3 bold steps to put the wonder back in WW84
And why the 2020 direct-to-HBO-Max release does have all the ingredients to step up its game
By now you have probably read a few opinion pieces about the second installation of the Wonder Woman movie franchise this side of the new millennium, and the fourth embodiment of the iconic superhero by everybody’s darling, the incredible presence that is Gal Gadot.
Let’s take a moment to appreciate her and imagine the movie that could have been. Looking at the main themes and character dynamics, I’m suggesting a hypothetical rewrite that might change your mind about Wonder Woman 84. Here, let me fix that, in just three bold steps:
Step 1 — A Deeper Love
Step 2 — A Clearer Legend
Step 3 — An Antagonist Closer to Home
Step 1
A Deeper Love
Looking at Diana’s “one thing” from a different angle, and how to incorporate Steve’s spirit into her level-up.
The problem:
Excuse me, while my boyfriend’s soul leaves his eternal resting place to slip into your contemporary body to enjoy a painfully longed-for reunion. Awkward? Inappropriate? Traumatizing?–Potentially. Unusual?–No.
It’s a sci-fi and comic-book classic and Captain Marvel, Betsy Braddock (aka Psylocke of the X-Men), Sylar (of “Heroes”), anybody possessed due to a Quantum Leap, the blank slates of Dollhouse, which preceded the similarly inclined hosts of West World, and most recently Ash Tyler of Star Trek Discovery can attest to. There seem to be two different ways to go about it: comedy or trauma, as this list on IMDB showcases:
https://www.imdb.com/list/ls062772651/
The simplification is causing a cringe-moment. When Diana meets the actual person who temporarily hosted Steve’s soul, they share a casual moment of attraction. Does the “handsome man” (as he is credited) feel a lingering rush of oxytocin for the supposed stranger or is it a new and unique connection about to be made? Handsome might never know.
Here we are: Just because he does not know what happened to him, does not make it right. Diana and Steve never raise the question whether it was right to use and to endanger Handsome’s body, taking it to flight, dragging it into battle across the world. What if he had been injured, permanently?
Norepinephrine and cortisol flushing Steve’s oblivious vessel don’t make for a simple happy ending.
The fix:
You don’t need Steve to appear in somebody else’s body. The repertoire of the super hero multiverse, Hypertime or not, includes a plethora of resurrection scenarios and vessels, such as golems, robots, apparitions, but even an unexplained phenomenon would have been just fine — and probably the most elegant solution when dealing with forces beyond comprehension.
Where to go from here:
Steve’s function in furthering Diana’s character development is not only to elevate herself beyond the past, but also above the clouds.
As he represents the spirit of flight with his highly adaptable skill set and emotional balance, his gift to Diana clearly presents itself early in the movie. As they soar across the sky on the 4th of July, fireworks light the Night and create an image that is hauntingly reminiscent of Northern lights, often used to visualize transcendence, traveling of souls and what you might describe as “heaven”.
A perfect setup for letting Steve go in a reprise of that scenario. Floating above the clouds, in his element. Yes, the battleground was his element, too, unfortunately, and it made for a heart-breaking solution to the “monkey paw”-problem.
A change of scenery and scenario would allow for much higher stakes:
Diana and Steve are above the clouds, in the jet, again.
She is losing her powers.
The invisibility of the jet fails.
They are being attacked by enemy fighters / forces.
They have to jump from the plane.
She grabs a lightning bolt with her lasso, but it is only a delay to an inevitable fall.
To regain her powers, she has to let Steve go right there above the clouds, letting him sink into them, into the unknown.
Failing to grab another lightning bolt, she falls after him, reaching out to him, but he is gone.
She understands.
She soars above the clouds, making flight. On her own. Without the need of her lasso.
How the legendary armor fits into that scenario, well, that is going to roll over directly into the next chapter:
Step 2
A Clearer Legend
Connecting Diana closer to the pseudo-Greek myths of the DC multiverse and letting the pieces come together.
The problems:
There is no reason for Asteria’s armor to be in the story other than cool promotional photos. It does provide some cover for Cheetah’s claws, but that function could have been fulfilled by any old leftover pieces from the forge of Hephaestos.
There is no connection between the superpowered stone and Dianas family history and the pantheon, as used by DC. Which begs the question: Has she been in touch, at all? Has she thought of reaching out?
It’s hard to believe that the armor, as iconic as it is, it sitting around in Dianas closet without a probable hinderance to its use.
The fixes:
Bringing Hephaistos into the story would not only have solved the problem of having an invisible jet and a powerful set of armor, it could have provided excellent exposition.
