Yes, but since this is in several ways heavily “inspired” by Captain America…so yeah they would make changes.
Thanks - Very good analysis
How is it inspired by Captain America, unless you’re talking about the original Wonder Woman comic book (for which I don’t know if CA was influential)?
Chris Nolan had better watch out when he releases Dunkirk next month. He might get sued by Marvel since Batman appears on the beach. 
I think WWII would have had less impact. As mentioned, Trevor says that they are fighting a global conflict, a “War to end all wars”. That’s an obvious cue that Ares is back and trying to destroy mankind.
Had Trevor said that they were fighting the SECOND World War and the Amazons remained blissfully unaware of the previous one a couple decades prior, it sounds as though this Ares thing goes away on its own. Or at least isn’t the existential threat that Diana assumes.
Wonder Woman debuted about 6-7 months after Captain America. I’m guessing that the idea for her character had been floating around for a while.
I’m curious: did any of the sword wielding characters do the “twirling the sword over their head” thing prior to fighting?
Wonder Woman’s comic debuted during World War 2. Her 1975 TV show was set during World War 2. If the movie was heavily inspired by anything, it was by her own history and affiliation with the war.
Captain America most likely inspired the shift to World War 1, though, yes.
Not that I recall.
Also, the way World War I originated in a series of individually small steps by all parties that painted everybody into a corner (as opposed to the origins of World War II as a result of clearcut acts of aggression by one side) was a better fit to the “sometimes people mess up on their own without needing some Big Bad Evil to make it happen” point.
Plus poison gas being such an important part of the story, WWI made much more sense (although I suppose it is possible they went with poison gas because of WWI being the setting and not the other way around).
If they had gone with World War II (and I am glad they didn’t), the idea that Marvel could sue them is pretty ridiculous.
Agreed. There may have been some grumbling from Marvel fans accusing DC of ripping them off but so many comic heroes were created or came to fame during that era that it would be ludicrous to think that Marvel gets a legal lock on it even within the narrow confines of “superhero movies”.
My point (which I did a poor job in getting across) ws that Wonder Woman shared many plot points with the original Captain America film from 2011.
At that: the bit where Diana concludes that Ludendorff must be Ares – and so she makes a beeline for the guy, for to deliver her big fine speech before putting a sword in him? And then she looks around in stunned horror, slowly concluding that maybe she was wrong and maybe she should no longer help flawed men?
So in a WWII flick she’d – well, she’d be disappointed after killing Hitler, right?
I saw it for the first time yesterday. It’s got more plot holes than a swiss cheese, and it’s got waaaaaaay too much of that Matrix-type CGI fighting stuff that for goodness sake Shrek made fun of 16 years ago! (I half expected to see her flip her hair out of the way during some portion of the fighting). One thing I like about the Marvel pics is that they generally avoid that gimmick.
The main “plot” is pretty stupid, too. As it works out, Ares has somehow created the scene upon which humans are playing out the war (so presumably he’s had a hand in setting up the Triple Alliance and the Triple Entente, not to mention stirring the pot in the Balkans). Now, he’s intent upon making certain that an armistice is negotiated, on the theory that what will follow at some point in the future will definitely destroy all mankind? And Wonder Woman is supposed to be helping him by ending the plot of Leutendorff to bomb London with a super-gas, which, of course, she would be doing anyway even if she wasn’t in league with him? But she tries to kill him, and succeeds, so as a result… there’s an Armistice? Who thought up that silly nonsense??? I think the whole thing was designed solely so that they could have the interesting twist that Leutendorff is not Ares (which was a good thing!), and that mankind isn’t “worth” fighting for. But it’s like someone took a story in which Leutendorff WAS Ares and everything makes sense (more or less), and then tried to figure out who else could be the baddy, and didn’t bother to start from scratch in making up the story. Even for a comic book plot, that’s pretty bad.
I liked Wonder Woman. I liked that they showed her slowly learning what her abilities really were. When she goes “over the top”, she doesn’t really know what she’s capable of. She makes it up as she goes. But geeze, all she has to do is that crossed Bracelets of Submission thing and it’s game over for the Germans trying to shoot her. And she already knows how to do that from Themyscira. And for goodness sake, haven’t we already seen the hide behind the shield while the machine guns rip bullets at you thing? Oh, yeah, Cap, maybe you’d better ask for some royalties. What, they couldn’t get a machine gun placed, oh, say, 15º to one side or the other to fire at her?
Then there’s the silliness of the “sniper” who can’t snipe, who apparently is in the movie for the sole purpose of showing Diana that humans have frailties. Does he make up for his failure by managing to snipe someone/something else? Does he do ANYTHING else in the movie remotely worth having brought him along in the first place? Does Steve Taylor KNOW he can’t snipe?? If so, why does he get to come along, for the singing? :rolleyes:
I’ve not watched any of the other DC efforts from the past 10 years. If this is a good one from that universe, well, wow. It’s an average movie at best. Some fun scenes. Slow development (enforced by the character-origin story’s complexity). Lousy plot. Overworked CGI scenes. Really well-done WW herself. Not worth the cost of the IMAX-3D ticket, really (another complaint: the 3-D didn’t really add anything to the movie at any point). I had more fun watching the admittedly tired 5th entry to the Pirates franchise a couple weeks back.
