Character Analysis: Wonder Woman (WW84)

Finally! The sequel of DCEU's Wonder Woman came to Europe and I could watch it on the weekend.

Everyone who knows me personally knows that I'm a huge WW fangirl and I couldn't wait to see what Patty Jenkins and her crew made with one of my favourite heroines.

... well, to be honest, I have mixed feelings about it.

It's not because of Gal Gadot's performance as Wonder Woman or the other brilliant actors, or great visuals and epic fights. It's more about the little details in between and the storytelling of itself that lacked depth and clarity in some scenes.

BUT this article is about Wonder Woman, Diana Prince, and her motivations, her powers, and her change during the movie.

So, let's get to it, my fellow nerds.

Young Diana and her desire to be a great warrior

In the first scenes, we're back on Themyscira, the Amazonian island and Diana's home, and it's SO freaking epic!

We see a young Diana challenging older warriors in badass Amazonian olympic games and it's obvious that this young girl has some amazing skills. She's clever and uses her size as an advantage to beat the older warriors in various sporting disciplines.

But she gets too cocky and eventually loses. Of course, young Diana is angry and disappointed with herself. She could have won!

Her teacher Antiope tells Diana that she cheated and therefore should accept that she lost. Also, there's nothing bad about losing. It's part of the journey and losing doesn't determine greatness.

Still Diana struggles to accept that she failed. She wants to be a great warrior.

So, from the first moment we meet her, we know:

Diana wants to be a great warrior. She wants to be great!

To say it in typical storytelling terms:

The character's goal/desire is to be a great warrior.

Okay, got it.

Adult Diana and her desire to get her boyfriend back

Then there's a time jump. We're back in the 80s!

Hell yes! Man, so many good opportunities for great 80s smash songs ... or not? I mean, we can just have a normal soundtrack that has nothing to do with 80s ... I guess?

Yeah, that was one of the things that sucked. I mean, I love 80s music and this is a movie that happens in the 80s! But what happened to the music? Not that I don't admire Hans Zimmer and his epic soundtracks, but I'm just saying that this was a lost opportunity.

But back to our main girl:

Now, we see Diana as Wonder Woman kicking ass, saving kids, and swinging her lasso of truth around. She definitely has her role as Wonder Woman figured out by now and has helped a lot of people by doing heroic stuff like throwing bad guys on police cars.

When she's not Wonder Woman, Diana works in a museum and is a loner with a broken heart. She still griefs the loss of Steve Trevor, her love interest from the first movie.

Which is fine. That's a good character reveal, but it also made me wonder how this would come into play with her first initial introduced goal to become a great warrior.

Obviously, she is already great in what she's doing as Wonder Woman and Diana Prince. She's successful, sociable, kind, loves her day- and nighttime jobs. The only missing part is her boyfriend, Steve .

YIEKS!

Sorry, but this is such a clichée story for female characters. She's super successful, a badass, loved and respected, but the one thing she misses in her life is: LOVE.

I mean, come on? Really?

I'm not saying this is bad storytelling. But I just expected more from a modern version of Wonder Woman. I mean, yes, she's all about love, kindness, and grace.

But how will this "I want my boyfriend back" play into the "I want to be a great warrior"?

Does that mean that Diana can only be great when she gives up her only love?

Or does she need to decide between being a great warrior or love?

Spoiler Alert: Yes, that's exactly what she needs to do.

The struggle between love and greatness

Moving forward, Diana gets a chance to have Steve back when she makes a wish with an ancient artefact that just randomly pops up in her museum and seems to be kind of a bad gift from a God of deception and lies who won't be named ... ?

Yeah, don't get me started with the weird wish stone from the "wanna-be-Voldemort-God". In the beginning this was a nice initiator for the story, but in the end it was just confusing with all the wishes and the renouncing of these wishes ... like whaaaaat? How? Why?

So, Diana has Steve back and is happy. Yay! Finally! She got her love back and she enjoys the time with him. While they both chase after the wish stone to stop all the chaos that it's creating, Diana slowly loses her god-like powers.

In a car chase she gets wounded by a bullet and endangers kids because she isn't capable of saving them. As Diana loses her powers, Barbara (her new co-worker and frenemy) who had wished to be like Diana, gains strength and confidence.

Therefore, when it comes to a fight between Barbara and Diana because Barbara wants to stop Diana from destroying the wish stone it's obvious that Diana can barely defend herself against Barbara.

She gets knocked down hard and realises that if she wants her powers back, she needs to give up Steve.

And why you might be wondering like me while I was watching the movie?

Because apparently the wish stone is from a bad God, and therefore every wish expects something in return. Like, you get a wish, but you gotta give something back.

In Diana's case: She gets Steve, but loses her powers.

Ah! Okay ... okay, okay ... I got it ... I think.

Now, we're kind of back to her main goal and her big emotional dilemma:

If Diana wants to save the world, she needs to lose Steve ... again.

