Wonder Woman 1984

[Lear60man]

Personally as far as I've seen Patty Jenkins isn't woke and she seems down to earth so the mistakes made in the writing don't come across to me as being directed at painting men in a bad light but more about needing work. Drafts are often rushed for Hollywood scripts and tentpoles in particular because there are so many working parts to get the movie made as well as strict deadlines which often can be to the detriment of the story if not handled properly. If she starts blaming poor fan reception on sexism (ala Ghostbusters 2016) then I would rethink things.

I'm all for female empowerment and having positive strong feminine role models for women to aspire to. That said, great characters transcend labels like gender, sexual preference, and race so that no matter who you are you can admire and relate to them because the package they come in isn't as important as reaching an audience's empathy. The first Wonder Woman movie did a fantastic job with that and was a really entertaining movie to boot. In fact I really should get a copy of it on bluray because I've been wanting to rewatch it. Especially after how disappointing WW84 was.

Just like everything else with movies it all boils down to writing and theme. Critical analysis by audiences will always be driven by emotion but I think it's best to try and balance it with how well that theme was presented to be able to give it a fair chance and if the characters speak to the human experience then all the better.

This was brilliant BTW:

Time to rethink it......So far I havnt seen a rebuttal from her on WW84.

She blasted James Cameron critique of her first WW because he was a man. I dont think this was a rush job, in fact, WB pushed back the release months and months while trying to convice Jenkins to cut the movie down. She held stong with the script she wrote and owns it. She may still get to direct the third, green lit, episode, but I bet WB/DC injects some other talent in the behind the scenes dept.

 

[Psab keel]

Fair enough. I wasn't aware of that though I personally didn't feel it was over the top in this movie. Even so it was the least of this movie's problems.

 

[HMSwolfe]

So far she’s directed more that I’ve liked than James Cameron, who’s got a whopping one film that I enjoy. Admittedly, that film is T2, which is nearly perfect (sorry Edward Furlong), but still.

 

[DarkKnight]

I get Camerons point about WW, but I disagree with him about the first film, it was good and did not need to be "groundbreaking" as for Camerons female characters he writes them well. Sarah Connor was a great fighter, in spite of being a woman, she could kick your ass, but wasnt going to fight someone super-fit, Navy SEAL type, Dougie or Dr. Silberman she could take easily. Or Ripley, there's no girl power crap in that movie, shes hard ass because of who she is. You can see/feel the feelings Vasquez has for Drake. Cameron writes real roles for women. Disney makes every woman some kinda unrealistic stronger and smarter than all men "womyns studies" clown. Camerons directing and writing 10x better than this piece of girl power garbage. Hopefully the inevitable WW3 is a better film, hmmm WW3 in 3D? or 3 Wonder Women, GG, Lynda Carter and maybe Kate Upton, that would be awesome

 

[Cephus]

Yeah, the writing, but more importantly the editing.
Sometimes over-writing is a good thing because if you make a point three times in a script, if two of those scenes are removed for other reasons, the point still gets made. The trick is, to recognize redundancies that remain late in the editing process and eliminate them. The "guys hit on women" commentary is a fair one that I'm fine with them making, it just didn't need to happen that much to get the point across.

Considering it came out a year after it was first supposed to hit theaters (November 1, 2019), they had plenty of time to fix it and they clearly didn't do a thing. Or they made it worse. Who really knows.

 

[Treadwell]

I don't have a fact check reference for this, but I read somewhere the studio tried to get her to cut it down and she refused.

 

[Lear60man]

I don't have a fact check reference for this, but I read somewhere the studio tried to get her to cut it down and she refused.

The word on the street was WB wanted her to drop either the mall scene or the Amazon Olympics scene.

While I may disagree with Camerons dislike of the first WW film, he does know how to make a great film with a strong female lead. Aliens, T2, Avatar and even Titanic all have strong women. Cameron and Jenkins just have a different style of how they want display that character on film.

 

[JoeG]

Maybe WB wanted Jenkins to cut the film when they still thought it was going to play in theatres, but once it was going to straight to HBOMax, I have doubts that they would be as concerned. Usually the only time studios care about a film's running time is because they are concerned about how many times it can run in a day while in theatres. Once the film is released for viewing at home, you may as well let the director put their version out. What difference does it make? Considering how WB treated Jenkins and Gadot over the decision to release it straight to streaming, I think that shows they were trying to keep her happy. Seems like they had already made up their minds that they wanted them both to stick around.

 

[Psab keel]

Despite the reviews changing in the down turn they already green lit a 3rd to get fast tracked into production. Hopefully the next outing will be better.

 

[Treadwell]

Although the olympic and mall scenes could stand to be tightened I'm not sure about eliminating them entirely. (Removing some of the camp from the mall scene I wouldn't mind at all)

 

[Usagi Pilgrim]

I got the reason the Amazonian scene was in there, but I think the reason she refused to cut it had more to go with Robin Wright & Connie Neilson than any story telling elements. I think that will only be confirmed though, if they both have parts in WW3.

 

[cboath]

Time to rethink it......So far I havnt seen a rebuttal from her on WW84.

She blasted James Cameron critique of her first WW because he was a man. I dont think this was a rush job, in fact, WB pushed back the release months and months while trying to convice Jenkins to cut the movie down. She held stong with the script she wrote and owns it. She may still get to direct the third, green lit, episode, but I bet WB/DC injects some other talent in the behind the scenes dept.

That'd be ironic. This may have it's issues, but it's got fewer than any other flick they've done in the DCUE other than the first WW.

