 For the first time in months, movie theaters, at least where I live, are finally open again. I could not be happier about this. I've already been to see a handful of movies, like Tenet, which we recently talked about on the new Out of Frame Behind the Scenes podcast, which you should totally check out. But the movie I'm actually most looking forward to seeing right now is Wonder Woman 1984. Over the years, I've been really critical of the DCEU. Between their complete lack of coherent long-term direction, they're rushed to tell some of their biggest stories without properly setting them up or adequately introducing major characters, and with what had always seemed like a lack of creative conviction, they've just missed so many opportunities with some of my favorite characters. But the first movie that really stood out and made me feel like Warner Brothers and DCEU might get their extended universe on track was, you guessed it, Wonder Woman. It's not a perfect film, but it is a pretty good one. Gal Gadot is a lovely blend of innocence, charm, and powerful heroism. The tone is much lighter and more fun than any of DCEU's other films, with a lot of the humor also being carried by Chris Pine. It's a relatively simple story, but it's a great vehicle for introducing Wonder Woman's values and character while expanding the DCEU beyond Metropolis and Gotham. But I do have one major issue with the film that I've wanted to talk about on this series for a long time. Wonder Woman features one of the most important and interesting themes I've seen in any recent DCEU movie. This theme is set up beautifully at the beginning and culminates with a critical plot twist that shakes Diana's faith in herself and her beliefs. The whole thing represents an incredibly worthwhile lesson that people all over the world should understand. And then the third act kind of ruins it. But even though its release has been pushed back, again, with Wonder Woman 1984 still coming out pretty soon, I figured the time is finally right to get into this. So hit the subscribe button, ring that bell icon, and stick around as I explain what I mean on this episode of Out of Frame. For those who haven't seen the film, Wonder Woman is the story of, well, Wonder Woman. She's a character created by the psychologist William Moulton Marston and H.G. Peter in 1941. Marston and his wife Elizabeth Holloway were also notable for inventing a form of lie detector. But without getting into the more bizarre history of the character's literary origins, Wonder Woman is an Amazon warrior and, at least in the movie incarnation, a demigod created by Zeus to protect humanity through superior violence. The gods created us, the Amazons, to influence men's hearts with love and restore peace to the earth. The DCEU hasn't really dealt with the implications of all this yet, but Greek gods are real in this universe, I guess. Anyway, in the movie, we're introduced to Diana as a little girl and get to see her life growing up with her mother Hippolyta, her aunt Entiope, and the other Amazons living on the magically isolated island of Themyscara. Unlike some characters we've seen in a lot of recent films, Wonder Woman actually takes time to show us the progression of her skills and experiences. And while she's always a bit fearless, we see that getting trained by competent mentors is what makes her a good fighter. The Amazons are basically immortal, but, again, they're completely isolated, so for hundreds of years their society stagnates, looking like ancient Greece frozen in time. And not only does their lack of interaction with the outside world leave them living without advancements in technology, including weapons, which you'd think would be pretty important to their culture, it also leaves them without any information about what's going on beyond the barrier that keeps them hidden. And what's happening is the First World War. We don't need to dive too deep into this history, but from July of 1914 to November of 1918, the Great War was one of the bloodiest and most horrific conflicts in human history. Just looking at the numbers alone is shocking. The war involved 70 million soldiers from every inhabited continent. 9 million combatants were killed, along with 13 million civilians. Another 23 million people were wounded over the course of the war. Two-thirds of military deaths were a direct consequence of fighting in trenches and facing vicious new weapons, like mustard gas, flamethrowers, mortars, and mass-produced machine guns. And yet still a third of military deaths were caused by disease, particularly Spanish flu, which ravaged prisoner of war camps and became a global pandemic by 1918. It was industrialized brutality on a completely unprecedented scale, and it had a powerful impact on every aspect of human society. Apart from the loss of life itself, the economic impacts were devastating. We've talked a lot on this series, both about the consequences of reducing trade and about what actually happens when your population disappears. Beyond the emotional toll their deaths had on their friends and families, the millions of people who lost their lives all had uniquely creative ideas, irreplaceable knowledge, specialized skills, and could have benefited the world through their productive efforts if they'd lived through the war. And during World War I, not only was the productive capacity of Europe and tons of countries in other parts of the