The woman from the museum for example just wants to be more popular and more noticed. So, she dresses differently and talks to more people.
Things people learn to do in real life. And, in a sense, it’s the opposite of a shortcut, because previously she was just feeling sorry for herself and hoping the world will come to her, and now she is actively getting herself out there.
But in the movie, it makes her a monster (then she goes all out and chooses to be a monster, which made absolutely no sense).
So, I agree with what they were shooting for, but boy did they fumble.
At this point, I seriously have no idea what you’re trying to argue. Diana is privileged? Ok, I mean sure, but…so?
If Diana said in the movie that Minerva should just work harder to be like her, sure, that would be stupid, because Diana is an Amazonian demigod, while Minerva is human, and no amount of hard work is going to give her the power to fly. If you’re saying that the “no shortcuts” message is muddled, I agree with you, because the whole movie is a muddled mess. Beyond that, I’m really not clear what point you’re trying to make in your replies to me.
Well, it makes sense if you accept that the stone chose her “goodness” as the price for her popularity. Of course, that also didn’t make a lot of sense but whatcha gonna do?
Incidentally, afterwards I did manage to get through enough of his video to hear this argument, and… honestly, his argument is very weak, highly dependent on some extremely dubious assumptions, and he takes it to a genuinely ridiculous extreme.
gdave’s interpretation of WW84’s message is far more consistent with what the movie actually had in it, but let’s take Video Guy’s argument for what it is:
Barbara (Kristen Wiig) wishes she were more like the beautiful, confident Diana (Gal Gadot)
She wishes on the dreamstone to be like her
She becomes more like Diana, at least superficially
This doesn’t work out well
Therefore, the message of the movie is that you should not aspire to be better.
I am really struggling with the logic here; it’s a truly bizarre interpretation. The message of the movie, including Barbara’s story, is exactly what gdave said; success comes through effort, not cheating. (Unfortunately this is combined with the message that it’s okay to take a guy’s life over and rape him, which is distracting, and it’s in the midst of a movie that’s very badly written in a lot of distracting ways.) As jumbled as the movie is, it’s a message the film just hammers away at, over and over. It’s why that long boring race scene was in the movie, it’s why Diana has to give up Steve Trevor, it’s the whole point of Maxwell Lord, and it’s what the Barbara/Cheetah arc was about. I can’t for the life of me grasp how one gets out of that “you shouldn’t try to achieve things.”
Unrelated to Wonder Woman, but I was reading the excellent Superman Smashes the Klan comic a few months ago, and was pleased to find a scene almost exactly like this.
I’ve finally caught up with both the movie and this thread. I agree with a lot that’s been posted.
Directed by the same person, Patty Jenkins. But Jenkins has no writing credit on the first (2017) movie, which lists Allan Heinberg for the screenplay and Zack Snyder, Jason Fuchs, and Heinberg for the story. For WW84, Jenkins is credited both on screenplay (with two others) and story (with one other).
Which brings me to my main takeaway about WW84: Jenkins was director of a movie–the original 2017 Wonder Woman–that made hundreds of millions of dollars for its studio and investors.
And when that happens, filmmaking history has shown us, a director’s next project gets much less scrutiny. The writer and/or director of the hit is presumed to be a Wizard: someone who knows what makes a movie a hit.
Up-thread there was reference to studio pressure on Jenkins to make the movie shorter, by removing one of the two opening sequences. So it’s not the case that Jenkins got full creative control—something arguably responsible for some of the most disappointing follow-up films ever made. (I’m thinking M. Night Shyamalan and Christopher Nolan here, among others.)
Nonetheless, I’m feeling fairly confident that the screenplay that Jenkins and her writing partners Geoff Johns and Dave Callaham came up with did not receive the number of readings and the amount of feedback it would have undergone, if Jenkins didn’t have the 2017 success under her belt. Studio executives assumed she was enough of a Wizard to be left alone. Maybe some of them read the screenplay and saw issues—but who dares to question the person who knows ‘what makes a movie a hit’???
People posting in this thread have performed script-doctoring that could–and should–have happened before the cameras ever rolled. But no one at Warner was willing to interfere with what they assumed to be the hit-making magic.
It’s a weakness in the industry. In all likelihood it can’t be fixed, because it’s human nature to defer to those who have had a big success.