Wonder Woman 1984 (2020)

[GHScorpiosRule]

55 minutes ago, slowpoked said:

have brought back Steve, made Cheetah the main villain and do away with Maxwell Lord (is he even based on a comic book character?)

Yes, he is a character from the comics and has been used in the tv DC shows as well. He was just a joke here. 

[Spartan Girl]

Another thing: what happened to the awesome electric guitar Wonder Woman theme music? Not that I hated Hans Zimmer's score, but I'm mad that they left it out! That was one of the few good things to come out of the Batman vs Superman trashfire!

[Captain Carrot]

4 hours ago, Kromm said:

I admit I disliked the way they did this. If they insisted on this body snatching plot I do think it should have been made clear that maybe the man otherwise might have died at that point instead. That solves most of the problems--if it wasn't really that man's body anymore either. I wish they'd thought of that. 

It's worse than that based on an earlier post that the idea was based on the movie 'Heaven Can Wait'. In that movie a man is taken before his time and can't be returned to his original body since it was cremated. So he's given the body of a freshly deceased man. Not the body of someone who's still alive and would be using the body if it weren't for the wish.

[slowpoked]

8 hours ago, Shannon L. said:

Personally, I cheered when I saw Linda Carter. No matter how cheesy, I loved that they gave her a cameo.

I thought that was a really nice touch, and   I like that she’s a character related to the legend of the Amazonians, rather than just someone whom WW passed by on the street or struck a conversation with randomly. I also liked that they referred to her character as the Amazonians’ strongest warrior. I read that they’ve been trying to make a cameo work since the first film, so I’m glad they were able to do it here.

My husband also mentioned that a brief scene towards the end where WW was running at full speed was a homage to Linda’s WW. That’s pretty cool if so. It’s the scene where WW says goodbye to Steve and out of frustration and despair, she yelled and ran really fast on the street. He said that’s how Linda’s WW usually ran. 

 

Edited December 26, 2020 by slowpoked

[KnotsLanding]

I enjoyed some of this, but overall I agree it was a mess. I felt like they sidelined Wonder Woman as a character. There were far too many scenes without her. I also didn’t like the idea of her losing her powers (especially within such a silly plot). Seeing Wonder Woman get shot and not even trying to use her bracelets was stupid. They also overdid it with the lasso. I felt like the WW on the original film was more confident than what we got here. This felt more like a Wonder Woman who just arrived, not a seasoned one who had been around for decades. As for the villains, I liked both but they didn’t have time to develop both. 
 

The highlight of the entire film was of course Lynda Carter as Asteria! Sad that such a short scene was the highlight, but it was. I’m glad she’s still playing an Amazonian and that they allowed a woman to be portrayed as strong at that age. I hope they give her something to do in the next film similar to Michael Douglas in Ant Man. Lynda just has that it factor and honestly she should’ve probably played a bigger role in this film. It only highlighted Gal’s limitations as an actresss. I’d love to see them working together though. 

[slowpoked]

1 hour ago, GHScorpiosRule said:

Yes, he is a character from the comics and has been used in the tv DC shows as well. He was just a joke here. 

D’oh! His name did sound familiar but I couldn’t quite place it. So I looked it up and felt silly. I used to watch Supergirl religiously and he did have a story arc in one of the earlier seasons. 

[Spartan Girl]

26 minutes ago, Captain Carrot said:

It's worse than that based on an earlier post that the idea was based on the movie 'Heaven Can Wait'. In that movie a man is taken before his time and can't be returned to his original body since it was cremated. So he's given the body of a freshly deceased man. Not the body of someone who's still alive and would be using the body if it weren't for the wish.

Maybe if the Steve storyline had been done that way it would have been better...unless the guy died as a result of the wish. But if Diana had found that out it would have given her a good opportunity for her to be all, “Wait, I didn’t want this” in addition to the reveal that the wish took her powers.

Again, as problematic as this storyline was, I’ll still take it over the Endgame fuckery because Diana ultimately knew it had to end, no matter how much it hurt.

[Chicago Redshirt]

On 12/8/2019 at 9:04 PM, Spartan Girl said:

So it's "crazy" for Diana to still have a torch for Steve Trevor, but meanwhile in the Marvelverse, it's okay for Steve Rogers pine over Peggy though he didn't know her that long in the past and she'd moved on with her life (before he decided to time travel and insert himself into her life)? **

*glares askance*

Steve Trevor was killed in action. It's natural that a part of her would always grieve him. And maybe this movie will give her closure.

**And we all know Diana would never pull that Endgame shit.

A couple of big differences.

Steve Rogers was canonically a virgin and unlucky with women before getting super-soldiered. He had the mindset of a typical American 20-something guy from the 40s when it came to romance and sex. He knew Peggy for (presumably) a month or more being super-soldiered and quite probably years after. Within years of being thawed out, Cap was willing to resume dating (although it is squicky that he did so with his girlfriend's niece). In short, it makes sense for Steve Rogers to get fixated on the one woman he thought was a perfect ideal because he a) had less experience than the average person b) had ample time to develop strong feelings for Peggy c) had relatively little time to process his feelings of loss after being reanimated. And even then, he is able to move on within a few yearsto date at least one other person.

As WW84 portrays it, Diana has not dated anyone since 1918 (or whenever precisely WW was set.) That is about 66 years of celibacy and non-involvement. It has not been established exactly how old Diana is, but I think it is safe to say that she is hundreds of years old, possibly thousands. It is also safe to say that she has had romantic relationships prior to Trevor and yes, s-e-x.  If we want to be generous, the events of WW take place over the course of about a month or two. (I would probably say a couple weeks is a more fair estimate.) Grieving him is one thing. Her deepest one-wish being to bring him back to life seems a stretch  in the context of him being someone she knew for all of a couple months and her having numerous other people she lost who she had deeper connections to (such as her aunt and a bunch of the other Amazons killed by the Germans in WW). 