world either redirected by the state towards their respective war efforts or destroyed by the war itself, the entire global trading system was shut down through a combination of new regulations, high taxes and tariffs, and restrictions on the movement of goods and people across national boundaries. This all reinforces a common paraphrase of Friedrich Bastiat. When goods don't cross borders, armies will. This economic devastation had severe ripple effects that lasted for decades. It set the stage for Nazi fascism by forcing the Weimar Republic to rapidly repay war debts, which they tried to do through hyperinflation. And it contributed to the Bolshevik Revolution and indirectly led to Stalinist Communism. Even in the US and Britain, the concentrated political power a master in war time was never fully relinquished, and that in turn played a huge role in the monetary policies that led to the Great Depression and the heavy-handed regulations, tariffs, and government spending programs that kept it going for years beyond what was remotely necessary. But that's a story for another time. Back to Wonder Woman. The main plot of the film takes place towards the end of the war. After we're introduced to Diana, we meet Steve Trevor, a British pilot and spy who manages to steal some important information about Germany's weapons technology from a lab in Turkey. Under the command of General Ludendorff, the Germans plan to use a new kind of poison gas against the Allied forces fighting in the trenches. From what I could tell if Dr. Maru was able to complete her work, millions more would die. The war would never end. Trevor steals a plane and makes a daring escape, even blowing up a bomb factory in the process. As he flies away with Dr. Maru's notebook, he's chased by the German planes and warships positioned somewhere in the Aegean Sea. And that pursuit ends at the magic barrier that hides Themyscira from the rest of the world. Steve Trevor's plane breaks through first, crashing into the water, while Diana watches the whole thing from a cliff. Realizing that the person flying the plane is probably drowning, she dives into the ocean to rescue him. Ah. You're a man. Yeah. Don't I look like one? But there's not a lot of time to dwell on our two main characters' introduction, because Steve is still being followed by Austro-Hungarian soldiers who also make it through the barrier. Honestly, for something made by the king of Mount Olympus, Themyscira does not have a very good defense system. The Amazons take some heavy losses from the invaders' guns, but after they defeat the men who storm their beach, they turn their attention to Steve Trevor and what he was doing there in the first place. As a trained spy, he initially resists their questions, but the Amazons have the lasso of truth, which compels him to tell them everything. But if I can get these notes back to British intelligence in time, it could stop millions more from dying. It could stop the war. War? What war? The war to end all wars. Innocent people, women and children slaughtered. Their homes and their villages looted and burned. Weapons far deadlier than you can ever imagine. It's like the world's gonna end. When Diana hears this, she immediately decides that she knows the true cause of the war. Only Aries could do such a thing. And this is the inciting incident for her story. The whole reason Diana gets involved in World War I in the first place, and her driving motivation for most of the film, is because she believes that Aries, the literal god of war, is the cause of all this conflict and suffering. There's much you do not understand. Men are easily corrupted. Yes, but Aries is behind that corruption. It is Aries who has these Germans fighting. And although her mother forbids her to go, Diana's desire to protect the world leads her to break into the armory and collect her iconic sword, shield, lasso, and armor. Then she returns to the cave where Steve is being held and obsconds with him on the condition that he take her to the front lines. So after a brief stop in London where they deliver some exposition, she actually helped me bring this notebook back here. That's from Dr. Maru's lab. I think the information contained inside will change the course of the war, sir. My god. Dr. Poison has out. Yes. And assembled the team. These are the reinforcements. Are these even good men? Relatively. They head off to find Ludendorff's new factory and destroy the poison gas so that he can't kill anyone else while the politicians are negotiating a peace agreement. Lots of cool stuff happens in this part of the film and we get to see what Wonder Woman is really capable of. But as they get closer and closer to their goal, Diana has an epiphany. Of course, it makes complete sense. What is that? Ludendorff is Aries. She concludes that if she can just get to Ludendorff and kill him, the god of war's magical corruption of the German people will stop and the whole war will just end on its own. And this belief is what I think is such an interesting and worthwhile concept to talk about. Even though very few people today believe that an actual god of war exists, we do see this line of thinking all the time. Diana is not the only one who believes that there's some kind of an evil mastermind behind all the suffering in the world. And I get it. It's really tempting to think that every horrible thing that happens from terrorism and warfare to pandemics