The critics agree that Wonder Woman is the best-reviewed film in the DCEU, but the good news for everyone is that Diana’s origin story makes Batman V Superman even better as a result. Those who found Zack Snyder’s Justice League lead-in not to their tastes, and the changes to BvS‘s Ultimate Edition not much of an improvement, Wonder Woman may remain the only DCEU movie they enjoy on repeat viewings. But if the showdown between DC’s biggest icons seemed like a promising, or at least interesting but ultimately flawed story, the depth and added weight behind Diana’s character may improve the film more than one might expect.
With Wonder Woman flying past $300 million box office already – and possibly on pace to make more money than Man of Steel – some fond of Diana may wish to simply look forward, not backward (and that includes the Wonder Woman Amazons returning for Justice League). Having gone to the trouble of seeing what new connections, ideas, DCEU themes, and specific plot clarifications arise thanks to Wonder Woman, we have to recommend that curious fans see if the points on our list catch their interest.
Needless to say, there will be plenty of DCEU SPOILERS in our look at How Wonder Woman Makes Batman V Superman Better.
“Gods Hurl Thunderbolts”
For reasons that should be perfectly obvious to anyone who has seen Wonder Woman, the scene in which Alfred addresses the apparent changing of “rules” in torturing criminals carries some new meaning. When Alfred corrects his employer and states that things have most certainly changed, it’s impossible to hear the following words the same: “Men fall from the sky. The gods hurl thunderbolts.” Considering that Wonder Woman‘s own history of humanity’s creation includes both those exact features, it pairs the final battles between Diana and Ares, and Superman and Zod. In the former fight, the bout itself is based on literally hurling thunderbolts.
Alfred continues to explain that when the gods do battle on Earth, or make this plane of ‘mortals’ their backdrop – as Ares, and Zod have – the result is that “innocents die. That’s how it starts, sir. The fever. The rage. The feeling of powerlessness. It turns good men cruel.” It’s a little eerie how much this claim resonates, since the notion that men are inherently “good,” and that they grow “cruel” only through a hunger for power (all stemming from envy, anger, and hate) are the basic thesis statements of Wonder Woman.
Unfortunately, the pattern has begun all over again with Bruce in particular – adding further fuel to the idea that men don’t need to be directly steered by Ares to be corrupted… unless you argue that Lex Luthor is now the one manipulating events, and trusting that all key players will react, and attack, as he assumes. More on that later.
“You Know, Dad Was Born in East Germany”
Wonder Woman may end with Diana saving the day, and The Great War ending in a ceasefire, but the wars of man were already set in motion. Even if we know that Diana didn’t “turn her back” on the world, she does admit to turning away from it with Ares defeated. It’s hard to blame her, considering how the so-called ‘good guys’ she was fighting alongside in her own solo movie handled Germany upon their defeat in World War II (which spun out of Germany’s defeat in World War I). In short, dividing the country up into sections each conquering country could claim – with East Germany falling under Soviet rule until 1990. By then Lex Luthor’s father had already spent his childhood in the controlled region, “marching in parades, waving flowers at tyrants.”
The likely history, then, is of Lex’s father growing up in the forgotten mess left behind by foreign powers. Only in adulthood did he clearly leave for America, have a son, and grow his empire in that child’s name. Consider how Lex views even virtuous heroes or ‘defenders’ as far darker than most realize, and you’re pulling at a compelling thread. Also of note: Germany largely lost the war Diana fought in by trying to knock out one superpower (France) before their other neighbor (Russia) could attack. Damaged, but aggressive and power-hungry trying to outsmart threats on either side… well, that describes Lex just as well.
The Metahuman Thesis
As manic as he may be in pursuit of power and authority, you have to hand it to Lex Luthor for realizing that Superman wasn’t the only superhuman to have walked the face of the Earth throughout history. The Kryptonite weapon he proposes is intended to deter more than just the Man of Steel, since he believes “there are more of them… the metahuman thesis. More likely than not, these exceptional beings live among us. The basis of our myths. Gods among men upon our little blue planet here.” We learn later in the film that he’s already found proof of one immortal Greek warrior woman, but it’s a solid theory to begin with, since we now know that it’s correct on even its most fundamental assumption.