Maybe she found the armor, which was inspired by Wonder Woman’s change of costume in “Kingdom Come” (Alex Ross, Mark Waid), in pieces and brought it to him for repairs. She wouldn’t have to go to otherworldly places. A garage somewhere would have sufficed for the god of fire and forging to set up shop. Maybe she did not know how to use it, as it would not activate for her the way her lasso does.
Mastering flight could have been the key for the armor to accept her.
That must have been in the script at some point, because the armor has wings to make use of. Add Steve Miller’s “Fly like an eagle” to the 80s soundtrack, and you have all the pieces come together beautifully.
What it opens up for the story:
Connecting Diana to her background and dragging more of it into a contemporary setting, namely a god like Hephaestos into a relatable urban environment, makes for a more colorful and intriguing playground. In a world that has not been left by gods long ago, but is infused with their presence and their quirkiness, makes the rise of the villains more believable.
Dianas prolonged presence in this world should not only be reflected by collecting artifacts, and having access to museums, but also by being resourceful and connected.
Meeting with contacts she had made over the years, keeping tabs on other gods or demigods walking the earth, would have made her look more informed and better suited her status as a secret superhero.
These fixes so far also open up a solution for the awkward “Rushing towards the enemy, no wait, I have to get my armor”-moment right before the endgame:
Diana masters flight, as she lets go of Steve’s soul and the past.
The battle rages on. She is outnumbered.
The armor, now hearing the call of her new master, vanishes from Dianas closet and appears in the lightning storm.
In a “magical girl” transformation sequence, the armor wraps around Diana and completes her level-up.
Every piece of the puzzle of her divine legacy has fallen into place. She is the daughter of Zeus. Worthy of the armor. Prepared for a what is to come.
Step 3
An Antagonist Closer to Home
Pulling in the reigns of the story in tightly, while setting the villains loose.
The problems with the villains:
It might just have dawned on me, that the antagonistic character of “Cheetah” is a word play on “cheater” versus Diana as a champion of truth and virtue. A missed opportunity to go full monkey’s paw, here.
When warping Barbara’s origin story towards the common denominator, the source of magic being responsible for every wheel turning in the story, several opportunities for clarity and simplicity were missed.
Cheetah could have started out strong and morphed into her animal shape over time. That would have been enough. Why the second wish? There is no need for her to make a second wish to go in deeper or to commit herself further. She is already well on her way.
The contrast between Barbara and Cheetah is not harsh enough. I would have liked to see real suffering, real inability to belong, to socialize, to self-love. While Barbara lacks the faults she sees in herself, Cheetah, as a result of her overcompensation, is not nearly as cold and aggressive enough to hold anything against Diana.
The interesting codependency of her power rising while Diana’s is draining has not been explored as such and might as well have been left out of the dynamic completely, as it meant nothing for their supposed friendship and nothing for the resolution of the crisis.
Let’s talk about the big stone in the room:
If you’re going to name your story catalyst the “Dream Stone”, I fully expect you to make good use of your cross-franchise-licensing powers. Is “The Sandman” already far enough into production for WW84 having had to adjust their script? Were we robbed of the most popular of the Endless for the same reasons we were robbed of the most popular shapeshifters in the MCU, the Skrulls, in Dark Phoenix?
Dream aka Morpheus aka The Sandman would have made such an elevated, otherworldly opponent / possible ally, you cannot believe that opportunity turned to dust before our very eyes.
Whether or not the magic item was straight from the Sandman comics, remains unresolved. It’s not a ruby, but it did produce a lot of sand. It could also have been a shard from the chaos crystal, as in shattered by Superman.
Various names of gods are thrown around, but not being made use of. Maxwell Lord is not possessed by any old god but the turbocapitalism he learned to worship. To tie his identity as a bullied immigrant to his infinite greed might be a progressive idea, but does it work?
While Pedro Pascal as the magically amped-up Maxwell Lord standing in the middle of the super satellite (?) station gives us a little bit of Jim Carrey as the supercharged Riddler in Batman Forever, the setting itself is lackluster and does not really convey the large scale of the operation and the gravity of the scenario.
Maxwell himself struggles for most of the story, being drained and poisoned by the power of the stone or the stone itself, never really settling in to be as irritatingly confident and calm as the political or economic figures we know today. His greed is always fueled by his need to survive. There never is an amount of power that we might understand as superfluous rather than desperate.
Would his despair have been driven by the need to fulfill a god’s deal, it might have felt larger than life and benefitted the scenario.
