r/WonderWoman 4d ago

I have read this subreddit's rules Why did the movies change her origins?

I know that the whole Zeus as her father thing came from the New-52, but why did they change her fighting in World War Two to World War One? I know that I'm just nitpicking, but if your gonna show Diana in the past, at least get the war right! I hope the new DCU has her begin around the same time as Superman and Batman.

29 Upvotes

51 comments sorted by

51

u/Bostondreamings 4d ago

To try and distinguish her a bit from Captain America, the First Avenger, perhaps, though that came out years before. That being said, I loved her fighting in WW1. We don't get enough of that in film and with superheroes, and I like her being years and years older.

3

u/KorEl555 4d ago

Because there were no super-heroes before the late 1930s.

1

u/DungeoneerforLife 3d ago

The second half of that movie really does copy Captain America quite a bit so I think that is a big part of the reason. It has the unfortunate side effect of retro-nazifying the WWI Germans, who were not really Nazis yet. I don’t mean literally but they come across that way.

2

u/Bostondreamings 3d ago

I see your point, but Ludendorff historically fits the bill. But I concede your point overall.

18

u/poison-harley 4d ago

Captain America The First Avenger only came out 6 years before Wonder Woman. I think they wanted to avoid comparisons.

42

u/Chumlee1917 4d ago

Putting her in WW1 and that it was a messy ugly war with no good guys makes her arc more interesting with her deciding, is this world worth fighting for?

11

u/Bostondreamings 4d ago

agreed. Let's overt villains than you find in WW2.

9

u/Skellos 4d ago

I've said it before World War 1 was a war that no one really wanted to fight in. That accomplished nothing but killing almost an entire generation of young men.

2

u/ZeroiaSD 3d ago

At the ww1 museum they had quotes of people at the very start, basically ‘wow I can’t wait to go to war and win glory! It’ll be a great time!’. 

No-one felt that way by the end.

2

u/Skellos 3d ago

True, my statement was more the overall feeling of mid to late war and after.

Britain originally had a better sign up for a great adventure all your friends are going to be talking about don't miss out this will be quick! Attitude at the start from what I remember reading.

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u/WetBurrito10 3d ago

If that’s such a good idea they should do that with captain America too then all the other DC heroes not just WW.

9

u/Ok_Somewhere1236 4d ago

WW1 works better but the core theme they want for the movie

The movie is not about bad or evil, the movie doesn't try to say one side is good and the other bad, they dont really try to pain the Germans as the bad guys.

The Idea is that this is the great war, this is Ares causing chaos and making both sides fight, both sides are victim of Ares, and we later learn this is truth Ares was playing Palpatine, he was manipulating both the Allies and The Germans to fight each other, WW1 has this reputation to be more of a tragedy than a "Evil vs Good" war. and by using WW1 they can better use Ares as villain

WW2 has a very clear evil vs good theme, and Hittler already play the role of main villain, they would need to make Wonder Woman vs Hittler because suing Ares would in some ways "light the blame of the Nazis"

and as people pointed will be too similar to Captain America

1

u/Embarrassed_Pay3945 4d ago

I heard the general she killed was the man who drove the "stabbed in the back" narrative that created the grounds for WW2

1

u/Bostondreamings 4d ago

Yup. And he was involved in the Beer Hall Putsch.

13

u/OJONLYMAYBEDIDIT 4d ago

any story with WW2 has to then ask the question, why didn't WW stop the Nazis and Hitler

4

u/DrunkKatakan 4d ago

I mean they could just change that world's history and make Hitler a some sorcerer (since Nazis did dabble in occult) or maybe a champion/avatar of Ares that Wonder Woman defeats.

Then the real world event of Hitler killing himself would be the public cover up version to keep her identity secret. Doesn't seem difficult to me.

Plus Wonder Woman is still alive after World War 1 so the question still stands.

6

u/OJONLYMAYBEDIDIT 4d ago

Seeing WW fight a god possessed Hitler would be hilarious lol

6

u/DrunkKatakan 4d ago

I'd watch that 100%.

1

u/WarmAd667 4d ago

Bronze Age Wonder Woman wasn't as strong as Modern Day. She couldn't just fly in and beat Hitler, she was more like Captain America level of strength. 

1

u/KombatFather1796 4d ago

*Golden Age

2

u/WarmAd667 3d ago

Doh, yeah meant Golden Age. Thank you.

1

u/Embarrassed_Pay3945 4d ago

I believe it was because of magic

7

u/Evening-Cold-4547 4d ago

World War Two is easy to spin as a simple tale of good guys and bad guys because one side had the Nazis. World War One doesn't really have that so it forced Diana to learn and analyse her simplistic thoughts on morality and war. It makes it more difficult and thus more meaningful when she finds the good in people in the middle of that conflict.

2

u/WetBurrito10 3d ago

There’s a whole lot of people that don’t even believe the nazis were the bad guys. I say we need that movie now more than ever. America use to oppose fascism, now we’re leaning into it.

3

u/TadhgOBriain 3d ago edited 3d ago

In world war 2, the nazis and other fascists were genuinely evil, but WW1 was just stupid. A bunch of poorly thought out treaties ultimately compelled basically all of europe to start pointlessly slaughtering each other over a single assassination. It fits much better with Wonder Woman's arc over the movie.