And I know no one could have predicted this before the movie came out, but Diana does Steve Rogers one worse than what he did in Endgame. Diana hijacks someone else's body and has sex with him and puts it repeatedly in danger. Of course, she does not do so deliberately, but she doesn't seem to think or care about for one second that this person has been co-opted to be Steve Trevor 2.0 and doesn't have a say in what happens to him. . 

The thing about Cap in Endgame is that his getting to spend a lifetime with Peggy in that branch-off universe has no consequences to anyone in the "main" universe and possibly nothing significant in the side universe either beyond Cap and Peggy. Whereas Diana would be hijacking a guy by continuing to have Steve around.

Edited December 26, 2020 by Chicago Redshirt

[Robert Lynch]

All that was missing for an 1984 wake up call was an MJ joke! But knowing the Jacksons will be very touchy feely on that and demand money, I can't say I am shocked that it never happened.

But the Linda cameo was the best in such a mediocre movie. She still commands a presence still.

Edited December 26, 2020 by Robert Lynch

[Sakura12]

48 minutes ago, Chicago Redshirt said:

Diana hijacks someone else's body and has sex with him and puts it repeatedly in danger. Of course, she does not do so deliberately, but she doesn't seem to think or care about for one second that this person has been co-opted to be Steve Trevor 2.0 and doesn't have a say in what happens to him.

Did that guy wake up all bruised and cut up and wondered what the f happened to him.

Zach Synder said by the events of Justice League, Diana is 5000 years old. 

For this movie I was more interested in Diana and Barbara's relationship.

[BitterApple]

I wanted to love this movie, but I thought it sucked.

For starters, the 2:30 run time needed to be cut way down. I didn't think the opening scene of young Diana was necessary, and it took too long for the action to get going.

I also didn't think the reappearance of Steve added anything to the story. I would much rather have seen more development of the Diana/Barbara friendship.

The premise of the villain was pretty weak, and I didn't understand how granting wishes meant he could just absorb people's wealth. 

On the positive, Gal looked fabulous and the fight scenes were cool.

Everything else, meh.

[Spartan Girl]

Did Diana have any relationships before Steve on Themyscira? If she did that would have been a great story to tell but sadly I don't think the filmmakers would have been that ballsy. She didn't seem inclined toward romance until she met Steve so it's reasonable to assume she was a virgin before him. 

I really don't want to get in a discussion comparing this to Endgame. Let's just agree that both storylines sucked. 

Edited December 26, 2020 by Spartan Girl

[ApathyMonger]

8 minutes ago, Spartan Girl said:

Did Diana have any relationships before Steve on Themyscira? If she did that would have been a great story to tell but sadly I don't think the filmmakers would have been that ballsy. She didn't seem inclined toward romance until she met Steve so it's reasonable to assume she was a virgin before him. 

They talk around it in the first one. She hasn't been with a man, and they're oblique on whether she's been with women: https://transcripts.fandom.com/wiki/Wonder_Woman

Quote

Steve: Okay. You know, where I come from, I'm not considered average. You know, being a spy, you have to show a certain amount of vigor. Have you never met a man before? What about your father?

Diana: I have no father. My mother sculpted me from clay and I was brought to life by Zeus.

Steve: Well that's neat.

Diana: Sorry.

Steve: Where I come from, babies are made differently.

Diana: You refer to reproductive biology.

Steve: Yes, yes. 

Diana: Yeah, I know. I know all about that.

Steve: I mean I refer to that, and other things.

Diana: The pleasures of the flesh.

Steve: Do you know about that?

Diana: I've read all 12 volumes of Clio's Treatises on Bobily Pleasure. 

Steve: All 12, huh?

Diana: Mmm-hmm.

Steve: Did you bring any of those with you?

Diana: You would not enjoy them.

Steve: I don't know. Maybe.

Diana:  No, you wouldn't.

Steve: Why not?

Diana: They came to the conclusion that man are essential for procreation, but when it comes to pleasure, Unnecessary.

Steve: No, no.

Diana: Goodnight.

Steve: Night. 

 

 

Edited December 26, 2020 by ApathyMonger

[Guest]

13 minutes ago, Spartan Girl said:

Did Diana have any relationships before Steve on Themyscira? If she did that would have been a great story to tell but sadly I don't think the filmmakers would have been that ballsy. She didn't seem inclined toward romance until she met Steve so it's reasonable to assume she was a virgin before him. 

They eluded to her having previous relationships with her line in the first movie about men being necessary for procreation but unnecessary for pleasure. 
 

Eta: or what the previous post said. 

Edited December 26, 2020 by Guest

[Chicago Redshirt]

Here's a quick take on how I might try to fix the movie.

1. I would explain a little more as to what happened in the wake of the last movie. Perhaps have Diana go back to Themiscyra, to recover from what happened and to mourn Steve. Probably have scenes showing how and why she mourned Steve for years rather than just tell about it. Maybe have the Amazons dedicate themselves to monitoring god- and magic-related threats after the close call with Ares. [This would attempt to solve the issue that we have no idea what was the falloout from WW or why/how Diana ends up in Washington D.C. at the Smithsonian]

2. Make it not just a coincidence that WW and the rest stumble on the Dreamstone. The Amazons know about it, were looking for it, and put Diana on its trail from early on, warning that it has seductive qualities. Have the invisible jet be an actual Amazon construct as opposed to something Diana just magicks up on the fly (no pun intended). [This solves the problems with the Dreamstone just randomly being kept in a black market store in a mall in D.C., with people not knowing what it is or what it is capable of, with Diana apparently now having the power to turn something as large as a jet invisible, with giving the backstory of the Monkey's Paw/Faustian bargain part of the Dreamstone right away]

3. Remake Barbara or Max (whichever) from adorkable losers to essentially a Lara Croft/Indiana Jones type who found the Dreamstone and brought it back to civilization. I probably would just have only one as the actual villain and perhaps tease the other for a potential sequel. [Solving the problem of getting the Dreamstone in play and making the villains seem more bad-ass]

4. Either lean way more heavily to things being set in the 80s or just make it set in the present day. [Because with the exception of the one fashion montage there was just not enough stuff to justify setting the movie then]

5. Just have the Dreamstone bring back actual Steve, but have Diana wrestle with the dangers of that and reject the temptation of it. [Avoiding the rapey overtones of taking a person's body over and having sex with him without his consent.]

