Why Those ‘Wonder Woman’ World War One Rumors Better Be True 

Why Those ‘Wonder Woman’ World War One Rumors Better Be True

So far we still know nothing about the very much anticipated “Wonder Woman” movie, other than that Gal Gadot and Chris Pine will star, Patty Jenkins will direct, and we won’t be able to see it until 2017. But current rumors suggest that the film will be a period piece — and the time period it’s supposedly set in might change Wonder Woman’s story for the better.

Like most comic book heroes, Wonder Woman was created in the ’40s, right smack dab in the middle of World War Two. As such, she was often depicted fighting Nazis alongside the Allied troops. But according to these rumors, the movie will instead focus on her involvement in World War

A WW2 setting would invite too many “Captain America” comparisons.

He did punch Hitler (well, a guy dressed as Hitler) in the face every night in his debut Marvel film, after all. Wonder Woman’s already got a lot riding on her, and setting her up in the same story as the First Avenger would probably hurt more than it helps.

The Nazis are so overused as campy genre antagonists that even when Captain America came out, people were over it. They’ve been zombies, space explorers, supernatural Indiana Jones villains — where would Wonder Woman even go with it to make them new and interesting?

World War One stories are inherently more complex — because they have to be.

When it comes to action, adventure, science fiction and superheroes, Hollywood tends to break WW2 stories down to their most basic form — Nazis and their friends are bad, Everybody else is good. World War One isn’t so easy to define in concrete terms, because every country was fighting it for super complicated reasons. It’s honestly kind of refreshing to think that a superhero movie might address those complexities rather that just give Wonder Woman some Nazis to punch.

World War Two obviously looms in our collective consciousness much more because of the atrocities Nazi Germany and the Axis powers inflicted, but it would never have happened — or been as devastating — if World War One hasn’t occurred first. Trench warfare, gas attacks, and shell shock basically crippled an entire generation so badly that Western society never got over it.

Basically, it just makes more sense for Amazons to get involved in the First World War before the Second one.

Wonder Woman is from a mysterious all-female Amazonian tribe on an island known as Themyscira, which has a policy of not getting involved in the outside world. Breaking that tradition to become a part of World War Two is kind of like watching the sequel to a movie when you haven’t seen the original. You