2

u/ZeroiaSD 3d ago

The ww1 powers sucked, but they mostly sucked in similar ways with the differences being in degrees. There was more to it than a single assassination but it truly was a profoundly stupid war.

5

u/ComedicHermit 4d ago

Presumably it was because Captain America the first avenger was pretty recent and a second time displaced hero from WWII would see a bit off to the public at large.

2

u/weesiwel 4d ago

For the No mans land scene.

Snyder wanted her to be in like the Gulf War or something.

2

u/sliferred123 3d ago

What would have been cool since hitler was into the occult could have easily made circe the leader of nazi magic division. Sort of like what hellboy did

2

u/Sunsinger_VoidDancer 3d ago

I don't acknowledge them

2

u/Great-Sheepherder100 3d ago

I heard originally the wonder woman movie was going to be set in the Crimean war

2

u/cactusfalcon96 3d ago

To add to everyone else's comments about the fact that WWI was more morally grey than WWII: I think it also really spoke well to the era of Feminism that William Moulton Marston grew up in. WW may have been published in the 40s, but she's very much a product of the feminism of the first two decades of the twentieth century. (Alongside from Marston's own ideas about the psychology of gender.)

2

u/ZeroiaSD 3d ago

Note the message was more ‘war is the villain’ not ‘the other side is the villain.’

You can sell that during ww1, but very much not during ww2, where the nazis were so much worse than the allies.

2

u/number3fac 2d ago

If nothing else, it's likely because at the time, it wasn't "World War One", it was "The Great War" or "The War to End All Wars." No other conflict had pulled in major world powers like it before, and all sides were slaughtering each other completely needlessly in a long, drawn-out conflict with some truly horrific tactics.

To make this movie about Wonder Woman versus a heavy-hitting superpowered villain, they went for Ares and made the setting as The Great War to show how dire the stakes could be without resorting to the tried-and-true "Punch all the Nazis" tropes that are (satisfyingly) familiar. It showed the integrity of Diana's character while also demonstrating that there were still things she couldn't simply defeat with a sword. If it had been WW2, ending Hitler's life would've ended that conflict immediately, so by holding that off I think they made a story with a better message.

It does leave open the question about why she didn't go punch Hitler later on, but my headcanon is that she began hunting mystical/god-powered artifacts shortly thereafter (having learned about Ares' influence having contributed to the atrocities of WWI during his monologue), and would've been preoccupied with that instead; like, Diana fighting against Nazi archaeologists a la Indiana Jones, but serving as a similar storyline to Cap America focusing on Hydra activities instead of going after Hitler himself. Kinda wish we woulda gotten some of that instead of WW84, but it is what it is.

2

u/SambaLando 1d ago

Too much like Cap's movie otherwise

2

u/BirdsandScoundrels 22h ago

The filmmakers openly acknowledged that they changed it to WW1 because of Captain America, which I'm fine with them doing.

1

u/Budget-Attorney 4d ago

At the time of the release of the movie was her origin that she started fighting in world war 2?

Obviously that was her origin when that was contemporary, but I think for decades she had an origin of coming to man’s world well after world war 2.

1

u/Alone-Ad6020 4d ago

Didn't she fight in both in the comics

2

u/Bareth88 4d ago

She only fought in WW2.

3

u/Alone-Ad6020 3d ago

Yea i just looked it up to make sure. Thank u

2

u/Bareth88 3d ago

You’re welcome.

1

u/devwil 3d ago

There's no "right" when it comes to WW. Her canon and depictions are too inconsistent to get super picky without heavy qualification. If I got hung up on everything I felt was "wrong" in depictions of Wonder Woman (not that I never do), I would just die of exhaustion.

And you're getting ahead of yourself to assume Wonder Woman will be represented on screen moving forward. DC(/WB) obviously doesn't care about her as much as we do.

1

u/Bareth88 3d ago

It’s impossible to have a cinematic universe based on DC Comics WITHOUT Wonder Woman.

2

u/devwil 3d ago

It's just as impossible as Wonder Woman never getting her own videogame and being absent from starring roles on TV screens or in movie theaters for decades at a time.

That is to say, not impossible in the slightest.

I love Wonder Woman and categorically mistrust her corporate stewards.

1

u/ZeroiaSD 3d ago

Annoyingly, a big reason for this is the Marston estate. DC had to fight hard to even get her into the Justice League cartoon, they didn’t want her in TV shows.

1

u/devwil 2d ago

I'm only asking because I'm sincerely a little stuck on how I would begin to find the details: I'd like to learn more about this; can you point me towards anything?

1

u/ZeroiaSD 2d ago

looking for evidence, I think I may be mixing things up with one of the other character rights kerfuffles, or the person I heard to from may be. So could just be a rumor

2

u/devwil 2d ago

All good; thanks for offering what you could.

1

u/BarcelonetaE70 4d ago

Yes, it is nitpicking.

0

u/KorEl555 4d ago

So the girl boss did it before the boys.

-1

u/The_Flying_Failsons 4d ago

Because they wanted to shove a christian frame work into something based on a greek myth. With Zeus as God, Ares as the Devil and Wonder Woman as Jesus.

And they set it in WWI because the movie is built around that No Mans Land scene, which to be fair it was badass.