My guess is, one man’s greed was supposed to be shown as reason enough to poison a whole planet and drag it into chaos. And it could have been.
The two big fixes:
Aid Maxwell’s wish fulfillment by the Endless and make his rise to power really smooth, but his life really, really hard. Give Wondy a good reason to level up and to go beyond defeating Maxwell and have her take up the god responsible for the stone.
If that’s Morpheus himself — all the better. Make him hold a speech about not wishing to be a part in all of this, about how it is really Maxwell Lord and the greed of man causing an unstoppable shift in reality.
If you’re going to stick to the location of the final battle, at least put Maxwell on a satellite station orbiting the planet, so Wondy has a reason to soar to the sky and beyond.
Then, step on up and reveal the true antagonist of the story:
A former warrior of the Amazons, the fabled hero of Themyscira, a legend walking the earth: Asteria.
At the very end of the movie, we learn that Asteria is still alive and well and in the business of using her powers in the world. Sadly, her role solely serves the purpose of surprising us with the delightful cameo of the first ever live-action Wonder Woman, Lynda Carter.
Let’s change that and bring her into the story much earlier, and reassign some of the pieces that are already there.
Let’s assume Asteria knows about Diana, daughter of Hippolyta and Zeus themselves, of all gods and people, and has kept a watchful eye out for her. Has she prepared the path for the princess? Or has she laid a trap for her?
Let’s loosely browse through thousands of years of history Asteria must have lived through. Start by connecting the prequel sequence with the movie. Make us understand the cost of her longevity. Asteria might have laid low at first, maybe hidden in a magic slumber for a few hundred of them, but eventually she would have had to live among humans and come to terms with their way of life — and inevitably the patriarchy. Her choices might have become less heroic and less feminist, and she could have become a willing participant and mighty player in the game by selling out her heritage as antiquities to the highest bidder.
She‘s more than adequate as a secret villain that Diana has been fighting for quite some time.
Asteria, corrupted by the world, hides out in a distant location in a luxurious villa. There, she holds secretive art exhibitions, poaching magic items to powerful and wealthy friends. Friends like the monarchs of Bialya and princess Bee, the late Thomas Wayne, a younger Simon Stagg...
Diana retrieves and neutralizes those items, as part of what has become her hero routine.
One day, a powerful set of items falls into her hands: Pieces of Asteria’s armor that had once been stripped from her during her legendary stand against mankind.Asteria is furious and moves to end the nuisance that is the little princess meddling in her affairs.
She puts the Dream stone in Maxwell’s path, as she knows he tries to rise beyond his status, and plots with fallen demigods to test Diana’s strength.
She is surprised by Dianas heroism and her virtue.
What it does for the movie and for us:
Having two stranded Amazons, who are playing their fields with the help of gods and demigods, set against each other, one blessed with a divine heritage, one cursed by “losing her wings” and her integrity, weaves a story much closer to home. That home being Themyscira and also the generational conflict of young women today and the women who came before them and made very different choices.
While the film does not miss out on touching the subject of toxic masculinity, it is too focused on solving it. Noteworthy moments:
• The two criminals trying to talk down their buddy as he dangles the kid over the mall court.
• Maxwell finally revealing his truth to his son and making amends.
While we understand where Cheetah is taking the wrong turn from overlooked nerd to apex predator, we don’t see anything beyond physical strength being abused by women who contribute to the perpetuation of capitalism and consumerism and toxic masculinity.
A malignant version of Asteria could have given us just that. The lie being the success of women in the patriarchy. The truth being true power in empathy and holding others accountable for their actions — but also yourself. If you must stick to the juxtaposition of truth vs. lies, Diana presents us with virtues, while her opponents lose themselves in vices.
Appealing to the fallen heroine’s moral fiber and turning Asteria from villain to ally makes for more personal, more relatable moments of truth than using the lasso to talk to every living and breathing person on the planet.
Stepping it up
Hopefully, I have made a point here, that the movie already has all the right ingredients, but stumbled over a few of the preparation and execution steps.
As far as optics are concerned, I really wish it would have been as colorful and bold as the promotional art.
I enjoyed the experience and the potential of WW84, as it opened up a range of possibilities to draw different dynamics from. While the missed opportunities have led to some dissatisfaction, I did enjoy spending more time with Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman and I am excited for more. In fact, as much as possible.
In the current age of entertainment that supersaturates us with continuous attempts at portraying male superheroes, such as Batman, Spider-Man and — not as frequently, but most prominently — Superman, I want to believe we have a right to get as much wondrous women and LGBTQ role models as we need. So please, everybody, let’s step it up!
Respectfully,
Eve
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