If Diana would be defined as a “metahuman” due to her being the daughter of Zeus, then it stands to reason many other gods, demigods, and children of gods were similarly shifted from history to myth. Hercules seems just as likely a candidate proving Lex’s point, and may even be referenced in a Wonder Woman easter egg. But if you go one step further and assume that Zeus, Ares, and the rest of the Olympian Gods were also shifted from actual figures to ‘gods,’ Lex may give another hint towards the Gods of Apokolips actually creating the Greek Pantheon.
In a packed Captain America: Civil War, Chadwick Boseman’s T’Challa stood out from the crowd, drawing both critical praise and fan adoration. Next February, audiences will get to see him lead a movie of his own. Today, Marvel released the first trailer for Black Panther, which is slated for a February 16, 2018 release. Already Twitter is abuzz with praise for the film’s visuals and cast, as well as eager speculation over the plot itself. Even with months left before the film’s release, the hype is incredibly, incredibly real. Below are twelve things that the trailer revealed that excited us the most.
Wakanda World-Building
Director Ryan Coogler and cinematographer Rachel Morrison look to have outdone themselves crafting the rich and beautiful world of Wakanda. The trailer is striking not only in it’s use of color but also in the way it visually establishes Wakanda. The culture of the country easily comes through in this one teaser alone, and one can only imagine how magnificent it will be in the final film. The blend of tradition and technology is well-balanced, and the production design is equally stellar. Much like the world of Asgard and then nine realms in the Thor films, Coogler and the Black Panther team faced a challenge in bringing the fictitious Wakanda to life. It seems they have more than risen to the challenge.
Costume Design
Another stunning element of the visuals in the trailer was the standout costume design. From Erik Killmonger’s (Michael B. Jordan) armor to the regalia worn by Wakandan leaders, such as the pictured above character played by Isaach De Bankolé, the costumes match the setting perfectly. The costumes were designed by Ruth E. Carter, a two-time Academy Award nominee who’s work ranges from historical films such as Amistad, Malcom X, and Selma to genre films such as Serenity. She has most definitely outdone herself here, and the film looks to have Marvel’s most stunning costumes yet. Could some awards season buzz for costume design be in the movie’s future?
Wakandan Technology
One of Wakanda’s greatest secrets is that it is perhaps the most technologically advanced country in the MCU’s. This is due in part to Wakanda having a rich store of vibranium, the metal that makes up Captain America’s (Chris Evans) shield. Audiences got a taste of Wakandan technology in Civil War with T’Challa’s powerful Black Panther suit, but Black Panther will bring a new level of futuristic technology to the Marvel ‘verse. There’s a reason that Ulyesses Klaue (Andy Serkis) says that the country was called El Dorado by explorers. Of course, not everything is perfect in Wakanda….
Michael B. Jordan as Erik Killmonger
The trailer gave us a first look at Michael B. Jordan’s villainous turn as Erik Killmonger, an exile from Wakanda determined to overthrow T’Challa’s rule. This marks the third time that Jordan and Coogler have teamed up; they previously worked together on Fruitvale Station and Creed. An Entertainment Weekly article on the trailer said that Coogler is hesitant to reveal the background for Killmonger yet, but that in the comics it is one of the darkest villain origin stories. Marvel movies have often struggled with crafting compelling villains to match their heroes, but between Jordan’s talent and that tease, Killmonger might emerge as one of Marvel’s most frightening and effective villains. He’s also not the only villain to appear in the trailer; we get a brief glimpse of Winston Duke as M’Baku/Man-Ape, as well as M’Baku and Killmonger locked in combat. T’Challa will need all the help he can get to take on this crew of villains.
Fans of Brendan Fraser’s The Mummy movies disappointed by the Tom Cruise reboot may be in luck – an Easter egg suggests Rick O’Connell, Imhotep, and co. are still canon.
