Wonder Woman 1984s Biggest Comic Book Changes

Wonder Woman 1984’s Biggest Comic Book Changes

Contents

Wonder Woman 1984 borrowed heavily from various DC Comics series, but also made many changes in adapting those characters and elements for the DCEU.

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Wonder Woman 1984s Biggest Comic Book Changes

Warning: The following feature contains SPOILERS for Wonder Woman 1984.

Despite being largely loyal to the core idea of Wonder Woman as a character, Wonder Woman 1984 still made a number of changes to various characters and concepts in adapting them from the comics. Most of these changes were made to better tie several separate ideas together within the setting of the DCEU.

Wonder Woman 1984 has proven to be a success for Warner Bros, after a rocky release and delays born of the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite being simultaneously released in theaters and on the HBO Max streaming service in the United States, Wonder Woman 1984 has had the best box office performance of any theatrical release since the start of the pandemic. The film has also received a mostly positive response from critics and audiences alike and seems poised to become one of the biggest action hits of 2020.

That successful reception can be credited to how well Wonder Woman 1984 built upon the mythology of original film, while adding in other elements of the DC Comics multiverse. Of course some of these elements did require alteration in the journey from the comics page to the screen, but that is par for the course in adapting any written work into a movie. The script by Patty Jenkins and Geoff Johns found ways to stay true to the spirit of the original comic books while creating unique spins on the classic concepts.

The Dreamstone

Wonder Woman 1984s Biggest Comic Book Changes

The action of Wonder Woman 1984 centers around an ancient artifact known as the Dreamstone, which grants the deepest wish of whoever holds it. The stone exacts a heavy toll upon the wisher, however, granting the wish in a way that either ironically negates the wish or takes something from the wisher worth far more than the wish. This is ultimately revealed to be due to the Dreamstone being the creation of an evil god known as the Duke of Deception, who gained power from trickery and delighted in bringing about the downfall of civilizations.

While the Duke of Deception is one of Wonder Woman’s oldest enemies in the comics, he was not the creator of the Dreamstone. The original wielder of the Dreamstone was a Justice League villain called Doctor Destiny. Rather than granting wishes, the Dreamstone allowed the wielder to see into the world of dreams and make those dreams manifest in the physical world. The wielder could also reshape the world around them, effectively making their dreams into reality.

Writer Neil Gaiman changed the origins of the Dreamstone as part of his series, The Sandman. The opening arc of The Sandman, Preludes and Nocturnes, revealed that the Dreamstone was the creation of Dream of the Endless, a god-like personification of the creative spirit and that it was one of the three great artifacts into which Dream had placed the majority of his power. In Gaiman’s new history, the Dreamstone fell into Doctor Destiny’s clutches several decades after Dream was accidentally captured and held captive by a sorcerer who sought to capture Death.

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Maxwell Lord’s Background And Powers

Wonder Woman 1984s Biggest Comic Book Changes

In the DCEU, Maxwell Lord was an entrepreneur whose quest to find the Dreamstone ended with him giving himself the power to grant other people’s wishes. The Dreamstone demanded a heavy price for its power, both fueling Lord’s already considerable greed and draining Lord’s vitality as he sought to grant more wishes while demanding even more of his petitioners. Despite this, Lord was revealed to have a basically good heart and his efforts to acquire wealth and power were born of his love for his son and his desire to be a better parent and provider than his own abusive father. The Maxwell Lord of the comics was a similarly conflicted figure, but his powers were telepathic in nature rather than magical.

Originally Lord was a businessman who offered the Justice League financial backing and acted as the team’s money manager when it expanded to become Justice League International. While largely interested in the financial benefits and good publicity that came with being associated with the World’s Finest heroes, Lord ultimately revealed himself as a decent man when the chips were down. Lord also developed telepathy following the Invasion! crossover event, though he continued to work with the Justice League in a support role and rarely used his powers, as he suffered severe nosebleeds and blackouts as a side effect. Lord was retconned to have a more sinister personality leading into the 2005 Infinite Crisis event and was revealed to have been slowly and secretly building up his telepathic powers to the point where he could easily bend the iron will of Superman.

