Can I Improve on the Wonder Woman Movie Ever-So-Slightly?

Jesse Ferguson
Aug 28, 2017 · 13 min read

First, let me get this out of the way up front: I loved Wonder Woman. I’ve seen it three times in the theater as of this writing. It’s among my favorite comic book movies. It’s probably the best superhero origin movie I’ve seen, and it’s one of the best movies I’ve seen this year, period. I’m not going to go into all the things I love about it, since others have already done so, better and more eloquently than I could.

Nor am I going to weigh in on its strengths and weaknesses as a feminist artifact. Again, others have discussed both of these better than I ever will, and the last thing the internet needs is another straight white dude’s opinion on how a movie succeeds and fails from that perspective.

I’m just going to look at the story itself and see if I can improve it, because as great as it is, there were some pretty big issues, which I feel can be addressed with a few changes and rearrangements. So think of this as an exercise in my own story-craft, using Wonder Woman as my clay, performed in public. This is a great movie, but can I make it a tiny bit better? Can I solve some of the story problems? Let’s find out.

Obviously, SPOILERS. If you haven’t yet seen Wonder Woman, GO SEE WONDER WOMAN. Then come back. Or don’t, I’m not your boss.

All of the issues I have with the story revolve around its handling of Ares. The first one is by far the least important; I’m tackling it before the heavy stuff because it’s also the smallest, and easiest to handle:

Can we stop making environmentalists the villains in stories? Please? These folks are literally the heroic underdogs of today’s political climate (hehe), and I think that their demonization in media over the past thirty years (Poison Ivy comes to mind, as well as… that dude from The Ghostbusters) is partially to blame for the overwhelming presence of anti-science rhetoric in America. So just don’t do it. He’s the God of War. He doesn’t need any other reason to sow strife among humanity. If the world is at war, Ares is King. So let’s drop the “humanity stole the world from us and now they’re destroying it” garbage, we don’t need it.

The rest are bigger. Don’t get me wrong, the Ares setup is great — Diana believing that he’s responsible for all the evil in the world, and that using the god-killer sword to destroy him will end The Great War, sets her up for an amazing character transformation: she enters our world full of hope and naiveté, becomes disillusioned and realizes that people can be pretty shitty and Ares was only really giving them nudges; she ultimately realizes that humanity as a whole is good and that she can still be an inspiration and a hero, even if not in the way she’d originally thought. It’s what they were going for, and I love it. And they got so close.

I really thought they’d nailed it when she killed Ludendorff and nothing happened… but then: Surprise! Ludendorff wasn’t Ares, it was Sir Patrick the whole time! He’s the last person you’d expect, right? Well, yeah.

While we’re given some indication that Ludendorff might not be Ares after all (he doesn’t recognize her in her Amazon gear or do anything “god-like” in their fight, and the performance enhancers made me lean in that direction), the hints that it could be Sir Patrick are very subtle. So subtle, in fact, that I couldn’t see them, even after repeat viewings. I’m told that his offer for Etta to run the operation from his office was so he could spy on them and was therefore proof he was shady, but I interpreted that as flirting with Ms. Candy. Maybe I was reading the exchange completely wrong and it’s actually super-obvious, but to me it felt less like a twist and more like a bait-and-switch. The only thing I found nefarious about Sir Patrick was his villainous-looking mustache, but that’s hardly fair — this is a period piece, all their facial hair is dreadful.

This contributes to my biggest problem with the Ares situation. The big battle finale contradicts the entire setup: Diana is supposed to be deciding to be the hero and help humanity even though they’re shitty and killing Ares didn’t stop the war, but then she kills Ares, and… stops the war. So Diana’s big moment of ideological upheaval is totally negated, because it turns out she wasn’t wrong about humanity; she was just wrong about the identity of Ares.

Quick sidebar here: a few people I’ve talked to about this have disputed that last point — that she killed Ares and stopped the war. The typical argument is that the armistice was about to be signed anyway, and that the gas attack was supposed to stop it, and by killing Ares and destroying the bombs, the signing was allowed to proceed as planned. I take issue with this for two reasons — first, Ludendorff killed the entire war council to prevent them from signing the armistice, and we can’t assume that whoever fills the power vacuum is automatically going to be of the same inclination. Second, the armistice is never mentioned again, and our scene progression goes: Diana kills Ares > Soldiers smile and hug each other > The War is over. This very strongly implies causality, even if that wasn’t the intent.

So back to my initial thesis — can I fix these issues? I think so, but you be the judge:

The first half or so is pretty much perfect, so I don’t want to change any of that, with a couple exceptions: First, we don’t start in modern Paris. I don’t want to frame it as a flashback, but an actual period piece. Second, I’d have Hippolyta actually tell Diana the truth about her origins and purpose before she leaves the island. I’m restructuring the story so that big reveal isn’t necessary, and in fact I need that to be slightly de-emphasized.