Although the Dark Universe is ostensibly based on Universal’s 1930s classic monster films, the instigating creature – the resurrected Mummy – is better remembered for a previous remake. Back in 1999, Stephen Sommers delivered one of the best summer blockbusters of a disappointing decade by taking a character best known for being an easy last-minute Halloween costume and putting it in an Indiana Jones-hued action-adventure.
Fun, creepy and full of great characters, The Mummy was a massive success, leading to two direct sequels and spin-off series The Scorpion King that, despite not being great, still ran for four movies between 2002 and 2015. There were once talks of a fourth film in the main series, but they died with the emergence of the Dark Universe (and its scathing reviews). Or did they?
The Mummy 1999 Easter Egg
The Mummy 2017 is mostly very removed from what’s come before. It’s set in the modern day (the previous remake took place in the 1920s), moves the action from Egypt to England (with the instigating tomb in Iraq), and while its villain is, again, primarily motivated by using one of our heroes to resurrect an ancient force, the story goes off in a completely different direction.
But Alex Kurtzman isn’t totally ignoring the O’Connells. In the film’s second act, Tom Cruise’s Nick Morton finds himself the headquarters of Prodigum, a secret organization that collects and catalogs rare antiquities related to a variety of strange creatures. When he discovers their motives aren’t totally pure he gets in a tussle with Russell Crowe’s Dr. Jekyll (or rather his dark side) while Annabelle Wallis’ Jenny Halsey tries to find a way to break them up. When scrabbling for a weapon, she uses one of the Prodigum’s acquisitions – a golden book with a strange lock.
This is the Book of Amun-Ra, a mythological item first introduced in The Mummy ’99. It was one of two essential MacGuffins in the film along with the obsidian Book of Death; the latter was able to resurrect ancient forces, while the former sent them back to the afterlife. The golden version was seemingly lost forever in sequel The Mummy Returns when it’s dropped it into pit of scarabs in Hamunaptra, the City of the Dead.
Of course, even though the Dark Universe appearance looks to be the same prop, or at the very least a near perfect recreation, it’s more intended as a neat easter egg for long-time Mummy fans. But could it be something more? Is Kurtzman actually saying the original films happened in continuity?
Why Brendan Fraser’s Films Are In Canon
The big difference between Fraser and Cruise’s Mummy is that while the former was just a rollicking one-off summer movie (initially), the latter is the springboard to one of Universal’s biggest gambles, a shared universe that – if box office and critical failure doesn’t crush it first – will unite Morton (now a Mummy) and Jekyll with Frankenstein, the Invisible Man, the Wolf Man, the Creature from the Black Lagoon and maybe even the Phantom of the Opera and Hunchback of Notre Dame. As such the film is full of setup for the future, with easter eggs and world building galore. Is the Book of Amun-Ra part of it?
Here’s where those aforementioned differences between remake series come into play – there’s very little if anything to contradict the two Mummy films being in the same timeline, with different cursed Egyptians, tomb locations and, indeed, magic explanation, all separated by the better part of a century. To say that Fraser’s films work in Dark Universe going forward is very simple; the writers just need to make sure they don’t contradict a few simple things. To be sure, it’s not even hard to explain the Easter egg; the Book was lost, not destroyed, and as a pivotal artifact is unlikely just get left to the sands of time. If Prodigium really is as maliciously far-reaching as presented, they’re sure to have hunted it down at some point – the Imhotep incident may even be what instigated the organization.
In fact, this would be a rather nice move for other remakes to follow through on – because these are contemporary, action-based versions, it’s not too damaging to pay homage to the 1930s classics and other efforts by making them officially in-continuity. Imagine Frankenstein saying he’s following work of an ancestor or the Invisible Man being a hereditary affliction. Heck, while the film itself is despised, people would surely be pretty excited to have Hugh Jackman’s Van Helsing pop up (if The Mummy hasn’t already introduced another version of the character). Ironically, the only film that couldn’t work in this vein due to the character’s immortality is Dracula Untold, once intended to be Dark Universe’s progenitor.