Bring on Spidey!!!
Ares didn’t want the armistice signed. The gala event was the night before the signing, during which Leutendorff planned to gas various places and show the German command that they could win the war. Ares, as the British guy, tells Trevor to stay away from the gala supposedly out of concern that Trevor will spoil the armistice but really because he doesn’t want Trevor and Diana coming close to Leutendorff. The whole idea is that there wouldn’t be an armistice the next day after Leutendorff carries out his attacks that evening. WWI is winding down as everyone tires of the fighting and horror and Ares is trying to ramp it back up into a mankind-ending climax.
Ares has been planning things for a while. He has layers all ready to go so that no matter what happens, he still wins.
Plan 1: Help humans develop more and better weapons, so the fighting continues.
Plan 2: Sabotage the armistice at the gala, so the fighting continues.
Plan 3: Pose as someone influential to writing the armistice, sabotage it so that it doesn’t hold, peace collapses and - you guessed it - the fighting continues.
He’s been doing Plan 1 since the beginning of time. No problem for someone who can teleport at will and whisper into the right people’s ears.
And the details of Plan 2 aren’t even his. He just rolls with it because it fits so nicely with Plan 1. Really, that’s all Leutendorff and Dr Poison. Maybe give them some pointers if they run into any hangups.
We know Plan 3 will work, because that’s (roughly) the universe we’re living in: the terms were so unfair to Germany that a direct line can be drawn between WW1 and WW2.
When Diana shows up, he sees an opportunity, and comes up with a couple of other plans:
Plan 4: Push Diana to the front, where she will see the horrors of war that man has wrought, lose faith in humanity, and join him in his quest to destroy all mankind.
Plan 5: In case Plan 4 fails, kill Diana.
Plan 4 would be nice (it’s good to have company at the end of the world), and it seems likely to him because it’s the conclusion he arrived at. To him, it’s the only rational choice. But just in case she is irrational … well, that’s what Plan 5 is for.
He sees no problem with Plan 5, because he easily took out all the other gods. Diana’s just one, untested, naive, simple demigod who doesn’t even reailze her potential. How hard could it be?
So when Plans 1, 2, 4, and 5 all fail, Plan 3 goes into effect, and the second world war happens. It’s no wonder that Diana is dejected and a little cynical in modern times. She’s had to go through the second world war and all the little skirmishes since, knowing that Ares’ effects still linger, that humans are fundamentally flawed. It works well as a prequel to “Batman v Superman,” because it goes a long way to explain why she hadn’t been heard of for a while.
You have NO idea. The last few DC movies have been oh so terribly bad. This one shines, though, and I have to put it on my personal list as one of the top superhero movies thus far.
Just got back from seeing it and haven’t read through this thread yet, but wanted to get my initial reactions down.
Wonder Woman is a very entertaining film. It delivers well on the action scenes, and it also has some heart to it. The first two-thirds of the movie–from Themyscira through to the battle at the German-occupied village–are great. I was a little let down at the end–mostly because the villains in the movie are kind of a muddled mess. The big boss battle at the end was okay, but I’d have preferred there be more interaction between Diana and Aries prior to that fight so that the conflict felt more… earned.
Gal Gadot is a star. The camera loves her, and she may or may not be a great actress (not enough information to say), but she has loads of charisma and ‘presence’ on screen that just cannot be denied. I would say 70% of the success of this movie is Gadot, with 25% for the director Patty Jenkins, and I’ll throw a 5% bone to Chris Pine for being a good Steve Trevor. Or maybe give that 5% to whomever composed Wonder Woman’s rousing theme music–it kicks ass.
Wonder Woman’s involvement was by far the best thing in BvS, and this Wonder Woman film is far and away the best of the DCEU movies so far.
When they do a sequel, will it necessarily be set in the modern day? She had said (in our ‘present’ time) that she left the world of man behind ‘100 years ago’ so would that preclude another period piece?
And do you think there’s any chance Trevor is still alive? Steve was about to shoot the bombs, but then it cuts away for a bit and we only see the plane explode from Diana’s perspective, right? Maybe he could have found a parachute and jumped out before the bombs detonated? Doesn’t explain why he wasn’t there at the end in London, but it’s a possibility. Though if Diana does just retreat to the island for the next 100 years, then I suppose it doesn’t matter as far as sequels go. Ooh, maybe in the Justice League movie the Flash could go back in time and rescue him at the last minute and bring him to the present?
Not what I saw. Ares specifically tells Diana that the Armistice is designed to fail. He WANTS Diana to engage in a bloody orgy of destruction at the airfield where the gas is. That will stop the effort by Ludendorff to gas London. And if Ares wants the Armistice to fail, why is he in London trying very hard to see that it succeeds? He finances the effort to go find the gas production plant, after all. It’s the gala event he wants them to avoid because if they screw that up, it will kill the Armistice. But he wants them to succeed at the airfield.
sowing discord is an art.