Originally Posted by
Endus
Everything past the conversation between Diana and Ares in the observation tower in the final act is complete and utter nonsense, and ignores everything leading up to it. The movie was great until that last section of the final act;
1> Diana's whole character arc was to be horrified by the violence humanity does to itself. The final note is Ares pointing out it isn't even him; they do it to themselves.
2> Ares has revealed himself as a master manipulator. He's also literally the God of War, and the only extant God because he fought all the other Gods at once and killed every single one, because that's War, and he's the fucking God of it.
3> Diana's response to this is to get angry and try and kill him, even though he's not causing the war; the entire motive she had prior to this. Why? Because he's smug?
4> They fight, Trevor dies in a completely unrelated noble sacrifice, Diana goes fucking apeshit and murders a whole bunch of German soldiers just for being there because she's angry her almost-boyfriend did a noble thing. Seriously, this whole scene should be seen as horrifying, not noble.
5> Diana and Ares fight some more, until Diana out-wars the God of War because fuck you. Literal deus ex machina; she can beat him because TADA, she's actually a God, and has powers she never knew she had and which were never even hinted at any point prior to their use in this climactic scene. Ares also stops being smart for some reason. Just fucking argh.
The rest of the film was fantastic. Everything past that conversation in the observation tower? Complete dogshit. It only gets worse on repeat viewings, too.
To bring this back, I think WW would have been better with Trevor having a crush, but Diana never noticing. They push romantic sidelines into these films for no reason other than they feel it's needed, and it isn't. And the team behind Captain Marvel knew this. There isn't even a hint of a romance subplot in the film. Not even a bad one she overcomes. And the film's stronger for it. Really, basically none of the Marvel heroes are defined by romantic entanglements. Vision and Scarlet Witch are strongly their own people, and were established separately; their subsequent romance feels natural. And for the rest, the romantic subplots inform character (Hawkeye and his family, for instance), or are there mostly for humour (Tony and Pepper Potts. It works well, but it's never not played for humor.) They're never a real focus of the story, whereas they tried to center Wonder Woman entirely on her relationship with Trevor. And it falls apart, because they didn't really have one.