Wonder Woman Movie

This is a superhero universe. There are all kinds of ways to gain and regain superpowers.

‘Wonder Woman 1984’ Opening Boosts Movie Theater Stocks, But AMC Loses More Ground

Yeah, I do think Max Lord's desperate attempt to be on top did hint at his backstory.

Also I managed to get into a Twitter argument with Thomas Astruc about Barbara and Max Lord today. Yay me.

What happened ?

Like, Miraculous Ladybug's Thomas Astruc?

Yup.

He made a tweet about the movie and its themes, I argued that I liked what the movie did with Max Lord and Cheetah. He argued that Max should have been more evil and gone down hard, with Barbara redeeming herself and helping Wonder Woman beat Max Lord. I argued that the movie set up the ending in part by having Barbara refuse to see what she's lost or even consider recanting multiple times, and that Max giving up everything he gained through the stone was a fitting end for him

Does max even do anything that bad here. From what I've heard everything bad that happens is a total accident on his part and not intentional ? With the only real expectation being creating the shield using life force.

https://twitter.com/Thomas_Astruc/status/1343936442461024258 Here's a link, and hopefully it should be easy to find the whole thread from there. But Astruc really thinks Max Lord was terrible and got off light. The side effects of his actions did cause a lot, but he wasn't the one who wished for nukes. And even if Wondy doesn't punish him specifically, revoking his wish means he is broke, bankrupt, and might even be liable for lawsuits if the accusations of him running a ponzi scheme would hold in court.

Yeah, that's about the size of it. Of course, he nearly starts World War III because of how much he's taking from people, which is a little bit of an oopsie on his part.

There is a bit of a plot hole during the ending when the soldiers escort him back to DC to reunite with his son after he renounces his wish, since that means he doesn't have any control over them anymore. I guess the military was feeling generous that day.

Edited by chasemaddigan on Dec 29th 2020 at 7:15:01 AM

Eh, it wasn't even because of that. People like the president were wishing for nukes, which was causing tensions to escalate. Max just didn't care about what wishes he was granting.

Max is blinded by his greed but he certainly does not have altruistic reasons or intentions. The best you can argue is that he is not as ruthless as he tries to convince himself that he is. He needed the Morality Pet of his son, coupled with the lasso of truth, in order to be convinced to renounce his wish. It proves he has morals, but runs into Wants a Prize for Basic Decency.

The more I think of Barbara's story the more I like how it played out. Her wish was based on thinking Diana was just naturally the way she was, and learned Diana had superhuman abilities complimenting her "perfection." Beyond the magic of the wish removing her empathy she was bitter at Diana personally feeling like the secret of her image was a deception. This has significant subtext when it comes to numerous class conflicts.

Max is an interesting take on greed, in that he's fine with everyone else getting everything they want alongside him as long as they worship him and give him what he wants in the process. He doesn't seem to be trying to sow destruction with his wishes (even the ones that would blatantly cause horrible aftereffects even without the drawbacks of the wishing stone), he just doesn't care about the consequences of his actions and is just doing what he wants to get what he wants.

I think part of what sells that is that Max doesn't have a plan. He's impulsive, and barely knows what he's doing - but is still just smart enough not to fall into the trap of Evil Is Not a Toy. He's taking things he needs right now, and then that snowballs into taking things to deal with the consequences of what he took last time, and so on. He only escalated into taking life force from people (and taking the authority to reach everyone in the world) when it became clear that using the stone was killing him, but naturally he couldn't bring himself to stop using the stone because he wants so much and doesn't think what he has it worth it.

He basically has zero intention to hurt anybody (except people who insult him), but also zero empathy for anyone who gets hurt as a result of his actions, and zero foresight or wisdom about whether his actions are going to hurt people in the first place. At the end of the day, like a drunken idiot with a shotgun I'd argue Max is more dangerous than necessarily evil.

Edited by KnownUnknown on Dec 29th 2020 at 4:34:08 AM

Max may have not wished for nukes but surely he could’ve just tricked Not-Reagan into making an offhand wish for something insignificant rather than buttering him up with an elaborate offer that was sure to have massive consequences coming from one of the most powerful people on the planet.

Edited by Tuckerscreator on Dec 29th 2020 at 4:38:17 AM

Mike Nelson, Destroyer of Worlds. He's not an intentional world ender or anything. He's just really impulsive about his greed and getting what he wants. That he just can't see the effect it will have.

Edited by miraculous on Dec 29th 2020 at 4:34:46 AM

I think it's kind of funny how in any other movie, Maxwell wishing to become the Dream Stone would've just turned him into stone. His whole plan could've backfired before he even started.

