A Counter To Every Complaint About WW84
By Ephraim Belnap
None of these have to work, but if you’re a hater who’s annoyed or a fan who wants a good explanation, this is your answer.
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#1 - The Film Is Too Long
Fair. But the first one had this issue too; the pacing in the third act got all funny. I think we can agree it’s not a strength of the creative team. But think of it like Lord of the Rings - they’re stretching it out so we can enjoy the world more. It’s no longer than any other superhero film - 2 hours and 31 minutes. And if you think they should’ve made it shorter if they didn’t have enough content to fill the time ... well, studios usually mandate a two and a half hour runtime for tent pole releases. They want it long enough for audiences to feel like it’s a proper epic. We can’t put it all on the creators. It’s a limitation of the format.
#2 - That Weird Rapey Implication With Steve Trevor’s Host
Any idiot in show biz knows having a protagonist be an explicit rapist alienates 99% of casual audiences, so we should ask, “why did they think they could get away with this in something so popular?” And I think the answer is that they don’t think of it as rape, ‘cause it isn’t. Here’s why - the man isn’t using his body and has zero recollection of anything that happened once he regains it. It was his body, no doubt, but no aspect of his mind - or “soul” if you wanna call it - was ever present during that interaction.
This is a hypothetical justification that can NEVER be real, because a large fraction of people are raped while they’re unconscious and some may even not remember it (perhaps for those sexually abused as newborn infants), but it still counts as assault. It’s always been their personality. It always has been, and always will be their personality in that body. You can’t take the Coke out of the can. But what we saw was a hypothetical where the Coke was taken out of the can, and replaced with perhaps some Sprite.
We’re right to feel weird about this. The creative team has to skirt the lines between a lot of ideas and norms, and they didn’t nail it with this. But they’re not implicit or explicit rape-endorsers (gosh, I hope they don’t contradict that).
#3 - That Weird Kid CGI Rescue
Yeah, that one was a risk. It looked a bit janky. But it probably looked about as well as it could have. They might have been better off just having it be one kid or a baby or something. The technical challenges were pretty high.
#4 - Diana Suddenly Knowing How To Fly
Yeeaah, we’re kind of at a shaky point with that. She’s always been able to fly in the comics, but they didn’t have it in the first film, probably so they could emphasize the sword-and-sandal action. This creates continuity issues, because if she learned how to fly in the ‘80’s, why didn’t she use that in Batman V. Superman or Justice League? But I think it works out. She has to launch herself into the air and then ride the wind. In those two movies she was always either fighting someone or stuck indoors. She couldn’t gently glide anyone to death. Superman flies by manipulating electromagnetic/gravitational forces. Diana is just falling with style. It makes sense she’d be sparing with it.
#5 - Everything With The Jet
Yes, none of that made sense. The Smithsonian doesn’t have an air strip, and Steve couldn’t possibly fly a sixty-years-later plane. But in their defense, this isn’t like guns or cars or physics; it’s not a topic we’re convinced we know about as movie-goers. It’s a little silly, but it’s not a glaring plot hole. Not too bad.
#5 - What Seems Like A Middle Eastern Politics Reference
Shoot, it apparently weirded a person or two out, but there’s nothing there that really ties into any present or past issue. You have guys beefing over ancestral land, and you have fighting over land. The sudden wall appearance seems like it’s a reference to a few things (my first thought was the dividing walls in parts of Jerusalem and the West Bank, which is a politically contentious topic), but the context it appears in really doesn’t fit well with any of them. Maybe the writers just looked at the Middle East and were like, “shoot, they like walls there, let’s throw a wall in.” If you’re wondering about the dialogue, the guy specifically mentioned the Bialyian legacy, and that is just a reference to the comics, not anything real. Bialya is a fictional Middle Eastern country that stands in for the country du jour. It’s where one of Shazam’s greatest villains is from, so they’re probably setting it up for a future appearance. The line isn’t commentary.
#6 - Talking Maxwell Lord Out Of It
Shoot, I didn’t like where it was going at first, but it ended up working. When you saw the lasso on his leg and that golden light showed up on the screen, I got sold. This film is really a character film held together by great performances and meaningful imagery, and that moment where Diana, Maxwell, and the wider world collided was all of that. Maxwell’s character was brilliant for every second. He’s a real improvement on the first film. Compare Ludendorff’s scenes with Lord’s, and it’s a whole ‘nother league. Wow.
There’s a bunch of smaller stuff to critique from there - the training continuity question the opening raises, whether or not the invisibility thing felt plausible, the cheetah CGI - but those all have explanations that you can figure out on your own. At the end of the day, you gotta choose if you like it.
I really feel sorry for the creators, ‘cause I think this would’ve SLAYED if it had gotten onto the big screen. It’s full of the kind of massive spectacle that works in a theater. But I think the third WW film will get back in the saddle, so don’t write this off just yet.
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