[txhorns79]

2 hours ago, BitterApple said:

 

The premise of the villain was pretty weak, and I didn't understand how granting wishes meant he could just absorb people's wealth. 

The best I could get from that was that the wishing stone essentially required a trade to work.  For example, with Diana, to get Steve back she would have lose her powers.  When Max became the wishing stone, he had the ability to decide what he would take in return for the wish.   

And just an annoyance to me, subways and escalators both existed long before WW1.  I know you could fanwank it that Steve just hadn't seen them before, but both did exist in 1917. 

[Chicago Redshirt]

19 minutes ago, txhorns79 said:

The best I could get from that was that the wishing stone essentially required a trade to work.  For example, with Diana, to get Steve back she would have lose her powers.  When Max became the wishing stone, he had the ability to decide what he would take in return for the wish.   

And just an annoyance to me, subways and escalators both existed long before WW1.  I know you could fanwank it that Steve just hadn't seen them before, but both did exist in 1917. 

From being somewhat familiar with the D.C. Metro, I'm guessing that it was an escalator bank that goes down like 150-200 feet, which is way more than your average subway and might induce some awe even in someone who's familiar with escalators generally. I know that even coming from Chicago where we of course have subways and escalators I still was impressed on seeing such a long-ass escalator on D.C.'s Metro. And of course a 80s era subway car would go probably 20-30 mph faster than anything Steve would have been used to plus look more futuristic.

[Chicago Redshirt]

2 hours ago, BitterApple said:

I wanted to love this movie, but I thought it sucked.

For starters, the 2:30 run time needed to be cut way down. I didn't think the opening scene of young Diana was necessary, and it took too long for the action to get going.

I also didn't think the reappearance of Steve added anything to the story. I would much rather have seen more development of the Diana/Barbara friendship.

The premise of the villain was pretty weak, and I didn't understand how granting wishes meant he could just absorb people's wealth. 

I thought the visuals of the Amazon Olympics were cool even if not strictly "necessary," and I have to begrudge them that hey, inspiring little girls is a worthy goal and that to set the tone that "it's not worth having if you have to cheat to get it." My problem with the scene is it was such an obvious cheat. Nobody would think that Diana properly finished the course after seeing her get knocked off her horse and not hitting the waypoints that the others did. 

The reappearance of Steve was central to the story. This was supposed to be Diana's fondest wish. Which might make sense to Comic Wonder Woman or even Lynda Carter Wonder Woman, where the Steve Trevor/Diana Prince romance was a much bigger deal. But here, where Diana has known Steve for at most a couple months and has had six decades to process the grief over losing him doesn't work for me.

They definitely should have developed the Diana/Barbara friendship more.

The Dreamstone was an object like the Monkey's Paw or a number of other such objects/genies in pop culture. In case you are not familiar with the Monkey's Paw story, there was a couple that happened to get the magical item and wanted to test out its ability to make three wishes come true. First they wished for some money. The monkey's paw gave them the money but it was a life insurance payment for their suddenly dead grown son. They wished their son back to life. And so he came back but as an unseen zombie pounding on their door scaring the crap out of them. Then they wished the final wish to have him dead again.

With the Dreamstone, it traded you what you thought you wanted for something you already had and held dear. Diana started losing her powers, and Barbara started losing her humanity/personality.

Max wished to become the Dreamstone. It granted his wish by apparently allowing people to wish through him but (seemingly) being addicted to granting wishes. While letting people make wishes, as the human version of the Dreamstone, he could dictate the form of the drawback or exchange that would happen. 

[ProudMary]

47 minutes ago, txhorns79 said:

And just an annoyance to me, subways and escalators both existed long before WW1.  I know you could fanwank it that Steve just hadn't seen them before, but both did exist in 1917. 

I rolled my eyes a bit at that also. I might have been a bit more accepting of Steve's complete wonder, if not for the fact that the first film has Steve based in London during WWI. London's Underground dates back as far as 1863! He would certainly have been familiar with at least the idea of major cities having underground rail systems. 

OTOH, @Chicago Redshirt's observation about the depth of D.C.'s Metro and the length of those escalators is not lost on me. I rode the Metro there for the first time in the early '90s, after decades of riding the NYC Subways and was quite surprised at just how long D.C.'s escalator rides were! Still, Steve should have been somewhat aware of the technology of a moving stairway.

[Guest]

56 minutes ago, Chicago Redshirt said:

From being somewhat familiar with the D.C. Metro, I'm guessing that it was an escalator bank that goes down like 150-200 feet, which is way more than your average subway and might induce some awe even in someone who's familiar with escalators generally. I know that even coming from Chicago where we of course have subways and escalators I still was impressed on seeing such a long-ass escalator on D.C.'s Metro. And of course a 80s era subway car would go probably 20-30 mph faster than anything Steve would have been used to plus look more futuristic.

I really wish they went this route. Instead the went with, “I really thought I was going to fall” on something that would have existed for most of Steve’s life. 

[Chicago Redshirt]

1 hour ago, Dani said:

I really wish they went this route. Instead the went with, “I really thought I was going to fall” on something that would have existed for most of Steve’s life. 

I guess one can read that at least two ways: "Gawrsh, a moving staircase, what'll they think of next?" or "Jesus, that's a long way down and what happens if I trip?" 

From personal experience, the latter floated through my mind a few times when I was using the D.C. Metro. The problem is TPTB didn't do a long shot establishing how that 150 feet might look to someone who was unfamiliar with those specific stations. (I believe without proof that that would be Dupont Circle, which was one I took a lot when I did a semester and summer in D.C.).

[slowpoked]

So question for y’all - what are your theories on Cheetah’s future? I thought that when WW apologized to her when they were fighting in the water, Diana knew she had no other choice but to kill her. But she surprisingly survived the electrocution...

