I know I’m jumping in here a little late but I didn’t see the movie until yesterday. And I’m a little confused on the timeline.
Zeus created humans. Ares then introduced war to humans. Zeus created the Amazons to lead humans away from war. Ares went nuts and killed all the other gods. Zeus almost defeated Ares but didn’t quite finish him off. Zeus then, with his dying breath, created Themyscira and hid it away from the world.
We then see Diana as a little girl. She’s told by her mother that she was built of clay and then Hippolyta prayed to Zeus to give her life, which he did. He also presumably gave Diana the Godkiller powers at that point. This pretty much seems to establish that Diana was “born” before Zeus was killed and therefore before Themyscira was created. She doesn’t remember the outside world but she was probably just a baby when the Amazons went to Themyscira.
Was it ever established in the movies how old Diana is? We can see that she hasn’t visibly aged from 1918 to 2017. So unless she stopped aging at some point, we have to assume she just ages really slowly. So her childhood must have lasted for centuries. This would reinforce the idea that she was alive when Themyscira was created, which appears to have been two or three thousand years ago. It also explains her fighting skills. That training montage we saw lasted for over a thousand years. And it explains why no other Amazons tried to make their own clay children; Zeus was no longer around to bring them to life.
Does all of this makes sense? Does any of it make sense?
Another question: Was the character Ludendorff supposed to be the historical Ludendorff? It could just be a different general with the same name but it seems strange they would pick the name of an actual top German WWI general unless there were trying to make a connection.
The backstory mythology of the Olympian Gods and the Amazons was related to Diana (and the audience by proxy) by Hippolyta, who wanted to keep certain facts secret from her daughter. While most of it is true, I think it was implied that she deliberately fudged some of the facts. I imagine that Zeus created the Amazons after defeating Ares, but used his last dying embers to create Diana.
I also think it was a deliberate character trait for Diana that she never questioned the story. During her idyllic life on Themyscira, she would have no reason to ask. But once she set out on her question, it might have occurred to her had she not been so zealously over confidant in her beliefs.
It’s been a while since I saw the Wonder Woman movie, but was she not told that she was a genuine daughter of Zeus, and not a random animated statue like Galatea? In any event, none of the Amazon tribe seem to age, not just Diana. I do not believe it was stated how old she was or how long her childhood lasted.
There is the myth that the Amazons were actually daughters of Ares, not Zeus. We know Hippolyta lied to Diana, and she presumably failed to mention that little fact, which would be yet another thing distinguishing Diana from the rest of the Amazons.
Also, is there any evidence there were never any Amazon children, besides the unreliable stories she was told? For all we know they reproduced with the help of the neighboring tribe like the legendary Amazons (but Diana herself would surely have noticed that, so it does not seem likely.)
Apologies for an extremely unhelpful post in this thread, but that was funny.
On an almost-on-topic note, the historical Ludendorff was pretty much running Germany by late 1916. He was effective, but annoyed almost everyone by getting involved in all sorts of minutiae and sending out zillions of telegrams every day. He is quoted as saying “One thing was certain— the power must be in my hands."
After the war, he was largely responsible for at least spreading (or creating) the stabbed-in-the-back theory that the mustached-former-corporal took as the truth, invented the theory of “Total War”, and backed Hitler.
So, you know, the world might have been a better place if Wonder Woman would have killed him.
Which relates to what I feel was the most ironic scene in the movie. Or the most clueless. It’s the scene at the end of the movie when Ares has just been killed and we see the German soldiers “waking up” from the war fever he supposedly imposed upon them. I was thinking “Good job, Wonder Woman. You killed Ares and freed their minds. Germans will never fight another war.”
I think that Themyscira already existed. The Amazons needed some place as a home base of sorts, and the first contact between the the Amazons and Men had the former coming out of the ocean, implying that their home was an island. What Zeus did as he was dying was just hiding the island, so Diana’s “birth” (in whatever form that took) could have been on a pre-Veil Themyscira.
And the other Amazons do appear to age, albeit extremely slowly, given that Robin Wright’s character and Hippolyta appeared to be older than most of the other Amazons.
I was really expecting that the twist would be that Diana was Ares’ daughter, not Zeus’s, but I guess maybe they figured that that would be too derivative of Star Wars.
I have no fan basis to back this up, but I like to think that Diana was a child the whole time since the foundation of Themiscyra, and only began to grow up when Ares started stirring up trouble, so that Zeus would let her be a little girl, untroubled by the outside world, unless and until she was needed. Fifteen years later, she’s a fully-trained Amazon, with her advanced speed through the training explained by that whole “demigod” thing.
Huh. I thought that the idea was that Diana was not made from clay but an actual daughter of Zeus born of her mother’s womb - hence a real god (or a stepped up demigod at the least) - the fact of which mommy had been hiding from her with the clay story along with the fact that as such she was the godkiller. Gods can kill gods; animated clay, not. That, I thought, was what Unkie Ares was godsplaining to her, that was truth.
But it’s been a while since I saw the movie. Maybe I’m remembering incorrectly.
Some of the Amazons looked aged, though: they weren’t all hot girls in their late teens. Hippolyta and her sister were clearly in their 50s. So, perhaps time marched on, but veeerrryyy slowly?
That’s my recollection as well. Diana was able to kill Ares because she was a god herself - a fact that Hippolyta concealed by giving out the “sculpted from clay and brought to life” story.
I don’t have the script in front of me. But. as I said, I saw the movie yesterday. My recollection is that the surprise reveal was that Hippolyta had told Diana that the sword was the Godkiller. So Diana was shocked when Ares was invulnerable to the sword. Ares then told her that she was the Godkiller.
But I don’t recall any suggestion that Zeus was her father. I thought it was clear that Ego was her father but Yondu was her Daddy.
Okay. Apparently the actual lines stopped short of Ares spelling out Zeus boinking Hippolyta, be it specified worshipping like a missionary or in a more dyslexic divine style (I am sure some here will get that). He instead tells her that she is “the child Zeus made with Hippolyta” and that "“only a god can kill another god” and she refers to Ares as “brother” … but nah, not at all any suggestion that Zeus was her darling papa.
Yeah it was pretty clear to Vanity Fair’s writers too: “Diana finds out her mother lied to her. She was not born from a lump of clay (go figure!), but rather the result of an affair between Hippolyta and Zeus.” Clay? She was putty in his hands.
I figure if Zeus can make an Amazon out of clay, he can make a god out of clay. Being a god doesn’t require you to be the child of a god. That’s clear from Greek mythology.
It’s also clear from the comic books. They show Wonder Woman’s origins; she was made out of clay and brought to life by the gods. This is as fixed as Batman’s parents being murdered or Superman coming from Krypton.
Now I’ll grant that there was a recent change. Brian Azzarello was assigned to write Wonder Woman a few years ago and he decided to rewrite her history. He was the one that came up with the idea that Zeus is Diana’s father. But Azzarello is hardly regarded as the canonical source on Wonder Woman. He’s publicly stated he didn’t like Wonder Woman and was just messing with the character. DC has now returned Wonder Woman back to her original origin.
Except of course in the current comic book Wonder Woman origins, which started in 2011 …
Indeed though, it was in the movie just implied, not graphically spelled out (or shown), and one can believe that this story is not one that includes one of Zeus’ many affairs, but that he is her father through a more chaste means.