Alex Kurtzman has actually discussed the Easter egg with Digital Spy and while admitting it is primarily just a wink, the director said its ambiguity leading to a discussion such as this is intentional:
“You have to pay homage and tribute to everything that came before. I have nothing but respect for all the films that have been made, and the filmmakers who’ve made them. To deny their existence in any way, I think would have been incredibly rude. So, all of those films are part of the history of the Universal monsters, and as such I thought, rather than say it’s not part of the canon, let’s say, ‘No, it is part of the canon; we’re just taking it somewhere new’.”
When pressed, Kurtzman even jokingly said “Sure! Why not? You’re free to quote that.” Of course, this is all a bit cheap – it’s tying in beloved movies with no purpose beyond appeasing fans – but then who actually expected O’Connell to turn up?
Even if it is just a bit of fun, there’s no avoiding what it means: yes, the Brendan Fraser movies are canon. Now if only we could replace the Tom Cruise version with them…
When Wonder Woman arrived in Batman V Superman, fans were dying to know what caused her to spend a full century hiding from the world – a question that her origin movie in World War I promised to do. The film succeeded in showing why Wonder Woman is a better hero than Batman or Superman as the DCEU heads towards Justice League, but with Wonder Woman itself ending on something of an inspiring, victorious ending… fans are starting to wonder if her claim in BvS is a plot hole unaddressed. If Wonder Woman managed to end the war and defeat her enemy, why did she turn her back on mankind for the next hundred years?
It’s a question more and more fans and critics are asking, with even director Patty Jenkins explaining Diana’s words, from her point of view. Still, the movies themselves are what most fans will be seeing, and using to answer this question. Unfortunately, the addition of Wonder Woman’s story only makes BvS better if the audience remembers to reconsider what they used to believe. In this case, Diana’s words – and her reason for being in the movie at all – may have changed in light of her very own movie.
We’re here to help fans understand, and answer the question of Why Wonder Woman ‘Walks Away’ From Mankind After WWI.
What Diana Said vs. How Fans Understood It
To get to the bottom of whether Diana’s pre-BvS story is even a plot hole, we need to go back and pay close attention not to what fans took away or interpreted from her words in Dawn of Justice, but the words themselves. As she and Bruce Wayne stood a distance from Clark Kent’s grave, she let her latest ally know that she was less than optimistic about his mission to unite metahumans in one team. The line is famous now, but here it is, in case anyone’s memory is a little foggy:
“A hundred years ago I walked away from mankind; from a century of horrors. Men made a world where standing together is impossible.”
Combining her claim of “walking away from mankind” a century earlier with the photo of her in World War I, fans inferred that whatever happened during World War I soured her on mankind to the point of abandoning them to their fate. With the majority of the movie seeing Diana tracking down the photograph proving her existence and immortality, and resisting any urge to join Batman or Superman, it seemed safe to assume that was how she had spent the previous century.
She may not have been able to physically leave the world of mankind, meaning she had “walked away from mankind” in the sense that she had lived a secret life, hiding her powers, having had whatever heroic urges brought her into WWI quelled by a brutal war that led into “a century of horrors.” Again, that’s how audiences interpreted the words, with only her appearance in Batman V Superman to inform them. But that’s not the case anymore.
Diana Hasn’t Been ‘Hiding’ – And That’s Important
It should come as no surprise that seeing Wonder Woman only improves Batman V Superman – even aside from the surprisingly detailed Diana story running through the movie. Mainly, it’s the obvious benefits of seeing how Diana turned from a wide-eyed, optimistic crusader for worldly protection into the wiser, stoic, more guarded woman we see in the modern DCEU. But in terms of actual, material links between Dawn of Justice and Wonder Woman, there is none more obvious or misunderstood than the daguerreotype photograph taken of Diana, Steve Trevor, and their band of brothers. The photo that Diana was chasing down in the previous movie, for what fans could only assume was the sake of secrecy and privacy, having spent a century avoiding detection.