So did that mean that part of Diana’s immortality got transferred to Barbara?

Then when there was a montage of people renouncing their wish, it was pointed enough that Cheetah just kept quiet while staring at the sun. So did that mean she didn’t renounce her wish?

Third, Barbara got two wishes - first, to be like Diana. Then to be like Cheetah. I think it’s quite interesting that when everyone went back to their original state, pre-wish, that Barbara didn’t go back to looking like a nerd, but instead went back to her human self, but wearing fur print clothes that she wore when she had her initial transformation...

So does that mean that while she’s technically no longer Cheetah, she still got to keep Diana’s powers (as her initial wish was)? 

Edited December 27, 2020 by slowpoked

[moonorchid]

I wanted to like this so much more then I did. They had really good things going for it but didn’t focus on them.

I liked Steve in this, got a kick out of the reverse fish out of water story with him and Diana. His wonder and enthusiasm for the advancement of aero dynamics was a joy, especially thinking of where he came from. I loved that he was able to see how far we’ve come with that. I liked that he was at peace. 
 

Saying that, he didn’t have to be in the movie at all and I think it would have been better had he not. Despite what the movie portrayed, Diana has a lot of reasons for being distant and purposely isolating herself. She’s immortal. She’s already watched one set of friends grow old and die, I can totally see her reasoning not wanting to purposely put herself through that over and over again. I think we could have seen her come to the same conclusion at the end in a different way. Like I said, this is not to say I didn’t enjoy all of their scenes, they are magic together. 
 

I wish the movie focused on Barbara/Cheerah the way they did Maxwell Lord. He should have been a minor villain and I like Pedro Pascal and what he did here. 
 

Barbara was really interesting and used Kristin Wigg’s strengths perfectly and reined her in when needed. I thought she did great here. Seeing how people shat all over her repeatedly I understand completely why she would wish what she did and why she would be hell bent on keeping it. There was only one moment where I saw her humanity but the movie wasn’t super clear on her humanity like they were clear about Maxwells (in regards to the love he had for his son). 
 

I liked that Diana and Barbara had a likeness towards one another. I wish that had been explored more. Never once does Diana deserve the vitriol Barbara throws at her, being that she was one of the few people who treated her with kindness. And Diana liked her as she was!

By the end it felt really long and I was pretty “meh” on it. 
 

I agree with most of what was already said, so I didn’t want to repeat it.

[Chicago Redshirt]

4 minutes ago, slowpoked said:

So question for y’all - what are your theories on Cheetah’s future? I thought that when WW apologized to her when they were fighting in the water, Diana knew she had no other choice but to kill her. But she surprisingly survived the electrocution...

So did that mean that part of Diana’s immortality got transferred to Barbara?

Then when there was a montage of people renouncing their wish, it was pointed enough that Cheetah just kept quiet while staring at the sun. So did that mean she didn’t renounce her wish?

Third, Barbara got two wishes - first, to be like Diana. Then to be like Cheetah. I think it’s quite interesting that when everyone went back to their original state, pre-wish, that Barbara didn’t go back to looking like a nerd, but instead went back to her human self, but wearing fur print clothes that she wore when she had her initial transformation...

So does that mean that while she’s technically no longer Cheetah, she still got to keep Diana’s powers (as her initial wish was)? 

TPTB have a lot of leeway to do what they want.

1. They could decide that Max's wish wore off but the original Dreamstone wish still applies to Barbara so she continues to have Diana's abilities at the tradeoff of her humanity. 

2. They could decide that Max's renouncing of the Dreamstone (along with 90+ percent of humanity) destroyed the Dreamstone and any wishes it granted previously, leaving Barbara powerless and in need of finding some other artifact or magic to re-empower her.

3. They could write off Barbara as a character and have the torch be passed to a new Cheetah in the present day.

4. They could shelve the Cheetah for film purposes for a while and focus on other WW villains (Circe, some return of Greek gods, Giganta and Dr. Psycho, for instance)

[Guest]

27 minutes ago, Chicago Redshirt said:

I guess one can read that at least two ways: "Gawrsh, a moving staircase, what'll they think of next?" or "Jesus, that's a long way down and what happens if I trip?" 

In the scene it was clearly the first. The escalator on screen didn’t even look that long. 

[ICantDoThatDave]

Die they seriously fly a fighter jet from Washington DC to Cairo? A few seconds of googling tells me that trip is roughly 18 times longer than the range of even today's fighter jets.

[ribboninthesky1]

I enjoyed this one more than the first film, mostly because I actively disliked Diana by the end of the first one. I agree with others that Barbara/Cheetah should have been the main villain.  I guess the Max Lord as the Dreamstone plot was meant to up the stakes, but it came off convoluted and contrived.

I kind of rolled my eyes at two intelligent, attractive white women commiserating over their struggles.  But at least Diana's was more profound - being the only one of your kin (as far as she knew), watching your loved ones age and die over decades, almost a century, must be agonizing.  It totally made sense for her to become a loner.  I didn't see enough of Barbara's....struggles to sympathize much.  Not being liked by your co-workers is rough, but by her own admission she'd only been working there a week.  If anyone deserved a flashback of a traumatic past, it should have been her, not Max Lord. 

I hadn't considered the Steve body snatching factor until I read it here.  I didn't care about Steve and Diana's relationship.  They hardly knew each other long enough for me to be invested in this great love, plus I never saw much romantic chemistry between Gadot and Pine in either film.  Nevertheless, great points made about body autonomy, sexual assault, and consent.  In hindsight, I don't think the guy asking Diana out would have made things any better.  

I thought the young Diana and Alistair actors did very well in their roles, heck better than some of the adults. 

[txhorns79]

14 minutes ago, ribboninthesky1 said:

I didn't see enough of Barbara's....struggles to sympathize much.  Not being liked by your co-workers is rough, but by her own admission she'd only been working there a week.  If anyone deserved a flashback of a traumatic past, it should have been her, not Max Lord. 

I don't think it was that she wasn't liked, it was more that she was ignored or treated as forgettable. 