 

[Cephus]

Although the olympic and mall scenes could stand to be tightened I'm not sure about eliminating them entirely. (Removing some of the camp from the mall scene I wouldn't mind at all)

There's so much in the movie that needed to be removed entirely or tightened. The opening scene was ultimately pointless as she never really learned the lesson that it set up. The mall scene was completely random and had zero bearing on anything. It was just "we need an action scene" and threw it in for no good reason. They really didn't need Chris Pine coming back at all, it was just trailer fodder and if they were going to have him in the movie, they shouldn't have done it so poorly. There was no need for two half-assed villains, which is what they had. The CGI was terrible throughout. If she can now fly (which they established in the last movie for crying out loud), they didn't need her and her lasso tricks, which was just idiotic and again, done only for the trailer. Someone needs to explain radar to Patty Jenkins, because making the plane invisible doesn't actually mean anything. Again, pointless scene, done only for the trailers. And what pilot in their right mind is going to fly a plane into the middle of aerial explosives, which is exactly what fireworks are?

The more you think about it, the worse this movie gets.

 

[James Kenobi 1138]

I liked it ! Fun superhero movie, it delivered exactly what I expected.

 

[Psab keel]

Some movies are just Oz. Lacking Brain, Heart, and Courage. I think this one was pretty Oz. Just insanely dumb.

 

[Valor]

I have lots of little gripes ... lots. But my main disappointment was just how sad, and weak they made Diana. I hated that 80 years later she's still in the dumps for a man. And she just can't find ... another man. Why the hell does she need a man AT ALL? Be Wonder Woman dammit.

The character, and Gal are so much better than this material.

 

[EKF5]

There's so much in the movie that needed to be removed entirely or tightened. . . . They really didn't need Chris Pine coming back at all, it was just trailer fodder and if they were going to have him in the movie, they shouldn't have done it so poorly. . . . pointless scene, done only for the trailers. And what pilot in their right mind is going to fly a plane into the middle of aerial explosives, which is exactly what fireworks are?

The more you think about it, the worse this movie gets.

Cephus is on point with a lot of complaints here about the writing. Sadly, a lot of the complaints could have been addressed with minor fixes.

All the foolish trailer bait scenes, especially the flying through fireworks, could have been left as trailer scenes only. (You may recall that Marvel changed one of the lines from an Endgame trailer to the actual film to correct a problem - no one complained about it.) Not ideal perhaps, but removing scenes that make people question the sanity of the leads is a good idea.

I had a lot of problems with the "Handsome Man" character and how he was treated. That neither Diana nor Steve said a word about him was a big problem. Many folks have suggested that the solution was to just have Steve appear as himself. That would fix it. But instead it could have been used to help fix more of the writing.

The long intro sequence had a moral attached to it delivered by Antiope (Robin Wright). It was all about truth and earned victories. When Diana wishes for Steve to be alive (ignoring whether she should have made that wish) she asked for an "unearned" outcome. Steve shows up and they seem to be happy. At this point she could have touched the Lasso of Hestia and had the truth of the situation revealed to her. She could have learned that they were harming the "Handsome Man" by having Steve displace him.* Steve could have questioned this and also had the truth revealed by the lasso. Diana could then have given Steve up for moral/ethical reasons earlier in the film instead of giving him up for an external reason (saving the world). This type of sequence would have the additional benefit of foreshadowing the lasso as the key element of defeating Max Lord.

To wrap things up further Diana could have acknowledged Antiope either when renouncing her wish and sending Steve back or when she realizes that the lasso is the answer to defeating Lord. That would have closed the loop on the introductory material.

A lot of the lessons would still be overdone, but it would have given the events as presented more logic without requiring more than two or three line changes in any scene (except for when the wish is renounced).

*Not knowing the truth about harms caused by the wishes would be a feature of the stone. Someone earlier in the thread said the god in questions was Dolos - a Greek pantheon equivalent to Loki. So the Lasso of Hestia is the logical foil for his plots.

 

[joeranger]

It wasn't a comic movie it was comical. Visually cool. Great fodder for the previews. Dumb entertainment.

 

[Cephus]

The long intro sequence had a moral attached to it delivered by Antiope (Robin Wright). It was all about truth and earned victories. When Diana wishes for Steve to be alive (ignoring whether she should have made that wish) she asked for an "unearned" outcome. Steve shows up and they seem to be happy. At this point she could have touched the Lasso of Hestia and had the truth of the situation revealed to her. She could have learned that they were harming the "Handsome Man" by having Steve displace him.* Steve could have questioned this and also had the truth revealed by the lasso. Diana could then have given Steve up for moral/ethical reasons earlier in the film instead of giving him up for an external reason (saving the world). This type of sequence would have the additional benefit of foreshadowing the lasso as the key element of defeating Max Lord.

Except at the time Diana makes her wish, she has no idea that the wish stone does anything. It's just an idle wish. She isn't cheating, she's being hum,an. The same goes for the first wish by Barbara Minerva. Neither of them knew anything about the powers of the wish stone. Therefore, the entire opening sequence is meaningless.

 

[Lightning]

Someone needs to explain radar to Patty Jenkins, because making the plane invisible doesn't actually mean anything.

That was the whole point of her using the same magic that keeps Themiscyra from being detected by the outside world. It's magically undetectable. So you can't see it and neither can Radar, or any other deliberate means of detection. The only way to find either the island or the plane is to accidentally bump into it. Of all the problems in the movie, this wasn't one of them. Everything else about the plane scene was wrong however. WWI pilot, fully fueled in a museum, and flight range to Egypt.