With over $800 million made at world wide box offices, Wonder Woman has been a raging success. But though it is not immune to criticisms.
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While fans praise the the opening act in Themyscira and the No Man’s Land action sequence, some have expressed disappointment at the film’s final act — the reveal of Ares‘ identity and the subsequent battle.
Some fans expressed disappointment that Ares, played by David Thewlis, was even involved at all, preferring another in her gallery of rogues. But Wonder Woman’s enemies aren’t as iconic as other DC Comics villains, and director Patty Jenkins countered those complaints with her reasoning why Ares was important to the story.
“In my opinion, it would’ve been a mistake to make a first Wonder Woman film without her absolute arch rival nemesis Ares, who is the most classic villain from the lore and is her counterpart of her point of view,” Jenkins said in the movie’s special features. “She’s a god and he’s a god, and he knows something she doesn’t know and made a choice based on that.”
The climax of the movie itself is not awful. The effects are well done and the action has some great choreography, but but it does take out the momentum of what was a very relatively grounded superhero tale set in the Great War.
But given Jenkins explanation, it makes sense for Ares to be the main threat in the film, given Wonder Woman’s mission and the setting of the film.
“He saw the weakness in his father’s creation and is trying to show the world how bad mankind is and therefore annihilate them and get rid of them,” Jenkins said. “She, in the course of her journey, learns the same thing and ends up saying ‘oh my god they are all of those things,’ but she makes the opposite choice. If her story is about a shift in point of view, his storyline is a participant with that story, instead of being a villain bad guy, which is the point of the movie.”
Wonder Woman is now available on Digital HD. It hits Blu-ray and DVD on September 19.
[h/t] CinemaBlend