[Guest]

13 minutes ago, txhorns79 said:

I don't think it was that she wasn't liked, it was more that she was ignored or treated as forgettable. 

I felt sympathy for her because all her co-workers were jerks.  Although it’s another thing the movie took a little bit too far. The woman who hired a week before had literally forgotten her existence and walked around asking other people who Barbara Minerva is. 

[Robert Lynch]

What's funny is the one playing young Diana is the same one from the first film.

[Mikay]

51 minutes ago, ribboninthesky1 said:

I kind of rolled my eyes at two intelligent, attractive white women commiserating over their struggles. 

This was something I also struggled to engage with.  Wiig may lack the literal model looks of Gal Gadot, but she's still a thin white woman with blonde hair, an image often held up as the ideal. The movie tried to convey that she was frumpy with that same tired Hollywood trick of slapping some glasses on her, but it felt a little pat to me.  You see the glasses to no glasses transition all the time in shows and movies. Wonder Woman at least has the excuse of homaging the 80s, but I feel like in 2020 it's time for Hollywood to accept that some women wear glasses and just get over it. A flashback here would have gotten her plight across in a better way for me. Because while I had some sympathy, her increasing monstrousness, explained in a single line of dialogue, tossed out in the middle of a battle scene, left everything feeling a bit undercooked. 

There was one scene though with Cheetah that did really registered with me---the compare and contrast with mousy Barbara getting harassed by a drunk man, and then later on vamped Barbara being able to defend herself(even though she takes it too far). There have been a thousand times when I wished I had someway to remove aggressive suitors from my presence. I'm talking about people that will not take no for an answer, who become offended at a lack of interest, and who I've sometimes worried would follow me home or hurt me. Even just the knowledge that if things came to blows or if I felt unsafe, I'd be able to defend myself would be a balm.  I'm not sure if the film could have really gone into that angle without becoming grim, but I did think it was interesting. That type of fear that many woman experience is something that Wonder Woman with her super strength and speed doesn't have to worry about. 

Edited December 27, 2020 by Mikay

[slowpoked]

1 hour ago, Mikay said:

There was one scene though with Cheetah that did really registered with me---the compare and contrast with mousy Barbara getting harassed by a drunk man, and then later on vamped Barbara being able to defend herself(even though she takes it too far). There have been a thousand times when I wished I had someway to remove aggressive suitors from my presence. I'm talking about people that will not take no for an answer, who become offended at a lack of interest, and who I've sometimes worried would follow me home or hurt me. Even just the knowledge that if things came to blows or if I felt unsafe, I'd be able to defend myself would be a balm.  I'm not sure if the film could have really gone into that angle without becoming grim, but I did think it was interesting. That type of fear that many woman experience is something that Wonder Woman with her super strength and speed doesn't have to worry about. 

I had a problem with that scene being used to depict Barbara’s loss of humanity.  She didn’t set out to hurt the guy when he started harassing her. She asked firmly, from a distance, for him to stop harassing, not just her, but women in general. He didn’t listen, and instead got aggressive. Barbara just set out to defend herself, and learned, that with her newfound power, she actually can, and for most probably the first time in her life, she didn’t feel as fearful and helpless anymore. 
 

There were many other ways to show her loss of humanity, and tying it to that scene just doesn’t feel right, especially as WW the movie has been all about female empowerment, etc. 

[moonorchid]

17 minutes ago, slowpoked said:

I had a problem with that scene being used to depict Barbara’s loss of humanity.  She didn’t set out to hurt the guy when he started harassing her. She asked firmly, from a distance, for him to stop harassing, not just her, but women in general. He didn’t listen, and instead got aggressive. Barbara just set out to defend herself, and learned, that with her newfound power, she actually can, and for most probably the first time in her life, she didn’t feel as fearful and helpless anymore. 
 

There were many other ways to show her loss of humanity, and tying it to that scene just doesn’t feel right, especially as WW the movie has been all about female empowerment, etc. 

The third time and every time after that she kicked him bloody, and if I’m remembering correctly she kicked his teeth out, it wasn’t defending herself, she was attacking him.

But the real marker for her loss of humanity came when the homeless man she befriended came and asked her what she was doing and she rudely told him to mind his business. That stood out to me. 

[Zonk]

There were quite a few problems with the wish-thing. I mean you are telling me that nobody wished for all the nukes to disappear, at the height of the cold war? Nbbody wished for that, really?

Also the russian nukes weren't wished for. Those should still be coming.

Did really everybody have to renounce their wishes? Even if wonder woman wasn't a block of wood, I can't believe she would have convinced everybody. And what about the dead woman who wihed all the irish were gone. Even if she came back to live, she wouldn't have hear Diana's speach.

Also the block of wood saying "this world was already beautiful"? Really? This world sucks. Hard. It could be so much better.

Speaking of the block of wood that is wonder woman: I probably could have overlooked a lot of the problems much easier if Gal Gadot didn't suuuuuuuuuuck as an actress. I mean she is worse than me and I am really bad. I don't understand how she made it into blockbuster movies. Everytime she opened her mouth or shook her head for 5 minutes straight it took me right out of the movie.

On the other hand, everybody else was great. Kristen Wiig really stole the show for me, Pedro Pascal also great (with that hair I thought he was Nathan Fillian for a second), even young Diana in the falshback was pretty good.

Overall the film was an enjoyable action romp, but what kept it from beign great was the lead actress.

[Slovenly Muse]

3 hours ago, moonorchid said:

I had a problem with that scene being used to depict Barbara’s loss of humanity.  She didn’t set out to hurt the guy when he started harassing her. She asked firmly, from a distance, for him to stop harassing, not just her, but women in general. He didn’t listen, and instead got aggressive. Barbara just set out to defend herself, and learned, that with her newfound power, she actually can, and for most probably the first time in her life, she didn’t feel as fearful and helpless anymore. 