Huh, kinda like in the first movie ...

Oh no, wait. This time, when she does give Steve up, she can wear this super shiny armour with wings and even learns how to fly!

... wait, what?

The shiny goodie in the end that makes no sense, but desperately wants to reconnect to the beginning

Okay, let's recap what we have so far:

First, we meet young Diana who wants to be a great warrior, but needs to learn to be patient and that her time will eventually come to step into the footsteps of the Amazonian greatest warrior that protected them and wore this shiny armour with wings.

This little scene in the beginning with Diana and her mother establishes the golden armour for later. But it also gives us as the audience a visual cue for: "When Diana wears this golden armour, she'll be the greatest of them all! Yay!"

Then, we meet the adult Diana who is already a great warrior. I mean, she's Wonder Woman, for God's sake!

How can she be any greater than that?

BUT she's lonely. So, that's not so great. No worries, the wish stone is here to help you out. Wish-wishy-wish and poof: Steve is back!

This is perfect. Diana is finally happy. She can be a great warrior and have her lost love back in her life. Everything's awesome, but then ... FUCK!

The wish stone is actually bad, and she loses her powers when the world really needs her.

Now, Diana needs to make a hard decision. An awful and heart breaking decision because she needs to give up the only things she has ever wanted: Poor Steve.

And when she does that, she transforms into the flying super warrior with a golden armour! DAAAAMN!

So, here's the visual cue for us: Yes, Diana is the greatest warrior now even though before that moment there was never even a question about it.

Also, she wears this super armour like ... two minutes tops? Before Barbara ,who meanwhile has transformed to her super villain self (Cheetah), attacks her and rips the armour apart ...

I mean, this was it? That's what the armour was for?

Tbh, I expected a bit more.

This armour was established very early one and was supposed to be super important to Diana. It belonged to the greatest warrior ever who sacrificed herself to save the amazons.

So, yeah, this armour should be a freaking big deal for Diana and it should have shown her full transformation to her greater self.

Instead, it was just a shiny goodie in the end that was more like:

"Btw, if you didn't get it, but Diana is super great now after she decided to give up Steve for her powers. That's why she can fly now and has this shiny armour that she actually doesn't need at all because it gets easily destroyed by her frenemy in the next five minutes. Also, spoiler alert, but she even doesn't need it to beat the bad guy in the end. She just needs to talk to him, no shiny armour or super powers needed."

What does this mean for Diana's arc now? How did she change? Did she really change?

Regarding to her first desire/goal as young Diana (becoming a great warrior), there was no change at all. Adult Diana was already a great warrior but with a broken heart and struggling with loneliness, but this didn't make her any less great.

But if we look at the adult Diana who was lonely and wanted nothing more than having Steve back because she couldn't move on, we have a clear change in the end. Because after she renounced her wish and Steve died again, she started to enjoy the world more and even seemed interested in other men.

So, I guess, her actual goal all along was: Get over the dead guy.

What I would have wanted for "Wonder Woman 84"

I thought about this a lot since I watched the movie.

In my opinion, the movie tried to juggle to many things:

There was the talk about the greatest warrior and the golden armour, then there was Diana's grief for Steve that she needed to overcome, and Barbara who became Cheetah for a while because she finally wanted to be unique and cool, and then there was the main bad guy who was just a bad dad who wanted his son to be proud of him and shouldn't have played with an ancient wish stone ...

A wish stone that is so mysterious that you don't really get how it works and get more and more confused during the movie.

FOCUS ON ONE THEME!

I believe Wonder Woman should have just focused on one theme. One main goal for Diana. And I think this should have been her acceptance that she can't have a normal life with a family because she's meant for more.

You don't need to show us that she becomes the greatest warrior because she already is. She's freaking Wonder Woman!

Also, this was the theme of the first movie: Her becoming Wonder Woman and kicking Ares's ass. And losing her love in this battle.

Better let her struggle with being Wonder Woman. Maybe she already has enough of all that saving and always putting other's needs before her own. And during the movie she learns that being "normal", without powers is actually not what she wants and that serving humanity means sacrificing her needs.

There's a scene in the beginning, when Diana talks with Barbara and tells her that she envies her for her normal life.

Well, heeeeello!?

This is like the perfect set-up for her desire to be normal and not wanting to be Wonder Woman anymore.

FOCUS ON ONE VILLAIN

If we'd follow this theme for Diana, this could play perfectly into Barbara's development, too. Barbara wants nothing more than to be like Diana, and Diana wants to be like her.

If that isn't some spicy juice for a friends become foes set-up, I don't know what is.

Also, rather than have cute Steve coming back (which is sweet, but kind of just a repeat of the first movie with losing him again to save the world), you could focus on the relationship between Barbara and Diana that eventually leads to them becoming enemies, like Cheetah and Wonder Woman in the comics.

Man, I would have loved to see these two women struggling to stay friends while their values shift apart until they become enemies.

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