Diana Prince, cameo queen

I have to wonder how Gal Gadot feels about being asked to lend her star wattage in cameos in other DC movies, when they won't even make a third Wonder Woman movie.

The Flash marks the second 2023 DC film, and the second 2023 DC film in which Diana Prince makes a cameo. 

It's not a spoiler to mention The Flash, because the cameo comes in the first 15 minutes. It may be a spoiler to mention SPOILER ALERT Shazam: Fury of the Gods, because they hold that one to the very end and I'm sure they wanted us all to be surprised. Of course, we live in an era where everyone is all too eager to report that stuff, and who really cares about this kind of spoiler anyway. (Mine was a fairly ineffectual spoiler alert because the image above is from this movie.)

Well, it isn't obvious from either cameo that Gadot is annoyed, but I can't imagine she wouldn't be.

Now we all know Wonder Woman 1984 wasn't great, but I think we can all also admit it wasn't terrible. Okay, some people thought it was terrible. My love for the first movie and Gadot's performance in it probably allowed me to cut it some slack and give it a passing grade of three stars. But whatever you thought about it, the first was great and the character deserved to have a chance at a third.

There are a number of rumors floating out there about why it was cancelled, from Patty Jenkins walking away (that idea may have come from the fact that she was trying to juggle responsibilities on the Star Wars movie Rogue Squadron, which has also been cancelled) to DC changing the way it's doing things (an idea supported by the fact that The Flash is considered to be the last film in the DCEU). The reality is, studios bend and break their own rules if they think there is a reason to do so, and apparently they just didn't think WW3 would have the legs to be a success. 

Then why keep putting Gadot's legs in your movies?

I can't necessarily say that I'm frustrated that there will be no Wonder Woman 3, in a vacuum. Any indication that our unquenchable appetite for superhero movies might be dying off strikes me as a good sign for the movies. I'm not saying we have to get rid of them altogether, but maybe each studio gets to make one each year and that's it. I think their scarcity would certainly make us appreciate them more.

No, it's more like why does Wonder Woman not get a third movie when so many lesser properties do? I'm sure someone is out there making Venom 3 -- in fact, I've just confirmed it on IMDB -- and the first one of those movies was shite. I didn't see the second. 

Even more interesting about this whole "end the DCEU thing" is that The Flash is actually really good. Say what you want about Ezra Miller, you have every right and it's deserved, but Andy Muschietti delivered a damned entertaining movie. Don't tell me someone couldn't have found an awesome way to go with Wonder Woman in one more movie. And it wouldn't even have to have included all these other fools, because she was essentially the only superhero in the first two. 

But the really sad thing is: Without any of these other movies, we may not even see Gadot as Wonder Woman again. In fact, I think that's most likely. 

And try as she might, she just hasn't quite been able to duplicate that appeal in her other projects.

A Cyborg movie? Aquaman 2? 

Anything for one more movie from the cameo queen.*

*But wait a minute ... they are making an Aquaman 2. I forgot about the whole recasting of Amber Heard controversy. So why are they saying The Flash is the last movie of the DCEU? I can't keep any of this straight anymore. 

Is Wonder Woman 1984 even called Wonder Woman 1984?

I have finally caught up with Wonder Woman 1984. In the end, I really could have just gone by myself at the small town theater in Mansfield last week, since I didn't end up seeing it with either my wife or my kids. 

My wife ultimately determined it was too grown up for the seven-year-old, which ended up not being the case. He's seen Captain Marvel and Ant-Man, and this was really no worse than those -- possibly better, in terms of potentially disturbing content. A guy gets transformed into a tiny green globule and wiped up and thrown in the toilet in Ant-Man. Nothing like that happens here. 

Plus he's been watching The Mandalorian, where no fewer than 60 stormtroopers are slaughtered in every episode. A friend and I were discussing it and we don't think there was actually a single death in all of Wonder Woman 1984. 

Anyway, what happened happened. I said I was over not going to see it in Mansfield, and truly, I am. 

So, eager to review it, I went by myself on Monday night, which did have the benefit of allowing me to see it on the largest possible screen with the boomingest possible sound. Whether that helped or not is something you can find out in my review, which I will link to the right if it is not already there at the time of this posting.

So I won't talk too much about my thoughts on the movie in this post. I will talk about how this movie challenges my ideas of how to write a movie's title when I write about it.

We all know of this movie as Wonder Woman 1984, but the movie doesn't know itself that way. Both times the title appears on screen -- at the beginning and at the end -- it appears as WW84. Almost like a political slogan. Almost like a sequel to WWI and WWII, though you'd have to tell me what happened in the 82 other world wars because I wasn't paying attention. 

It's really just a shorthand for us, since we know the movie is called Wonder Woman 1984. Abbreviations are cool. Acronyms are cool. Other examples exist in cinema. We've been doing this since T2, though in that case, the full title did appear on screen. 

It also gets at the DCEU's hesitation about actually referring to the character as Wonder Woman. If I'm not mistaken, this is now the fourth movie Diana Prince has appeared in without ever once being referred to as Wonder Woman. It's like the change to calling it KFC because they were so darn worried people would realize the chicken is fried. 