Apart from those two minor changes, we don’t really diverge from the film until right before we get to the trenches that precede the No Man’s Land sequence. We still have that little village, but instead of being on the other side of the battle-line, it’s on a river with the only bridge within a day’s hike. It was a stop on their journey but has recently been occupied by the Germans. We find this out via the same woman, only now she’s escaped and fleeing. We still have the inter-party conflict — Diana wants to liberate the village, Steve wants to find another way across the river. The decision is made for them by German soldiers pursuing the woman, forcing the group to fight them off and engage with the occupied town. We get a very short action scene here: a little bit of gunplay, some sword work and a little bit with the lasso, just to set it up for later. This scene only lasts a minute or two, culminating in the bell-tower sequence, including the “Shield!” call-back and Charlie’s PTSD moment. That was a really nice touch and gives us quite a bit to work with later on.

One other thing about this scene — Diana is still in the purple overcoat and dress from earlier. She rejected other outfits because she couldn’t fight in them, which implies that she felt she could fight in that one, so let’s see it. More importantly, she hasn’t really become Wonder Woman yet, so we can’t reveal the armor, but it does get torn up a bit. This shouldn’t be framed for titillation, mostly just glimpses of the armor, because she’s starting to become Wonder Woman, but isn’t there yet.

After the bell-tower we pick the film’s narrative back up: the celebration, Sameer’s “I wanted to be an actor” monologue, the beer, the dancing, everything up to the Gala. Well, mostly — my version introduces a problem that isn’t in the original, and it has to do with the love scene between Diana and Steve. The problem is that, without the epic, drawn-out battle at No Man’s Land, the love scene doesn’t feel earned. We can’t really extend that scene, either, because that would diminish our No Man’s Land scene. I don’t actually have a solution for this yet, and I’m open to suggestions.

Okay, back to the gala — she sees Ares, they dance and talk, he leaves, she pursues, just like in the film. But in my version, she actually does fight him here — not here, not in the gala, but outside, on the castle battlements or courtyard or something. This time she’s fighting in the awkward blue ball gown. She’s still not Wonder Woman, so we don’t get to see the full armor yet, but this dress is a lot less battle-worthy, so it’s going to tear a lot easier and a lot bigger, and we’ll see a lot more of the armor poking through, because she’s almost there. My version of this battle is a little more super-charged than what we see in the film, because Ludendorff is Ares. We hit a lot of the same initial beats as the original Ares fight: we don’t do the whole “that’s not the God-Killer, you are” moment, because we already established her demi-godhood (though we keep the moment where Ares melts the sword with his palm, because it’s incredibly badass); he still tries to turn her, not because humanity is killing the planet, but because humans are ants, and they are gods, meant to rule them. Less Poison Ivy, more Loki or Ego; she can still kill him with magic lightning powers, only this time they’re isolated, so it makes sense that no one is staring, mouth agape, at the two gods floating in the air and shooting lightning at each other. To everyone at the gala, it would just seem like a freak storm. Hell, maybe we even flash back to the gala and show their reaction to the sudden lightning.

Her life’s purpose complete, Diana is making her way back to the gala, she sees the Germans finding seating outside for the demonstration. She looks up, puzzled, as soldiers are still loading up the gas mortar, with Dr. Poison instructing them. One of them probably asks about Ludendorff, but she tells them to proceed without him. Diana is confused that they’re still preparing the mortar, and panics when they fire it. She races back to the village, just like before, to find everyone dead, just like before. Only this time she’s not mad at Steve for stopping her, she’s horrified and disillusioned that humans are still shitty.

She spends the next ten minutes or so in shock. Steve gives his speech, pleads for her help, she doesn’t respond. He gets in hot water with Sir Patrick (who is human in my version, remember), but still manages to find out where the gas is being produced. And it’s close — if they leave in the next hour or so, they can be there by morning. Diana refuses — her mother was right, Mankind does not deserve her. She turns and starts to walk away. She’s going home, defeated. Steve calls out to her but she ignores him.

She doesn’t get far before hearing a cry for help from the woods. She initially ignores it, but can’t, because she’s not a monster, so she investigates and finds a teenage Belgian boy with a huge gash in his leg. As Diana kneels to investigate, a German soldier comes upon them both, rifle raised. Instead of firing, though, he assesses the situation, drops his rifle and starts treating the boy. He tries to apply a compress to the wound, but the boy panics. Diana helps calm him, and translates between German and French for them while he works.

As the soldier is treating the boy, between instructions he mutters a few sentences about “he’s just a kid, he shouldn’t be seeing this,” and “no one but the brass wants this war.” Between these utterances and his unhesitant care for a supposed enemy, it’s enough to convince Diana that while there are monsters in all of us, there is also good, and humanity is still worth protecting. The soldier finishes his treatment and just lets the boy go. He looks back to where Diana was, but she’s gone, too.