But in Wonder Woman, it’s suggested that Diana’s entire motivation may have been misunderstood. It turns out Diana needed Steve Trevor in whatever form she could get, even if it meant a photograph she had possibly never seen (considering what happens to the village shortly after). When Bruce sends her the original, she replies to him with an email, thanking her ally for “bringing him back to me.” (Editor’s note: we assume she means Steve, and not director Zack Snyder’s cameo in the photo.)
In this new light, some of the original assumptions have to be questioned. After all, Diana is happily employed at The Louvre in Paris, implying her attempts to ‘hide’ from the world may actually be limited to ‘keeping people from knowing I’m an immortal demigoddess.’ So if Diana is making friends, remembering loved ones, and going to work like the rest of humanity, what did her claim of “walking away from mankind” after WWI mean? And why was she resisting the urge to jump into combat alongside two American superheroes?
Why Diana (Really) Stopped Being a Superhero
With no horrifying defeat, no disillusionment unresolved, and defeating her enemy, Ares, with her belief in the power of love… why did Diana walk away from mankind? Why, if she killed Ares, did war continue? Why did World War II happen? And why didn’t she show up to stop it? These are the question being understandably thrown around by viewers, and the ones that some outlets and critics are actually pointing to as DCEU plot holes, mistakes, or continuity errors. That’s far from the truth, and viewers need only to remind themselves of why Diana left Themyscira in the first place to understand the reality.
She explains to Steve and her mother, just as it was explained to her, that the Amazons exist to defeat Ares. She believes what she was taught: that Zeus created Man to be good, and Ares corrupted them into doing terrible things. Zeus created the Amazons to pull mankind back from the corruption of Ares. After the death of the gods, Zeus concealed the Amazons so that they could return to defeat Ares once and for all, should he arrive to corrupt and destroy mankind once more.
He did. So Diana left Themyscira to make good on the Amazons’ duty. She did. At which point… well, her job was more or less done, and the Amazons’ duty fulfilled. Seeing her defeat Ares by claiming she “believes in love” and in the goodness of mankind may lead the audience to assume she’s accepted the mantle of their protector, but she’s neither a human nor a ‘superhero.’ She’s saying it in opposition to Ares, who believes mankind is evil at heart and therefore should be utterly erased from the Earth. Wonder Woman believes that mankind shouldn’t be written off, or at least that Ares is seeing only the worst of them – as she has, as well.
So she follows the destiny and duty of her people, and rids mankind of the corruption of Ares. With her job done, and no home to go back to… Diana began to live a life of her own, apparently keeping her secrets and powers to herself. Remember: there were no other superheroes at the time, and as far as we know, no other supernatural or superhuman threats ever came to humans for decades. She simply stepped back, and let mankind continue on as it chose to.
Ares revealed just how little pushing or seduction humans needed to commit horrors while wrapped in the Lasso of Truth, so Diana knows that the story she was fed as a child isn’t entirely true. Men are good. Men are evil. But taking on the task of overseeing the planet on a micromanaging scale wasn’t what Diana planned, nor was it ever her duty (or right, to be honest). And the century that followed clearly convinced her that Ares saw at least some of the truth of mankind.
Why It Doesn’t Really Matter
In the end, the distinction here is only a ‘plot hole’ or ‘inconsistency’ if viewers limit their interpretation to explicitly what is shown on screen. Even Wonder Woman‘s director has denied a continuity error, explaining that ‘turning away from mankind’ just as likely means Diana realized humanity needed to save itself, or that she couldn’t save everybody from the reality of mankind.
The audience is given enough in her own film, with Queen Hippolyta telling Diana that men are easily corrupted, and that they do not deserve the Amazons’ protection. Assuming Diana took some time off after fulfilling her people’s ancient duty, she would see World War II started by men all on their own – a war that she neither could have, nor was duty-bound to prevent, fight, or win. We don’t know that Diana stopped being a hero in some form or another, but having seen what Ares caused by meddling with humans, we’re willing to assume she decided never to follow in his footsteps. A demigoddess exercising her will over people was the opposite of what she was raised to be.