Yes, this. Plus, Diana, a character bursting with humanity, ALSO dealt with him by beating him up, just to a lesser extent. And clearly this had zero impact on his willingness or ability to continue harassing women in the future. So there was no correct solution explored for dealing with men like him, just "use brute force to knock them around, but not too much, or it's inhumane." Not that I'm surprised - these sorts of movies really bank on vigilantes fighting crime by stopping specific criminal acts from taking place, but have no interest in what a "safer" or "more just" world actually looks like, or what it might mean to stop somebody from being a criminal, rather than stopping the criminals from making off with the loot. Still, I wish if they were going to make "how to deal with creeps" a significant moral story point, they had at least had a contrasting good and bad idea in mind.

I pretty much came to say what others have said. I wish Chris Pine hadn't been in the movie. He didn't add anything romantically (not being in his own body, which was icky), or plot-wise, having nothing to really do. If they were committed to bringing him back this way, I wish they'd acknowledged the impact that him taking over another dude had on that other dude. A line about whether or not he could sense the other dude dormant in his consciousness somewhere, or whether he had died/disappeared completely so that Steve could replace him, or some acknowledgement that they were risking this other dude's life by involving him in multilple armed conflicts. Or some indication that he had a life and family/friends, and that if Steve stayed he'd be robbing this guy of his life. You know, that kind of thing! The lack of any examination of the morality of the situation was weird and jarring.

I also wish, instead of Steve, we'd had more time to develop the relationship between Barbara and Diana. They never really felt like friends, and they never really felt like enemies. I guess it leaves Cheetah in a morally-grey space moving forward, which has potential, but I really wish her character had been developed a little better. The closest comparison I got from her story was Poison Ivy in Batman & Robin. She starts off as this frumpy, nerdy scientist, and then gets superpowers and becomes sexy, and immediately turns evil for some reason. I like that they made her transformation gradual enough to make sense - she wished for power, but lost her humanity, and it was from a place of having already lost her humanity that she wished for deadlier power. I just wish we had gotten a better sense of her. She just seemed miserable and lonely. I wish we had a better sense of what she was LOSING while her power was growing. Like if she'd had an obvious moral decline, and seemed in some clear way more pathetic as a superpowered badass than she had as a friendless scientist, so that we could really feel what this was costing her. One bookended moment with a homeless man didn't quite do the trick.

I wasn't totally clear on what Maxwell Lord was up to. Sure, he wanted to be successful enough to impress his son and got carried away on his power trip, but what did he want by the end? What did he stand to gain, exactly, from making the world wish itself into nuclear Armageddon? More power? Over the smouldering cinder of planet Earth? Why? What was his endgame? And... was the moral of the movie that we should accept the world the way it is and not wish for anything better? The monkey's paw "wishes turn bad" story has been told so many times that I really wanted a stronger moral through-line that had something new to say, perhaps about wishing versus earning? They seemed to be setting that up, and then never followed through!

I also could have lived without the Egypt stuff. It bothers me when Hollywood blockbusters want to incorporate Middle Eastern or other Muslim-majority countries into their stories, but obviously don't see that these places/people/cultures have anything to offer the world besides oil and conflict. It's reductive and Islamophobic. They're pretty much brought in to be a shorthand for villainy or terrorism, and while I don't think that was really the intention here, the Egyptian characters still had nothing to do besides shoot guns and explosives at the heroes while looking Muslim and sinister. It's odd that the film's biggest action sequence pitted Wonder Woman against a convoy of heavily-armed Muslims (who weren't even acting of their own free will, being under the control of Max Lord, and were therefore innocent casualties - not that the film was interested in exploring that fact), rather than the film's actual villains. 

Not to say that I disliked the movie. I had a lot of notes, but I mostly enjoyed the experience of watching it. The performances were good, and Gal Godot may not be the most dynamic actress, but she is magnetic onscreen. I could watch two and a half hours of her doing laundry. Despite its issues, I don't regret the time I spent. I just wish the script had received a bit more (or, as is more likely the case with a movie of this scale, LESS) revision beforehand.

Edited December 27, 2020 by Slovenly Muse
Clarity

[Kromm]

12 hours ago, Spartan Girl said:

Did Diana have any relationships before Steve on Themyscira? If she did that would have been a great story to tell but sadly I don't think the filmmakers would have been that ballsy. She didn't seem inclined toward romance until she met Steve so it's reasonable to assume she was a virgin before him. 

I do think they have at least a reasonable line of reasoning about why she might be though.  She's not only the queen's daughter, a unique position in that society, but she's also the only child there.  It's been pretty much alluded to in various media that every Amazon thought of her as a daughter.  So... not a real good candidate for a sexual liason.  So I think it's about more than just a hesitancy to have Diana state outright that she's bisexual.

I will say that I do wish they'd at least alluded to Steve not being her ONLY sexual partner, even if her own words were that she'd never love anyone else.

[Kromm]

13 hours ago, BitterApple said:

I also didn't think the reappearance of Steve added anything to the story. I would much rather have seen more development of the Diana/Barbara friendship.

That would require changing the entire overall arc of the film though. Diana clearly needed a "most important thing" to gain and then sacrifice. A new friendship with Barbara certainly wouldn't have qualified.  The only other things I can think of besides Steve that might have come close is if we got Etta, and that's basically the same plot as Steve minus the romantic angle.  Or Antiope.  Same issue.

And even in this thread (and likely on the Internet in general) there are people of the opinion that the film not ending in a Big Boss God Fight was a step down from the first movie.  If they also stripped out the romance aspect by totally ditching Steve, that would add a second group of people not liking a core change from the first.  

Edited December 27, 2020 by Kromm

[Zonk]

3 hours ago, slowpoked said:

I had a problem with that scene being used to depict Barbara’s loss of humanity.  She didn’t set out to hurt the guy when he started harassing her. She asked firmly, from a distance, for him to stop harassing, not just her, but women in general. He didn’t listen, and instead got aggressive. Barbara just set out to defend herself, and learned, that with her newfound power, she actually can, and for most probably the first time in her life, she didn’t feel as fearful and helpless anymore. 