But the most problematic aspect of WW84 for me right now is that according to my own logic on movie titles, WW84 is actually the title of this movie.

Take my recent (nearly four years ago) post on Se7en, which you can find here. I only write it as Se7en because that's the only way the movie refers to itself within its own runtime. It never once, in the same two instances of appearing at the beginning and at the end, appears as "Seven." So Se7en is not just some cheeky way they advertised it, it's the actual title. 

If we consider Wonder Woman 1984 -- the film itself -- as the only available evidence to determine its title, we have to reach the same conclusion. If we just handed the film over to an alien life form studying earth culture, and asked them to use what they know of earth culture to tell us the title of the film, they would called it WW84.

But that's not the only available evidence we have. We have the poster above, which lists the abbreviation in bigger letters but also includes the full title below that. We have interviews with cast and crew. We have its IMDB page, which, granted, is only trying to use the available evidence to reach the same conclusions I'm trying to reach here. For what it's worth, WW84 is not even listed as an alternate title on IMDB. 

As with many of my discussions on The Audient, this one is pretty academic. We instinctively know the difference between a real title of a film and a more Twitter-friendly abbreviation of it. 

I still wonder, though -- pun not intended -- when they will finally commit to calling this character Wonder Woman. Sure, it's a kind of silly name that's left over from pulp comic books, a relic from another era. But I'm sure if either Superman or Batman were being named today, their creators would come up with something slightly less on the nose and slightly more "rad." That doesn't prevent those characters from being constantly referred to by those names, even with a certain fetishism when it comes to Batman. You don't hear those characters constantly referred to as Clark and Bruce, do you?

I'm wondering if we'll ever get the chance. I don't really know the future of DCEU movies -- I've been flocking to comic book movie headlines even less than usual lately -- so I don't even know if another Wonder Woman movie is planned, especially since this movie, whether it's Wonder Woman 1984 or WW84, is not nearly so beloved as the original. (Though it has a higher Metacritic score, 60, than I thought it might.) Also, they are running out of possible years in which to set such a sequel, if you want to set it significantly before the present day setting of Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice and Justice League. Wonder Woman 1997 might work, but then again it might not.

Maybe WW97 would work better. 

Personal growth

Never let it be said that an old dog can't learn any new tricks.

In past times, my "trick" on a five-night trip to a small country town that had its own movie theater would have been to get to that theater, at least once if not twice. With five nights at your disposal, it's not even a hindrance on any of your fellow travelers. Just this past summer -- winter in Australia -- I went to the local cinema in Lakes Entrance to see both Sonic the Hedgehog, and a repertory screening of Mary Poppins, which I had never seen.

This past week, I made it to the Mansfield Armchair Cinema, pictured above, exactly zero times.

Oh, it had been my intention to go. I had not yet seen any of the films playing there, which at different times during our stay included Wonder Woman 1984, The Croods: A New Age, The Dry and Words on Bathroom Walls. And I got as far as the lobby on our second-to-last full day, when I asked about whether the next day's shows were in danger of selling out. They were, so if we were to buy tickets, we probably ought to do it today. 

But when it didn't work out, I let it go without further comment, and that's the part that encourages me about my own ability to surprise myself.

It wasn't that we didn't have the time, but that we, collectively, did not have the inclination. 

I had expected to take my younger son, who turned seven on January 1st, to The Croods on his birthday. We had known it was going to rain that day. My wife was even planning a concurrent viewing of The Dry for her, her sister and her mother -- an escape to The Dry to get out of the wet, you could say. I guess we figured we'd force my older son along to The Croods.

But then it was revealed that not only did my older son not want to see The Croods -- which we already knew -- but neither did his brother. Forcing one would have been achievable, but not both -- especially if the second one we were forcing was having a birthday. (Incidentally, I sort of blame myself, for making a dismissive comment about this movie sometime in mid-December, when I did not know this scenario would arise.)

Wonder Woman was my next best hope, but my wife was uncertain whether it would be too adult for the seven-year-old. He's watched a handful of Marvel movies, but my wife was not willing to extend that logic to exposing him to this movie. The fact that she wanted to see it on a bigger screen -- we have that option in Australia, at least for now -- also factored into her thinking.

I still could have seen one of the other movies, but this small community theater plays its last show each day by about 6:40. I just couldn't see my way to skipping out on a whole night's dinner just to scratch my itch to visit small theaters in small towns. 

To be sure, my wife would have still helped me work it out. Our trip was long enough that I could have gotten away in one of the afternoons, especially since our kids are accustomed to some afternoon downtime -- meaning time playing video games. 

But instead I just decided to let it go. 

And part of letting it go was never mentioning it again once it was clear it was not going to happen. In the past, had I been thwarted in such an attempt, I might have made solemn, regretful comments which would have let my wife know I had not really let it go. This time, I just decided that what was done was done, and it would never get mentioned again.

Besides, I think we'll be back to Mansfield. If this place is great in the summer, it's even better in the winter, where it serves Mt. Buller, a rare Australian spot with the elevation to support skiing. Which, incidentally, has its own theater, where we saw Aladdin on a visit in 2019. 

And if for some reason we don't get back here, life will go on. 

I can't visit every small theater in every small town, and knowing that is a part of growing up as an evolved human being.