it justified the invisible jet sequence and the desert-truck-chase sequence. But I don’t think it was Lord’s fault.
“Oil Economist”. Which I won’t say can’t/doesn’t exist as a trade rag, (there’s trade publications for everything after all, most of which nobody outside that niche knows about) but the whole thing just seemed silly.
I don’t remember it being “I just…” but rather him saying that he had previously sold it. But you could very well be correct there – this wasn’t anything I had an issue with in the moment of viewing but rather a “Hey, waitaminute…” thought in retrospect.
She didn’t take the shortcut to cheat - she was knocked off her horse and saw a way to get back ‘in the race’/catch her horse.
WHat child Diana did not know was that she missed 2(?) targets along the way.
I agree with the rest (she wasn’t ‘ready’ to win, whatever the crap that means) but she didn’t ‘cheat’ in the sense of intent.
I don’t know what the rules of that race were. But, it seems like remaining on horseback the for the horseback segment of the race might actually be a requirement, and taking a shortcut is probably a violation (it usually is in races). It also seems like hitting all of the way point markers might actually be a requirement.
Again, I don’t actually know what the rules of the Amazon Pentathlon is, but that whole segment makes even less sense if what Diana did wasn’t actually cheating. What was the whole lecture Antiope gives her about “truth” about if it wasn’t about cheating?
It would have to be, since they ended at the same spot as they began; otherwise someone could just begin the competition by throwing their javelin through the hoop.
Baby Di skipped part of the track in order to catch up. She knew what the rules were and didn’t follow them. That’s cheating.
I don’t believe I phrased it well -
for the rules of the race - yes - baby diana cheated. No doubt - she took a shortcut and missed two markers.
In Diana’s mind - she didnt take the shortcut to ‘cheat’ - she took the shortcut to catch the horse and continue - she ‘missed’ the two markers which indicates she didn’t complete the test/course so therefore was simply disqualified to win.
I’m guessing that baby Diana didn’t realize she missed two markers or didn’t recognize the significance of it (or both)
What we’re not clear on is how much of this Diana was expected to know or understand at that point - there was some implication that she wasn’t even supposed to be ‘in’ the race to begin with - she certainly wasn’t expected to get as far as she did.