The point was that she kept kicking him when he was already down. Something you even teach kids you should never do. Plus when the homeless man, towards whom she was so nice before, asked what was going on, she snapped at him to mind his own business. I think that conveyed her slow loss of humanity quite well.

16 hours ago, KnotsLanding said:

I felt like they sidelined Wonder Woman as a character. There were far too many scenes without her.

I really think there were far too many scene with her. I mean think about it as the writers or director. You have a block of wood, who somehow got the leading role in your movie, you'd want to show that block of wood as little as you could, too.

13 hours ago, BitterApple said:

For starters, the 2:30 run time needed to be cut way down. I didn't think the opening scene of young Diana was necessary, and it took too long for the action to get going.

It was the theme of the movie that cheating never leads to anything good (even if in real life cheaters get away with it constantly) and we got a nice callback with the truckflip. But mainly the theme. I don't think you can take that out.

13 hours ago, BitterApple said:

The premise of the villain was pretty weak, and I didn't understand how granting wishes meant he could just absorb people's wealth. 

The stone always takes something from the people who make a wish. He became the stone, so he could take things from them.

11 hours ago, txhorns79 said:

And just an annoyance to me, subways and escalators both existed long before WW1. 

Yeah, I was rolling my eyes at that one. I was like "He knows what trains are!" when he was open mouthed towards the subway train. I mean the moon landing I totally get, but that stuff preemtively cheapened it a bit for me. Would have been better if they had cut that out, started at the art exhibit and moved to the space museum from there.

6 hours ago, ICantDoThatDave said:

Die they seriously fly a fighter jet from Washington DC to Cairo? A few seconds of googling tells me that trip is roughly 18 times longer than the range of even today's fighter jets.

Had the same question about the range while watching the movie, but then forgot about it again. Glad that my intuition wasn't wrong. Fighter jets can't have tanks that big and usually they are launched from aircraft carriers close to their target.

50 minutes ago, Slovenly Muse said:

Not that I'm surprised - these sorts of movies really bank on vigilantes fighting crime by stopping specific criminal acts from taking place, but have no interest in what a "safer" or "more just" world actually looks like, or what it might mean to stop somebody from being a criminal,

And you think a good solution would be to "kill them all"?

Edited December 27, 2020 by Zonk

[Kromm]

6 minutes ago, Zonk said:

And just an annoyance to me, subways and escalators both existed long before WW1. 

Yeah, that was just bad writing.  Macy's, in New York City, had escalators since 1902. They did change them for a different set after WWI, but still... they existed.

Harrods, in London where Trevor seems to have been stationed, had escalators since 1898.

The one thing I can take from that scene is maybe the SIZE of the escalator was supposed to be the thing.  I think that was Wheaton Station, which has one of the longest escalators in the world.  It's been in a lot of TV and movies specifically because of that. 

[qtpye]

I am horribly disappointed. I loved the first film and wanted to at least like this.

It was a disaster and a waste of some very talented people.

Edited December 27, 2020 by qtpye

[Jediknight]

I liked it.  Guess I'm in the minority.  Gadot, Pine, Nielsen, and Wright continue to prove they were born for their roles.  Seriously, can we get a prequel about the war with Ares, need more of the Amazons, and Robin Wright as Antiope, and Connie Nielsen as Hipolyta.  Wiig was fantastic, and Pascal was clearly having fun chewing scenery.

Hopefully one day, Diana finds that coffee cup.

[Spartan Girl]

48 minutes ago, Jediknight said:

I liked it.  Guess I'm in the minority.  Gadot, Pine, Nielsen, and Wright continue to prove they were born for their roles.  Seriously, can we get a prequel about the war with Ares, need more of the Amazons, and Robin Wright as Antiope, and Connie Nielsen as Hipolyta.  Wiig was fantastic, and Pascal was clearly having fun chewing scenery.

Hopefully one day, Diana finds that coffee cup.

 Don't feel alone. Like I said in my first post I didn't hate it, I just thought it could have been better. It was still a fun escape from, well, everything.

[Robert Lynch]

I think they crammed too much of everything. I don't mind long epic films, but this film had editing problems galore.

Personally, I think Shazam had a tighter storyline than this, but that is just me.

[Chicago Redshirt]

6 hours ago, Zonk said:

There were quite a few problems with the wish-thing. I mean you are telling me that nobody wished for all the nukes to disappear, at the height of the cold war? Nbbody wished for that, really?

Also the russian nukes weren't wished for. Those should still be coming.

Did really everybody have to renounce their wishes? Even if wonder woman wasn't a block of wood, I can't believe she would have convinced everybody. And what about the dead woman who wihed all the irish were gone. Even if she came back to live, she wouldn't have hear Diana's speach.

Also the block of wood saying "this world was already beautiful"? Really? This world sucks. Hard. It could be so much better.

Presumably people wished for contradictory things a fair amount -- "I wish for the Irish to go home" vs. something like "I wish the Irish took over Britain" "I wish for the 49ers to win the Super Bowl" vs "I wish for the Miami Dolphins to win the Super Bowl." How Max handled those sort of conflicting requests is curious -- granting them both in the order received so that first the 49ers won and then the Dolphins? Granting them so that there's a paradox where simultaneously the 49ers and the Dolphins were the winners? Refusing the last received wish and forcing the person to choose something else? Granting the last received wish only in the person's mind? Some kind of clever boomerang on the wishers sos that both were dissatisfied with the outcome?  Who knows? I'll give them a pass on that thing though.

I assume that once there was a  critical mass of renouncers, Max could have his epiphany and renounce his wish, which was the main thing that needed to happen for a general reset. If Max gives up being the Dreamstone, it doesn't matter that Betty Johnson from Dubuque, IA doesn't renounce the wish she made to be the PTA president for life or whatever. He's not the Dreamstone so the wish she made through him gets automatically undone.

[Cotypubby]

10 hours ago, moonorchid said:

The third time and every time after that she kicked him bloody, and if I’m remembering correctly she kicked his teeth out, it wasn’t defending herself, she was attacking him.

