6 issues I still have with ‘Wonder Woman’

Blake Stilwell
Apr 29, 2020 3:41 PM PDT
1 minute read
Movies photo

SUMMARY

None of this has anything to do with gender or anything as asinine as that. The fact is, Wonder Woman was the best superhero movie of 2017 (yeah, I know when Logan was relea…

None of this has anything to do with gender or anything as asinine as that. The fact is, Wonder Woman was the best superhero movie of 2017 (yeah, I know when Logan was released, and I stand by this statement). And Wonder Woman is easily the best part of the current DC cinematic universe. But this is history.


World War I is a lot more complex than when Steve Trevor tells Diana that he's the good guy and the bad guys are the Germans wading ashore. It was nice of her to just take his word for it. These are my issues with this mostly-fantastic film.

Oh yeah.

Wonder Woman does not like doors.

Ok, this isn't historical, it's more of a stylistic criticism. Batman and Superman get to fly in or punch their way through a group of bad guys while Wonder Woman has to explode through the wall like an ancient, mythical Kool-Aid Man.

How did that guy not see this coming?

The Germans look completely incompetent.

They're not just the traditional, evil villainous henchmen — they're bad at it, too. Maybe that's why they need to be directed by the God of War. After chasing Steve Rogers Steve Trevor onto the hidden island of Themyscira, they encounter a group of natives who seem technologically inferior... so, obviously they have to murder them all, right?

No. World War I Germans were not the Nazis. Historically, they were as much a victim of circumstance as any other combatant in the war. Germans were arguably the best at fighting World War I. That's why they took a lot of heat in Versailles, and that's why World War II happened — the Germans didn't technically lose. A general staff, a standing professional army — these are all pioneering developments from 19th/20th-Century Germany, but you'd never know it watching Wonder Woman.

A very important lesson for Diana.

No one lives up to their established reputation.

Eventually, the Germans who land on Themyscira all get slaughtered, despite the warship off the island's coast that never gets used. Despite their guns and grenades, they get creamed by an Amazonian army using swords and arrows, which begs another question: Why are these highly-trained professional soldiers just standing in the open as projectiles are fired at them?

Sure, the Amazonians have never fought rifles before, but with all their superhuman abilities, why can't they see these as projectile weapons? And the Germans can definitely see all the well-aimed arrows raining death on them, but there they are, kneeling in the open sand, waiting for death.

Germans in Wonder Woman just seem incompetent or lazy or both. Only Steve, the American, has the good sense to take cover on the beach that day.

Remember: They did this to save the town.

Wonder Woman does not do stairs.

There's a sniper in the bell tower! Luckily everyone has cover, and he's the only enemy left, so we can just head to the church and use the stars, right? No. That would require going through a door — we talked about that, remember? Let's just throw Wonder Woman at the building and see what happens.

In their shoes, you'd have shot at Wonder Woman. And probably would have had trench foot.

The Germans didn't start World War I.

They weren't really the "bad guys," they just happened to not be on America's side. These aren't Nazis and not every German soldier was responsible for the Rape of Belgium. A lot of them were conscripted, just like the guys on the other side of No Man's Land. When it came to chemical weapons, the Allies used them on the Central Powers just as much as the other way around, and the same goes for submarine warfare, forced civilian labor, machine guns, and every other horrible thing about World War I on the Western Front.

If anything, she should be taking down Serbia and Austria-Hungary.

Through the goddamned window.

It's way different for junior enlisted people.

While watching Wonder Woman for the first time, I remembered what it was like to pull security details as an E-2 while deployed. When Diana liberated Veld from the Germans, I couldn't help but think of the circumstances surrounding it. While it's totally awesome to watch her clear a trench, the war was almost over, and everyone knew it. The armies around Veld had been there for a year, and not much progress was made to advance either way. This means that everyone was likely just hunkering down to wait out the end of the war, content not to kill or be killed.

So, imagine being a German private, coming to work in the headquarters building, dreaming of returning home to Munich or Trier or wherever to be with your family again in just a few weeks when, suddenly, a Greek Goddess bursts in and starts murdering all your friends during frühstück and kaffee.

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