How Barbara Minerva Becomes Cheetah

Wonder Woman 1984s Biggest Comic Book Changes

Wonder Woman 1984 introduced Dr. Barbara Minerva as a colleague Diana befriended after the two started working together at the Smithsonian Museum. Despite being as attractive and intelligent as Diana, Barbara envied Diana’s quiet confidence and wished she could be more like her while handling the Dreamstone. This led Barbara to accidentally acquire the power of an Amazon at the cost of her own warmth and humor. When Barbara learned about what had happened and Diana’s intention to undo the damage Maxwell Lord was doing with his wish-granting, she offered herself to Lord as an enforcer and he, in turn, used the power of the Dreamstone to change Barbara into something truly inhuman – “an apex-predator like nothing there’s ever been before.” Barely recognizable as her former self by the film’s climax, Barbara Minerva was transformed into a monstrous being more feline than human – the Cheetah!

The Cheetah has had several different backgrounds over nearly eight decades in comics, but her most recent one had Dr. Barbara Minerva and Diana become friends before her transformation into Cheetah, like in Wonder Woman 1984. In the current DC Universe, Dr. Minerva was an archeologist who was hired by the American government to act as Diana’s tutor and translator when she first came to Man’s World. The two became fast friends, but that friendship was forever destroyed after Diana failed to save Barbara from being offered as a bride to the plant god Urzkartaga, who cursed any non-virgin who sought his blessings by transforming her into a cannibalistic cat-woman. Despite Diana’s repeated offers to help her find a cure for her condition, Barbara rejected Diana’s friendship and dedicated herself to the destruction of all gods and demigods, especially Wonder Woman.

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The Origin Of The Golden Eagle Armor

Wonder Woman 1984s Biggest Comic Book Changes

Diana donned the Golden Eagle Armor for the climax of Wonder Woman 1984 . Earlier in the film, Diana told Steve Trevor the story of how the armor was forged by Amazon blacksmiths for their greatest champion, Asteria, who volunteered to stay behind in Man’s World and hold off the armies that sought to enslave the Amazons, as they made their way to their new homeland of Themyscira. The armor was the only sign of Asteria’s existence that Diana found after searching Man’s World for the lost hero. However, the post-credits scene of Wonder Woman 1984 revealed that Asteria was apparently alive and well and still quietly working to help those in need in the modern world.

In the comics, the Golden Eagle Armor was first worn by Wonder Woman in Kingdom Come; a 1996 mini-series set in the not too distant future of the DC Comics universe. The armor would not be introduced into the modern DC Universe until nearly three years later in Wonder Woman #144. Rather than being the armor of a legendary Amazon champion, the armor was a gift made specifically for Diana by an Amazon blacksmith named Pallas, which was intended to be reserved for special ceremonial purposes. Amazon heavy armor is intended to be functional as well as aesthetically pleasing, however, and Diana came to wear the armor whenever she faced enemies who required she take more defensive precautions than usual.

Origin Of The Invisible Jet

Despite having had the ability to fly under her own power in the comics since 1987, many Wonder Woman fans still associate the character with the Invisible Jet that was her trademark vehicle for nearly 50 years. The Invisible Jet was originally the product of advanced Amazon technology, capable of traveling over 2000 MPH and designed to be piloted telepathically through Wonder Woman’s tiara. In the modern age the Invisible Jet was a sentient shape-shifting alien crystal that responded to telepathic stimuli, which Wonder Woman was given as a gift by the Lansinarians; a subterranean race whom she once saved. Though she most often had the crystal take the form of a jet when she needed to travel in stealth, Diana could reshape the crystal into any vehicle or object she needed.

The classic Invisible Jet does not appear in Wonder Woman 1984, though Diana was able to create a similar substitute as a nod to the vehicle from the comics. After Diana and Steve commandeered a jet to fly to Egypt. Diana attempted to hide the plane from prying eyes and radar detection by tapping into the divine powers of her birth, hiding the plane from the world in the same way that her father, Zeus, hid Themyscira from Man’s World. This led to one of the film’s most breathtaking sequences, in which Diana and Steve flew the now-invisible jet through a Fourth of July fireworks display.

Link Source : https://screenrant.com/wonder-woman-1984-movie-comic-book-differences-changes/

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