If we were supposed to feel that she was wrong in beating up an attempted rapist then they really went about it the wrong way. I was cheering every time she kicked one of teeth out. He had already been pummeled by Wonder Woman earlier in the film, and clearly getting punched in the gut by a literal god didn’t do anything to stop him from trying to rape women so what is left other than to use increased force against him? I hated that when the homeless man went to check on the rapist that we were supposed to now think of him as a “victim.”

[JTMacc99]

Rotten Tomatoes has this at 64%. I think that's about right for me. 

The training scene of Diana as a child and the car chase scene were excellent action sequences. Nice stuff with the invisible jet and learning to fly. I totally get why we bring back Chris Pine, and I'm okay with the part of the story where Diana truly copes with his loss.

It definitely would have benefited from either cutting down some stuff to make it shorter, or to just swap out some of the stuff we did see with other things. I only watched it once, but my gut feeling is that if we just strung all of the Max Lord scenes together with nothing else, it would be not all that exciting. Probably needed to sharpen up that story; tell it in a way that took less time but made him more menacing. A really good villain goes a long way in these movies. 

And by the way, I think both Pedro Pascal and Kristen Wiig did really good jobs with their characters. I think the editing/story telling just needed to make me more afraid of them. (For example, throw me a "We could reverse all this damage, but even if we do, they could still be a significant threat if the following happens...")  Does that make sense? Or even, how about a shot of the stone back on Barbara's desk after Max Lord renounces his wish, where surely she would find it for just a little bit of an "oh shit" moment at the end.

[moonorchid]

1 hour ago, Cotypubby said:

If we were supposed to feel that she was wrong in beating up an attempted rapist then they really went about it the wrong way. I was cheering every time she kicked one of teeth out. He had already been pummeled by Wonder Woman earlier in the film, and clearly getting punched in the gut by a literal god didn’t do anything to stop him from trying to rape women so what is left other than to use increased force against him? I hated that when the homeless man went to check on the rapist that we were supposed to now think of him as a “victim.”

While I watched it I never felt bad for him, but it showcased how much she had changed. 
 

When Diana did it, she kicked him really hard one time and left. 

Edited December 27, 2020 by moonorchid

[shantown]

I thought it was a bit cheesy and over-the-top at points, but that's what makes a superhero movie fun! It did get a little long, I liked the competition scene at the beginning but thought it went on a bit too long, same with the opening mall heist scene. It helped set that it was in the 80s, but the overall run time was too long for me so some tightening up here and there would have helped. I liked the idea of the dreamstone though, and losing what made you special/what you valued most in the process. That fascinates me about superheroes, especially semi-immortal ones like WW/Superman/etc. Fulfilling a destiny, saving the world, protecting the innocent is all great - but it can come at a great personal cost. I would have paid to see this movie in theaters and have been satisfied, but I can't say I minded watching from home and having the ability to pause for bathroom and snack breaks!

[Proclone]

It really pains me to say this, because I loved the first one, but I thought this was pretty awful.  And I have a pretty high tolerance for sitting back and enjoying mindless comic movies.  I don't hate Sucide Squad or Justice League and I actually enjoyed Birds of Prey.  But there was so much potential with this and it was such a disappointment.

Firstly I thought the action was by in large boring and pretty repetitive.  There was nothing like the scene of Diana running through no-man's-land in this one.  And some of the special effects seemed pretty bad to me.  The action also stops for most of the second act and the "plot" is not interesting enough to carry the movie.

Largely I thought the plot was kind of convoluted and the muguffian and it's rules weren't super clear.  The message of the movie also seemed to be really muddled to me.  Diana is told in the beginning that she can't win by lying.  But wishing for something isn't really the same as lying.  No one who made a wish was trying to deceive anyone (except Max, maybe).  In fact they generally had no idea that they were actually doing anything.  None it it really thematically connects in my mind.  They could have made it work better if they had had the message to little Diana be you can't find happiness through a short cut (like a wish).  But the message was explicitly about lying not just going down the easy path is wrong.  It seems weird, like there was a big change in the message of the script at some point.

So perhaps I'm the minority, but I actually like Gal Gadot, as Diana.  I also like her and Chris Pine together.  But I absolutely hated how he was brought back, and can't understand why they choose to do it the way the did.  They put him in another man's body.  Another man who absolutely did not consent to it.  A man that we assume has a life.  We know from the end that he has friends.  Does he have a girlfriend?  Does he have a job that he just didn't show up for for however long?  Was his family worried about him? Then did he "wake up"  standing behind a pillar while the world was going to shit with no memory of what happened or how he probably got the numerous bruised all over?  That's got to be super traumatizing.  They hijacked this guys life and neither Steve or Diana seemed remotely remorseful about that (which seems super out of character for both of them).  And let's not ignore the fact that they had sex while Steve was in this guy's body.  Sex this guy did not consent to.  It's disgusting.  And there was no reason to do it that way.  Steve very easily could have shown up in his own body.  The stone made walls appear and nuclear weapons pop up out of thing air.  You're going to tell me it could whip up a body for Steve?  This whole subplot put such a bad taste in my mouth that I couldn't enjoy any of the okay parts of the movie.

There is also no consequences for the villains.  Max get's off scot free after almost destroying the world.  Because he loved his son? Give me a break.  What happened to Barbara, was she back to her baseline personality?  Did she regret what she had done? I thought there would be an after credit scene with her, to set her up as still being a villain for the next one, but instead we got Linda Carter.  Which was okay I guess, but it seemed a little on the nose.

This was a big old hot mess, for me.  And the Steve subplot was just plain off putting.  I spent most of the movie saying, "Why Patty, Why?" over and over again.  I don't understand how a movie where Patty Jenkins had more control, at least on paper, was actually so much worse.  I wonder if we'll find out if DC interfered with the script at some later date. 

[shantown]

5 minutes ago, Proclone said:

but instead we got Linda Carter.  Which was okay I guess, but it seemed a little on the nose.

I personally LOVE that about the DC shows/movies - how willing they are to bring in actors from previous iterations for quick cameos!