As long as we’re adding scenes to the movie, I had an idea about how to upgrade Diana’s powers from “jumping really far” to “flying.”
During an action scene, Steve observes her making some improbable jump, like catching an escaping helicopter. Being a pilot, realizes that her trajectory doesn’t make sense if she’s jumping. Her trajectory only makes sense for powered flight. After the scene, he asks her how far she can jump, and she’s like, “I never tested it, I just try and make the jump, and usually succeed.”
“Try jumping somewhere for me.”
“Where?”
“Half a mile straight up.”
Cue gender-swapped flying scene from Superman: The Movie.
Well, to be fair, those (especially mine) are just brief plot notes. Notice how I just kind of breezed by exactly how Diana “accidentally” foils the robbers other than one kinda vague example. Adding notes like that is a lot easier than creating the plot in the first place, and then writing all of the actual dialogue and action cues and so on.
Watched it last night. I had pretty low expectations based on what I heard but somehow it failed to even meet those.
One thing that really annoyed me from a story-telling perspective: What’s the point of giving WW an armor with wings if she already figured out how to fly? The wings serve no purpose. Here’s my elevator pitch to make that whole business better:
Have her use the armor to fly
The wings get destroyed while she’s in the air
She starts panicking because she’s way up in the air with nothing the grab on with her lasso
The voiceover from Steve comes on talking about wind and air and she figures out how to fly
Yeah, that was pretty good. But they had escalators back then, also fireworks. wiki " Seeberger teamed with Otis in 1899, and together they produced the first commercial escalator. It won first prize at the 1900 Paris Exposition Universelle.
Wonder Woman
Shazam
3 Man of Steel
Justice league, tied with Aquaman
6 Batman vs Supes
7.Suicide Squad (really bad plot but some good acting) tied with WW 1984
9 The Harley Quinn film.
Now that the thread has been reopened, for those interested, the movie analysis site A Closer Look, made a video arguing that WW1984 goes beyond merely being an awful film because it actually harms the audience by trying to sell a negative moral lesson (link).
It’s a 2-hour analysis (and review), so I’ll give the TL;DW version.
He argues that even if the moral of the film is not to be greedy and/or not to just wish for things to fall into your lap without effort, it’s done in such a ham-fisted way, that it ends up basically implying that self-improvement itself is inherently bad; that we all need to stay in our respective lanes and not dream of more. And that this is a terrible message, particularly for children or adolescents to see.
I broadly agree with him (how could you not; he obviously argues his case in a lot of detail), but think he goes a bit too far. IMO the movie’s moral is incoherent and I think therefore most people will take whatever message they want from this film.
Regardless I recommend watching his video if you have time, as he is very good at breaking down films in detail.
I thought exactly the same thing before getting to this paragraph. The movie was so jumbled in the message it was trying to deliver that one really cannot get ANY message out of it.
Well, I personally don’t have two hours to watch a video analyzing a bad movie, so in that sense I suppose I can’t argue with him. I think he’s wrong, though. But, in thinking about it, I did gain an insight into the movie that had eluded me previously, which also falls into the category of “obvious things about a creative work you didn’t realize.”
I think WW84 did actually have a throughline, and a consistent moral message, albeit one that it muddled itself: don’t take shortcuts. Baby Diana literally takes a shortcut in the Themiscyra prologue, and that’s a Bad Thing (although the movie itself muddles that with Antiope’s lecture about “Truth”). Max Lord tries to take shortcuts to success with his oil share scheme, which is built on luring others into taking a shortcut to wealth. He then takes the ultimate shortcut with the Dreamstone - and pays the price. Throughout the movie, characters take shortcuts instead of putting in the work, and fail. The Dreamstone is the ultimate expression of that.
You know, with the perspective of a bit more distance, I think WW84 is a failure, but it’s an interesting failure.
My family and I really enjoyed Wonder Woman (the movie, not the cheesy, but definitely watchable, TV show), and we were all taken aback by how bad WW 1984 was. Bad pacing, convoluted storytelling, hacky contrivances (its his love of his son that saves them all! Blergh), and middling, at best, action. I was glad to see the lasso, and the invisible jet was a nice (if incredibly stupid) touch, but other than that, it was a very bad movie. Gal Gadot’s legs did earn an audible 'Whoa!" from a couple audience members. But when the best part of your movie is a 2 second clip of someone walking, you’re in trouble.
We were surprised to find out WW1984 and the original movie were written and directed by the same person. Talk about a fall from grace.
That’s…not a shortcut. That’s just who she is. She literally takes a shortcut in the Themiscyra Pentathalon, and that’s what gets her into trouble, not taking advantage of her inherent abilities.
Minerva didn’t “take a shortcut” to her multiple doctorates and a job at the Smithsonian by being smart. She used her intellect and work to achieve that. It’s when she takes a shortcut to become popular that she runs into trouble.
I’m not going to argue that “don’t take shortcuts” is the clear and coherent throughline and message of the movie - I think I’ve made it clear that I think it’s a muddled mess. But I do think that the message is much more “don’t take shortcuts” than “don’t try to improve yourself”.
Jeez Louise, it’s just another lame superhero movie. No need to go that far overboard. As soon as I saw that Kristen Wiig was in the movie it was clear it would be bad, maybe even worse than the average bad superhero movie, but not some kind of moralistic disaster that actually harms the audience. Seriously folks, stop with the high expectations and the emotional crash when Lucy pulls the football away again.
How’s that saying go - “born on third base and thought she hit a triple?” Diana may use her powers for good, but that doesn’t change the fact that her entire life is a shortcut.