Where's the fun in that? If you're going to cause civilization-ending chaos, why not let this Trump-wannabe figure get exactly what he wants and then use him as a proxy to end the world with wish abuses? That should have been Max's first hint that he didn't escape the curse.

Ok, I'm finding kind of weird that people are taking Maxwell as not being evil and excusing him (as I'm sure Maxwell is doing in his mind himself), shifting all the blame to the ones making the wishes.

For one, the ones making the wishes have no idea that it will came true, so it's not their fault that they wish something catastrophic. The one who knows is Maxwell, and even knowing it, let them wish for it to, as it's both clear when he takes the Araab oil tycoon guards and says to him that he will now deal with the disaster that going to occur without them to protect him, or when he hears the president talk about the nukes before wishing for it. He could've simply manipulated what they would've wished for, as he did with other people to get what he needed at the moment, but didn't regardless of the bad outcome it would come from it.

While I agree that Maxwell is simpatethic, and buy his redemption, it doesn't change the fact that the guy was selfish in his endeavor, with a total disregard of how his actions affected other people, and took it to far, and that makes him evil before his realization, and agree he got away to easy for all the trouble he caused. This is simply a case of Draco in Leather Pants, which seems to include the director herself.

I generally enjoyed this movie but I did take issue with something the movie doesn't point out and snowballs into an issue. Wonder Woman has not had an easy life by some respects to be sure, but she sure has had it easier than a lot of people in the last 50 years of the movie's timeline and someone might have a very valid reason to want to change the status quo. Cheetah is not wrong that the world of her time was not wonderful. In fact Reagan's America was pretty awful for someone not as privledged as her and she ultimately just returns the world to the status quo. Unlike Black Panther which was honest enough to admit that the Villian Had A Point even though Killmonger was more reprenhensible than this version of Barbara Minerva was.

I mean the way Max wanted to change the Status Quo was non-specific and can only produce chaos. It would be one thing if he specifically wanted to use his reality warper abilities to end poverty or racism or something.

Well yeah that I agree with. It isn't Max's portrayal that I take issue with, it is Cheetah and everyone else at the end we see make such a wish that immediatly backfires just so the climax can happen because it happens so late in the movie. We aren't given any idea why the man who wished to be king shouldn't be, for one example or the poor waitress who wished to be famous just has random people pounding on the door and she looks distressed for a second.

I wonder if it might have been better if they went with the original version of Barbara Minverva who was Deconstructed Character Archetype of the Adventure Archaeologist. Instead of being a charming antihero, she was a liar, murderer and thief with no respect for foreign cultures and only cared about claiming their treasures. That would have fit in just as well with this movies themes about greed, if not better.

Probably would have been less derivative than the nebbish nobody whose jealous and seeks power.

Oh, I'm not excusing Max Lord. Just saying he's not actively malicious, and while the movie ends with him reuniting with his son after giving up everything with the stone... remember that before the stone he was about to go bankrupt and potentially get charged for financial crimes. So he isn't exactly going to get off free and clear and dandy.

The thing about Barbara is that being an archeologist/genologist (or any sort of degreed professional) is not a working class character. She feels overlooked in the upper middle class society she is a part of. That is something touched upon with Lord as well, people with a little bit of money trying to convince others that have a lot of money.

I'm ambivalent about the idea that the movie is "punching down".

The opening scene makes the message about truth kind of uncomfortable, because child!Diana doesn't really seem to be cheating. Instead she's basically using cleverness to compensate for a physical setback.

So, I can kind of see how people could take away that the movie's message is "unless you manage to succeed by pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps or from having built in advantages, any success you have is cheating which will result in (deserved) bad consequences". Although it definitely takes some deliberateness to get there.

It kind of helps that a lot of the wishes we see are implicitly or explicitly people wanting to crush their enemies. Although it makes some practical difference whether the person/ruler wishing is broadly an oppressor or an oppressee, but it seems reasonable that such a wish would have negative consequences and that at the end of the day, everyone would renounce that wish.

Edit - Regarding Barbara, I tend to think a better approach would be something like the Spectacular Spider-Man version of Eddie Brock - Basically, someone who is subtly unpleasant and antagonistic even when they are the hero's friend and apparently very likable, so that the inevitable Face–Heel Turn comes across as organic.

The evil Adventure Archaeologist also sounds like a good approach. I am kind of uncomfortable though with the general idea of pagan gods and their relics being avatars of evil.

Edited by Hodor2 on Dec 30th 2020 at 10:26:38 AM