and forest fires must have some nefarious singular cause. It's not even a big mystery why so many people believe this. We've taught kids to think this way through the stories we've told for centuries. If only we got rid of the evil king and replaced him with a nicer one, we'd all live happily ever after, right? Sadly, no. The idea that big global problems are a product of one malicious person's evil plan is just the dark mirror version of the equally false idea that we can create a perfect world by giving a ton of power to well-meaning, smart people who can plan out a flawless utopia for us. The hard truth is that big problems usually have a ton of interconnected causes, many of which have nothing to do with anyone's specific plans, no matter how good or bad they might have been. And people who think like Wonder Woman does at this part of the story are often guilty of significantly overvaluing the importance of other people's intentions. Some of society's biggest problems are actually created by people who genuinely believe they're doing good, but who are also willing to do anything to reshape the world according to their righteous ideology. And that's not hard to understand either. If you believe that your political opponents are going to destroy the planet, if you've convinced yourself that silence is violence, but smashing windows and setting cars on fire is not, if you think that someone else's words or thoughts constitute a threat to your very existence, then almost anything you do to the people you think belong to the wrong group is okay. Throughout history, people have justified innumerable violations of human rights by claiming they were just trying to make the world a better place. Over the centuries, a lot of people who have claimed to have positive goals have done horrifying things to accomplish them. We often ignore this because it's easy to pretend that history's greatest monsters must have all had evil in their hearts to do what they did. But when you actually go back and look at some of the ways that people like Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, Mao, Idi Amin, and others sold their ideas to their people, you'll see that they almost always appeal to completely understandable, often even positive desires. In the stories these revolutionaries told through their campaigns and propaganda, they were the good noble leaders who came to replace the old evil oppressive tyrants. And they promised that if the people supported their bids for power, their societies would see less poverty and higher standards of living, more safety and stronger communities. Their countries would become prosperous and everyone would live in harmony forever and ever. Well, maybe not everyone, but everyone they were actually talking to. Maybe these guys were all just telling people what they thought they wanted to hear. But I'm inclined to think that most of these dictators really did believe that their ideas were creating a better world. And we see this on a smaller scale as well. To quote Isabelle Patterson, most of the harm in the world is done by good people and not by accident lapse or omission. It is the result of their deliberate actions, long persevered in, which they hold to be motivated by high ideals toward virtuous ends. This is demonstrably true, nor could it occur otherwise. The percentage of positively malignant, vicious or depraved persons is necessarily small. For no species could survive if its members were habitually and consciously bent upon injuring one another. To make things even more complicated, a lot of people's well-meaning ideas actually would make the world a better place if they weren't imposed by force. Diana doesn't really get that distinction. She can only conceptualize a world where bad things happen because bad people with bad intentions make them happen, and good people with good intentions will fix it. But eventually, Wonder Woman catches up to Ludendorff and comes face-to-face with the man she believes is the cause of the war to end all wars. And when he's defeated, nothing happens. In what is my favorite scene in the whole film, she has to confront the possibility that everything she believes is wrong. I killed him. I killed him, but nothing stopped. He killed the God of War. You stopped the war. All of this should have stopped. The fighting should have stopped. Why are they doing this? I don't know. Maybe people aren't always good. Aries or no Aries. Maybe it's just, it's who they are. This is the moment that Diana finally comes to grips with reality. They were killing each other. Killing people they cannot see children. No, it had to be him. It cannot be them. Diana, people... She was right. My mother was right. She said the world of men do not deserve you. Maybe, maybe we don't. But it's not about that. It's about what you believe. You don't think I get it after what I've seen out there? You don't think I wish I could tell you that it was one bad guy to blame? It's not. I love this scene because it's not only the heart of Wonder Woman's internal conflict playing out in a big way. It's also an incredibly good lesson for the way we should all understand the world. Unfortunately, the movie undercuts this point a few minutes later when it reveals that, in fact, Aries is real. And for me, it's ultimately a disappointment that the rest of the third act is just one big battle at a random airfield. Although Aries does at least tell