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human
CMV: The depiction of Germany in the new Wonder Woman movie is simplistic, historically inaccurate, harmful, and unnecessary

After watching the new wonder woman movie two days ago I was quite concerned by the depiction of Germany in the movie.

**What was wrong?**

The film watched like more of a World War 2 movie than a Word War 1 movie. In the film German soldiers and officers are depicted as evil, or in many cases as radically evil. In my opinion this is the result of a long chain of films and video games which depict the German forces in WW2 as a radically evil force; this is understandable. The Nazi regime was the most effective radically evil force in history, and although the average German soldier or even officer was not himself evil, it's an inaccuracy that must be borne in the production of art and storytelling that allows us to deal with and understand the horrors of the Nazi forces.

That all being said, this is not a WW2 movie; it's a WW1 movie. Historically speaking wonder woman's stories often took place during WW2, but it appears that the movie's writers just changed some details and pretended that it took place during WW1. To be clear, I have no problem with a WW1 wonder woman movie. But if it's going to take place during WW1, the Germans should not be depicted as radically evil, because to put it simply, they behaved no worse than the allies.

In fact it was the French that first engaged in chemical warfare, and although the Germans did first employ effective deadly gas, the British quickly responded by developing and deploying gas of their own.

**How should it have been done?**

It would have been very easy, and in my opinion more effective, to alter the storyline in two respects:

First, by depicting the German motivation for the development of toxic gas not as radically evil or diabolical, but as a necessity of war intended to end the war quickly, potentially even reducing overall deaths. It is understandable why the German army might have developed gas with less than evil intent. Of course it is still possible to have wonder woman be disgusted by this calculus of death, but it makes the German forces seem more liked flawed humans and less like inhuman monsters.

Second, the British forces should have been depicted as willing to develop gas themselves. What if the protagonists had gotten the notebook to London, only to have the military brass use it to develop chemical weapons of their own? Then, wonder woman and Chris Pine could have worked to intervene and prevent the breakout of deadly chemical warfare in a way that demonstrates far better what I believe to have been the intended message of the film anyway: that humans in war are often well-intentioned but end up losing their humanity in the passions of war. This route is better because, if you make the British be more or less "the good guys", the viewer can believe that the allies were fundamentally good. As it was presented, wonder woman's comment to Chris Pine, "you're just like they are", seems unbelievable and untrue. But historically, the British were more or less "just like them", and it was a disservice to the viewer to depict them otherwise.

**Why does it matter?**

This film simply re-enforces the stereotype that the Germans are "the bad guys of history", and that the British and other allied forces could do no wrong. Especially when it comes to WW1, where there was no right side of history, this black-and-white good-guys-and-bad-guys view of history is inaccurate and allows modern American, British, and French people from taking responsibility for their part in the horrors of WW1, and allows them to convince themselves that WW1 was just and not the absolute moral clusterfuck that it was on all sides.

**Tl;dr:** The movie was lazy and inappropriately reused "the Germans are evil bastards" theme from WW2 movies in a WW1 movie. This is unfair to Germans historically and weakens the movie's message that war corrupts people because it makes the allies seem fundamentally good in comparison to the Germans.
gpt
I don't think you can discuss the plot without bringing up Ares at all. Your proposed solutions undermine major aspects of the movie. If the movie shows the war as completely morally ambiguous from the start, then how is WW supposed to find Ares at all? Who is she going after? And where in the movie do you put all this? If these things happen before she kills Ares, how exactly are is she going to be convinced that any humans are fundamentally good enough to deserve protecting? If it happens after she kills Ares, then the story structure of the film just doesn't work (since the action climax of the movie happens in the middle).

I also disagree that the movie characterizes Germans, on the whole, poorly. There are two unambiguously bad Germans in the movie. The general, and the mad scientist lady. Both of them are clearly directly influenced by Ares himself. The rest of the German high command is ready to end the war, until he goes rogue and kills them all. You're way oversimplifying things by saying that the movie shows Germans as evil.