A Wonder Woman movie sequel could shed some light on how Diana spent the intervening years, and her origin movie’s ending certainly suggests that Superman’s death has stirred something inside of her. But her words to Bruce matter more to the future of the DCEU than the past. She hasn’t walked with mankind for a century, but the time may be coming when she needs to defend it from an enemy far greater than the God of War – the God of Apokolips.
The latest DC Extended Universe entry, Wonder Woman, is a triumph for female characters in movies, while this weekend’s big release, The Mummy, undermines any attempt at progress with its final twist. There are a few similarities between Wonder Woman and The Mummy. Even though their source material is vastly different – one comes from the pages of comics, the other is inspired by a 1932 horror movie – both films are positioned as summer blockbusters, and action/adventure films in which their lead characters discover the heroes within themselves. In a larger sense, however, both movies hit theaters with a great deal of pressure on them to succeed for the sake of their respective cinematic universes.
In the case of Wonder Wonder, Patty Jenkins’ DCEU installment arrived on the heels of back-to-back films that received largely negative critical reviews and mixed reactions among moviegoers (those films being Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice and Suicide Squad). As such, many hoped Wonder Woman would be the first DCEU entry that was generally well received by critics and moviegoers alike – which, considering reviews of Wonder Woman and the film’s massive box office, it was. Meanwhile, The Mummy is tasked with being the official launchpad for Universal Studio’s Dark Universe – the shared cinematic world of classic movie monsters that the studio has been planning for years. The Dark Universe was initially thought to kick off with Dracula Untold in 2014, but that film’s negative reception and poor box office made it a non-starter – though Alex Kurtzman’s update on the classic monster isn’t faring much better in terms of reviews for The Mummy.
Of course, there are also a great deal of differences between Wonder Woman and The Mummy, particularly in the way the films portray and treat their female characters. This won’t be a discussion of whether Wonder Woman or The Mummy are themselves feminist films, since labeling any one piece of art as feminist is a tricky business, but an in-depth look at the treatment of the films’ characters (and readers can draw their own conclusions from there). Additionally, though this close of a look at The Mummy’s female characters may not have arisen if it had debuted earlier in the summer movie schedule, in light of the discussion around women in Hollywood thanks to the success of Wonder Woman, a closer look at how female characters are portrayed in a typical summer blockbuster is warranted.
Much has been said about Wonder Woman’s strong female hero – which is to say, Gal Gadot’s Diana Prince is a well-written, three-dimensional superhero with a notable journey from a naive warrior to the more educated protector of mankind. The film’s depiction of Themyscira and the race of all-women Amazonian warriors has been praised for depicting the strength of women. Further, Wonder Woman confronts sexism both within the world in which the film is set and Hollywood as a whole. Even Wonder Woman’s, Steve Trevor (Chris Pine), flips the script on the damsel in distress trope by giving him his own character arc that is tied directly to Diana’s.
To be clear, however, Wonder Woman is an outlier in Hollywood. Data scientist Amber Thomas found that women only spoke 27 percent of the words in the top 10 grossing films of 2016, which included superhero tentpoles like Captain America: Civil War,Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice, and Suicide Squad. Behind the camera, 2016 also saw a two percent decline in the number of female filmmakers, with only 7 percent of directors in 2016 being women, according to San Diego State’s Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film as reported by THR. Women fared better when it came to being screenwriters, comprising 13 percent. In the case of Wonder Woman, the film is credited to Allan Heinberg with contributions from three other male writers.
The Mummy, however, falls more in line with the statistics laid out above since it was directed by Kurtzman from a script by David Koepp, Christopher McQuarrie, and Dylan Kussman. Contributing to the story of The Mummy were Kurtzman, Jon Spaihts, and Jenny Lumet. As for the cast, Annabelle Wallis’ Jenny Halsey and Sofia Boutella’s Princess Ahmanet are the only two main female characters. Although there isn’t an in-depth breakdown of the cast and dialogue, The Mummy’s lead roles are predominantly men, and Russell Crowe’s Dr. Jekyll has a great deal of dialogue, even telling the story of Princess Ahmanet in a lengthy voiceover. But, it’s how the characters of Jenny and Ahmanet are treated within the story where The Mummy truly fails.