Wonder Woman that he's not directly causing the war. Even so, the fact that he's behind any of it diminishes the importance of the lesson Diana just learned. Steve Trevor was right. It wasn't a Greek god or any singular cause that created World War I. It was millions of people all contributing their own small part to the destruction. And I think we can see some of the same ideas playing out today. It's pretty easy to find conspiracy theories for just about anything that people don't like. The pandemic we've all been living through couldn't just be a product of dozens of layers of incompetence in China. And the crippling policy responses in countries around the world couldn't just be a consequence of bad ideas and poor political incentives. It had to be a pandemic. People couldn't just be rioting because they've been locked down for months, unemployed, and feel like lashing out and smashing windows. It can't just be because some are opportunistic criminals who use the cover of protests to loot and steal stuff. No, somebody like George Soros must be behind it all. Even doing what I do, I've been told in the comments that the only reason I could advocate the kinds of ideas I talk about on this show is because some billionaire pays me to. I wish, but no. People are individuals and their actions are the product of their own choices, which in turn are usually driven by their values and beliefs. And yes, of course, there are sometimes conspiracies and there are almost always situations where one person has more influence over a major event than other people have. For example, most people get taught that World War I started because a Serbian nationalist named Gavrilo Princep assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand. And Princep himself was part of a criminal conspiracy involving five other assassins who carefully planned out their attack. But even that is an incredible oversimplification. Their actual plans completely failed and Princep was only able to shoot Franz Ferdinand and his wife because their driver accidentally turned down the wrong street and wound up right where Princep happened to be. And all that skips over the Austro-Hungarian Empire's colonization of Serbia, complex mutual defense alliances, the Balkan Wars in 1912 and 1913, and a ton of other important contributing causes for the war. The worldview that Wonder Woman holds at the beginning of the film and the one I see a lot in society at large is massively oversimplified. If no one else will defend the world for Marys, then I must. One thing that makes the movie really good, from my perspective, is that it actually forces Wonder Woman to confront her own naivete and grow in the process. What happens in the world isn't defined by good and bad intentions and people aren't just corrupted by malicious gods. As Daniel Webster said almost 200 years ago, good intentions will always be pleaded for every assumption of authority. It is hardly too strong to say that the Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions. There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters. Just as some people believe that if their favorite well-meaning politician had the power to make the right decisions for everybody, everything would always be good, some people believe that there must be an evil plan lurking behind everything they hate. The influential people they agree with are deified as saints and angels. The ones they don't like are villainous demons. This is all wrong, and it leads people to see politicians as either saviors or destroyers when they're usually just ordinary people grasping for power. And while that makes the idea of solving big, global problems a lot more complicated than most people want to believe, the good news is that it also means every single one of us has a lot more local influence than we realize. The things we do to improve our communities actually matter. The time we spend with our kids, friends, and neighbors, helping them see the value in good ideas and leading by example can help reduce the amount of violence and animosity we're seeing play out on the streets. Connecting with people, finding common ground, and engaging with them in a constructive way is how we build a better world together. But if we don't do this ourselves, no gods or masters are going to do it for us. My father told me once he said if you see something wrong happening in the world, you can either do nothing or you can do something and I already tried nothing. But if the other guy wins, demonic hellspawn will rise from the ground and destroy the world. This is all a sign of a society where politics has way too much power. So instead of yelling at each other in the comments, tell me something that you did lately to make your neighborhood a better place that doesn't fit on an I voted sticker. Also, I'd like to send some love to all of our patrons with an extra special thank you to our associate producers. To Connor McGowan, Dallin Case, Jermaine, Himantana, Matt Tabor, and Victoria Manschart. Thank you. And to everyone, please check out our new podcasts. I think you'll like it. If you love the show and want to help us keep making more episodes, check out the Patreon link in the description below. As always, don't forget to like this video, subscribe to this channel, ring that bell icon, and follow us on all our social media at YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Thanks for watching.