Ep 85: Wonder Woman 1984 Review

Topic: Wonder Woman 1984 Review

 

Mom and me both had concerns over the movie, but not that we couldn’t agree that some stuff in it was great, and other stuff wasn’t.  It’s an interesting movie none the less, especially when you look at some of the aspects that we thought were lacking.

 

Patty Jenkins - Director

Gal Gadot – Diana Prince / Wonder Woman

Chris Pine – Steve Trevor

Kristen Wiig – Barbara Minerva / Cheetah

Barbara Minerva is the 3rd known Cheetah in the Comics.  Movie Presents the powers as being the Apex Preditor, which happens to be a Cheetah, vs in the Comics, was due to an Ancient Plant God Urzkartaga. 

Pedro Pascal – Maxwell Lord

As depicted in the Comics, Maxwell Lord IV is a powerful business magnate and eventual manager of the Justice League International.  In the comics, he eventually gains mind control powers due to a gene bomb granted non-powered humans super powers.  He’s been a major bad guy in DC Comics as the guy who kicked off the events of Infinite Crisis by killing the Blue Beatle, infecting people with a cyborg virus, and eventually mind controlling Superman to beat up Wonder Woman and Batman.  Maxwell was eventually killed by Wonder Woman in order to save Superman from mind control, but not before a satellite called ‘Big Brother’ showed Wonder Woman killing him, a move that ostracized Wonder Woman for a time.  He was eventually resurrected during the Blackest Night event, and permanently resurrected during the events of Brightest Day.

 

Pascal claimed he was going for a Gordon Geko by ways of Gene Hackman’s portrayal of Lex Luthor.  Comes off more like Donald Trump.

 

 

Tangent

Blackest Night (2009)

This was an event in DC Comics which was meant to explain why Super Heroes and Villains kept coming back from the dead.  In DC Lore, Green Lanterns are merely one of 7 various Lantern Corps that operate around the universe, with each having various focuses and based off feels, IE Love, Willpower, Fear, so forth.  DC Rationalized that there was an 8th Lantern Corps, a Black Lantern Corps which controlled death, led by a bad guy named Nekron, who secretly allowed Super Heroes and Villains to keep coming back from the dead.  The intention was to seed the world with sleeper agents and activate them, turning anyone who HAD previously died in to a bad guys, including individuals like Superman, Green Lantern, and other Heroes and Villains.  This led to various non-previously-diseased super heroes taking up various other Lantern Corps in order to defeat them.

 

Brightest Day (2010)

After all Super Heroes dawn White Lantern Rings and join the White Lantern Corps, the following events post Brightest Day deal with the fallout from Blackest Night, partly dealing with resurrected individuals who had been dead for some time.  This also included Maxwell Lord, who goes about wiping his existence from everyone in the world, only to settle back in to his life of monitoring Super Humans and trying to keep them in check.

 

 

Release

Wonder Woman was originally slated for November/December of 2019, but was moved in order to avoid competing with Star Wars Episode 9, before being moved to June 2020 after seeing how well the first film did in the summer.  This also had an added effect of giving the studio more time to tweek and edit the film, but also to see it going head to head against Black Widow, another super hero movie.  The film would later be delayed multiple times due COVID 19 shutting down movie theaters: first moved to August 2020, then to October 2020, and then finally released in Theaters and Home Media via HBO Max in late December. 

 

Concern over Re-writes/edits

There’s been plenty of Rumors regarding the editing, re-writing, and changes made by the Film Studio producing the film.  The Film itself was shot back in 2018, and spent time between then and release, making various edits to the film.  The true scope isn’t fully known at this time, but it’s presumed that heavy editing changed the nature of the film.

 

Another concern for the Film comes in the fact that Warner Bros doesn’t seem to have any concrete or established plans for its DC Extended Universe, so the movie can’t necessarily do all the things the Marvel movies do, like setting up world building and dropping hints about comic references, nor can it develop the characters or point them in a direction for growth. 

 

Trivia

• Dream Stone was made from Citrine, a gem long representing wealth and prosperity, also known as a ‘Merchant Stone’ or ‘Money Stone’.
• The Dream Stone was to originally belong to a character name Sandman, the God of Dreams, another super hero. So when Maxwell Lord uses it to become the Dreamstone, it bursts into sand, which is meant to be a homage to the character.  At the time, a Sandman film was being floated and early production had started, and this might have been a tie in to it. 
• When Barbara appears later in the movie wearing furs and clothing made from the skin of animals or animal print, this is a homage to the First Cheetah in the comics, Priscilla Rich, who enjoyed wearing animal furs, and wore a magical cheetah costume.
• Diana’s wardrobe through out the film is based off Brooke Shield’s attire from the 1980s, since both were all and had similar physiques.
• This was Padro Pascal’s second Wonder Woman project, after having previously appeared on the Wonder Woman Tv Pilot in 2011.
• Patty Jenkins has gone on to describe the film as a standalone film, similar in the lines to James Bond or Indiana Jones.