Cut back to Steve, Sameer, Chief and Charlie getting ready to break camp. “Where’s Diana?” “We’re on our own,”

“No, you’re not.”

Yay, Diana’s back! They all hug, and then they make their way to the trenches because the factory is on the other side of — you guessed it — No Man’s Land. Steve once again wants to find another way around, using the same “No man can cross” line. But Diana looks around at the desperate and depressed soldiers, says her “It’s what I’m going to do” line, and becomes Wonder Woman. We get the scene just as it was in the film, we see her armor fully for the first time, and this becomes our third-act action set-piece. It’s the best sequence in the movie, and it deserves to close out the film.

It’s worth pointing out that we’d have to re-choreograph some of the No Man’s Land scene, because Diana no longer has her sword. This is a matter of logistics, but also of purpose — before, when she believed the soldiers were under the influence of Ares, killing was a necessary means to the end, but now that she’s realized she’s only fighting regular humans, and that, between her armor and her natural healing, they can’t really hurt her, so she should be avoiding taking a human life at all cost. A lot of deflection, a lot of destroying weapons, disabling and subduing, but no killing. That being said, most of that scene would work if we just replace the sword-swipes with shield-swipes. Also, we’ve already seen the god revelation, so we can also throw in some lightning powers if we need some extra spectacle.

We skip the bell-tower, opting instead to have our heroes run out of the village, across a small clearing, to the factory. Diana deflects more bullets, cuts a path through the defenders, does all the awesome lasso bits, and we see Dr. Poison making her way to a car at one end of the grounds, the plane with the gas taxiing into position at the other, and a grenade rolls to Diana’s feet.

The explosion knocks her back, and we get the same beats as the movie: ear-ringing conversation, the watch, Steve running off to catch the plane. Chief sabotages the factory with Sameer and Charlie assisting, while Diana fights her way through the Germans toward Dr. Poison, but there are just too many soldiers, too much heavy artillery. She takes a few hits, gets knocked down, starts to falter. She’ll heal, but it’s taking its toll on her.

Then Steve blows up the plane while still on it, like we saw. Diana rages out, does the bracer thing to knock all the soldiers away, then leaps through the air and lands on the hood of Dr. Poison’s getaway car, upending it and sending the Doc flying. Diana lassos her in the air and slams her down on the ground. By this time Charlie, Chief and Sameer have caught up to her, and she tells them that the Doctor will finally face justice. Chief runs off to get another car, and Dr Maru’s face falls off as she says:

DR MARU: <scared> “It won’t matter, I’m dead anyway.”

DIANA: “What do you mean?”

DR MARU: “The soldiers are under strict orders not to let me be captured.” <looks back at soldiers, who are starting to stir after DIANA’S blast> “They will kill me first.”

DIANA: <angry> “You would have killed millions of people. I believe you deserve to die for your crimes.”

We see that a soldier has gotten up and taken aim at the Doc. His muzzle flashes-

And now we get the flashback to her and Steve’s conversation. In my version he says something to the effect of “It has to be me, because you have to stop Dr. Maru or she’ll just make more of the gas,” but the rest is the same, including the “I can save today, you can save the World” line, and of course, the “I Love you” bit. Flash back to the moment, we see the bullet deflected off Diana’s bracer.

With this act, Diana has defined her heroism. She is going to save humanity through hope and love, rather than fear and death. She isn’t going to kill if it can at all be helped. Dr. Maru looks up, confused, and asks, “What are you doing?” as Chief comes back with a car and they all get in and drive off as the Germans are still firing on them. We take bits of the original Peace & Love monologue from the Ares fight and we sprinkle them throughout these sequence. A line as she’s blocking the bullets with her shield, a line as they head to the car, and a line as they get ready to drive off.

Now when we cut to the end of the war, the causality makes more sense: The Germans were already out of resources, and since Diana and the party destroyed their last big play, they had no choice but to surrender. Diana did stop the war, but not by killing Ares. The movie closes out the same way we saw it, except we put the entire modern segment here at the end. That wasn’t a flashback, we’ve flashed forward to present day (maybe with a new date card?), and the note from Bruce just says, “I found the original.” We probably don’t need her voiceover, either, though I think it’d be fine to leave it.

That’s it, folks, that’s how I would have done it. I feel like it stays more consistent with the film’s central conceit, strengthens the disillusionment angle and explores it a little deeper, and manages to subvert a lot of superhero tropes (mega-epic-floaty-sky-battle, the hero who fights an enemy with an identical power set, etc…) by getting the “final boss” over with in act 2.

This has been a fun exercise, and I’m proud of what I came up with, but what do you think? Does my version stack up against the original okay? Did I miss something vitally important? Should I do more of these? Let me know.

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Jesse Ferguson

Written by

Time-Travel Expert, Zombie Apocalypse Parkour Instructor. Co-host of the Recorded Tomorrow podcast.

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