Sometimes you come across a superhero movie that is genuinely excellent. It exceeds the superhero genre by tackling deeper, darker themes in grounded and realistic ways. For me, 2017's Wonder Woman would've been that movie, had it not be for its ending.
Yes, the movie that essentially resurrected the DCEU has a serious flaw in its story. And the funny thing is, this flaw is so jarring and so doesn't fit with the overall quality of the film that I personally could not believe that it was the product of this film's writers.
So, what is this flaw that I'm talking about.
From the very beginning of the movie, we are told that Diana's main goal is to defeat Ares, the god of war. She believes Ares is the root cuse to humanity's desire for conflict, and that by defeating him, humanity would be free of war.
Towards the end of the film, Diana finally confronts Ludendorff, the man she believes to be Ares.
She fought him for a while and of course defeats him. The ease of which she defeated Ludendorff tells us that he cannot be the main bad guy. So at that point, viewers like me are left with two possibilities in our mind:
One, Dr. Poison – the other villain – is Ares.
Two, there is no Ares. The god of war is a state of mind, mythologized by the Amazonian to give them something to fight for.
Now, we all know the movie did not go for number two. There is an Ares. Before we go any further, I'd like to make a point as to why this is not a good idea.
The entire mythology is very well set up, there is a good mystery surrounding Ares from the very start of the film. This of course means that almost any twist about Ares could work here.
And despite the fact that there was a weapon called the god-killer in the movie, despite the fact that there was a scene hinting that Diana was meant to meet Ares, despite the fact that there was an entire sequence describing the backstory of Ares, I honestly still feels like the film was building up to a twist that there was in fact no such entity.
The reason I thought this route was possible in one pivotal scene, a lot of the senior Amazonian warriors are not as serious as Antiope in getting Diana out to war to fight Ares. When Diana brought up Ares, they even said that it was a myth. This tells me that perhaps there is something more to the tribe we haven't learned about... something Diana hasn't learned about. Something that is not Ares.
Now, the movie did reveal Diana to be the god killer: and I will give it that was a good twist. The film uses some third person pronouns, which hinted at the existence of Ares. The Amazonians constantly talk about Diana as if she's someone special, someone much more powerful. The DCEU is strong in its use of mythology to intensify its story, and this one does exactly that. So for me, these myths do not hinder the movie.I don't have a problem with Ares as a concept.
What annoys me is the fact that he is used as a resolution to a movie that builds itself up as a very grounded story.
I think would've been fine had the movie kept Ares for the next sequel or something. The film could've left the whole Diana being the god killer as a mystery of sort for the sequel to come. This film has not built itself up to end with a CGI battle with a god and the tone shift there was incredibly jarring.
In other words, I am not that much opposed to Ares as a concept, I am opposed to him as a final villain in this movie.
The best origin story shows a character that has a really good trait who needs to be taught something new. Wonder Woman is a great origin story in that it shows a character that has an almost undying determination to simply help people. However, she is a very naïve individual. The fact that she believes war could be ended at the elimination of one person is naïve.
