That coulda been a decent comic book movie, and I think they had planned to make it good, but then they dumped a bunch of schlock onto it.
Specifically:
Almost all of the fight scenes include the Male Protagonist Guy and wonder woman standing back to back punching soldiers in the open, like invincible CGI superheroes.
They could have literally just had the Male Protagonist Guy sit back with his team, manning their machine gun to assist Wonder Woman. Only getting into a melee once or twice, in desperate moments.
Wonder Woman realizes at the beginning of the movie that he's a dumb weakling, but this doesn't matter
Wonder Woman could have witnessed the roughly equivalent power of A) Herself as a demigoddess or whatever and B) Some random asshole with an evil machine. She could have been dismayed that such power was capable of being placed in the hands of just any asshole, without the responsibility that comes from a lifetime of training under a weird warrior culture.
That would have made for better themes, and also better action scenes. The action scenes could have been realistic as fuck, and more exciting.
I think they were gonna do that, but then the producers looked at Marvel movies and said "no we need scenes like this one with Thor and the Hulk"
They could have literally just had the Male Protagonist Guy sit back with his team, manning their machine gun to assist Wonder Woman. Only getting into a melee once or twice, in desperate moments.
As I recall, this was basically what they did. For instance, there's a scene where Wonder Woman is charging a trench and deflecting machine gun fire off her shield, and Male Protagonist Guy and his buddies are mostly supporting her -- exactly what you're describing.
The problems started in the last third of the movie, when they went the "have our superhero get into a big messy CGI fight with another superhero" route. They should have gone with a finish closer to what you're suggesting: either "the big baddie was just whispering in the ears of humans who wanted to butcher each other anyway," or "there was no big baddie after all; you can't solve the fundamental problem here if you simply cut the right person in half."
a scene where Wonder Woman is charging a trench and deflecting machine gun fire off her shield, and Male Protagonist Guy and his buddies are mostly supporting her – exactly what you’re describing.
Yeah they SORT of do it at that point, but when they finally got around to kind of doing that, they also had 500 guys shooting perfectly at her shield as she stood there doing nothing. You lose the two things I wanted to see in the action scenes:
What if realistic scene with machine gun vs 100 enemies, plus a beastly warrior with a bulletproof shield tearing shit up, but also needing to put effort into not getting shot.
Wonder woman being able to separately see her pile of bodies, plus the guy's pile of bodies, and being disturbed that it's even possible there's an equivalency. This would be before she realizes the enemy isn't actually the evil side fighting the good side.
And even having the CGI superhero scenes breaks the tone of the rest of the movie, which could have been really grounded. It's almost more about removing things than adding them.
Oh also, the fucking German 17 year old farmhands fight to the last man for no fucking reason, charging with bayonets at this freakish demigod who leaps through the air and kicks people across fields, instead of running away or surrendering, which is a thing they did really easily. Having them retreat instead of being mindless death machines would have helped drive home the fact that they are just people, stuck in a horrible war.
That coulda been a decent comic book movie, and I think they had planned to make it good, but then they dumped a bunch of schlock onto it.
Specifically:
Almost all of the fight scenes include the Male Protagonist Guy and wonder woman standing back to back punching soldiers in the open, like invincible CGI superheroes.
They could have literally just had the Male Protagonist Guy sit back with his team, manning their machine gun to assist Wonder Woman. Only getting into a melee once or twice, in desperate moments.
Wonder Woman realizes at the beginning of the movie that he's a dumb weakling, but this doesn't matter
Wonder Woman could have witnessed the roughly equivalent power of A) Herself as a demigoddess or whatever and B) Some random asshole with an evil machine. She could have been dismayed that such power was capable of being placed in the hands of just any asshole, without the responsibility that comes from a lifetime of training under a weird warrior culture.
That would have made for better themes, and also better action scenes. The action scenes could have been realistic as fuck, and more exciting.
I think they were gonna do that, but then the producers looked at Marvel movies and said "no we need scenes like this one with Thor and the Hulk"
As I recall, this was basically what they did. For instance, there's a scene where Wonder Woman is charging a trench and deflecting machine gun fire off her shield, and Male Protagonist Guy and his buddies are mostly supporting her -- exactly what you're describing.
The problems started in the last third of the movie, when they went the "have our superhero get into a big messy CGI fight with another superhero" route. They should have gone with a finish closer to what you're suggesting: either "the big baddie was just whispering in the ears of humans who wanted to butcher each other anyway," or "there was no big baddie after all; you can't solve the fundamental problem here if you simply cut the right person in half."
Yeah they SORT of do it at that point, but when they finally got around to kind of doing that, they also had 500 guys shooting perfectly at her shield as she stood there doing nothing. You lose the two things I wanted to see in the action scenes:
What if realistic scene with machine gun vs 100 enemies, plus a beastly warrior with a bulletproof shield tearing shit up, but also needing to put effort into not getting shot.
Wonder woman being able to separately see her pile of bodies, plus the guy's pile of bodies, and being disturbed that it's even possible there's an equivalency. This would be before she realizes the enemy isn't actually the evil side fighting the good side.
And even having the CGI superhero scenes breaks the tone of the rest of the movie, which could have been really grounded. It's almost more about removing things than adding them.
Oh also, the fucking German 17 year old farmhands fight to the last man for no fucking reason, charging with bayonets at this freakish demigod who leaps through the air and kicks people across fields, instead of running away or surrendering, which is a thing they did really easily. Having them retreat instead of being mindless death machines would have helped drive home the fact that they are just people, stuck in a horrible war.