#can one even go in reverse chronological order b/c like i have never even tried to get to these even say ten+ yr old videos by Scrolling

[unproduciblesmackdown]

and in further "one million iconis videos i haven't seen" & further "the rich thread of [all i want for christmas is you] from first xmas to how it's branched out & evolved through all xmases" & further "yeah i like knowing Enough even without the peak concrete of confirmation but i like knowing More too, including more concrete confirmation," sure, i did feel Quite Sure that the "if only my dad was here to hear me sing my song" lance's father bit was part of cozy 3rd annual xmas, then shaken up by the introduction of Probably [reunion with your long lost sister, the sickly british ragamuffin] in 4th annual, Probably splitting off into [lance's long lost sister] & the ragamuffin having a whole other reunion also in 5th annual, big tradition of reuniting folks....but then getting a real kick out of this "baby, please come home" finale video from 3rd annual ft. all these Christmas Characters & Christmas Actors managing to appear plus also disappear i.e. not be contained in frame the whole time at any point despite the coziness b/c we are filling this space, & Indeed this includes Lance's Father appearing in the aisle & later Christmassing past the camera, thanks for wearing a hat again like truly where would we be without [thing on head signifies / differentiates between roles]

time for the hints & threads of Christmas Wish Family Reunions Adjacent To "All I Want For Christmas Is You" as i can trace them

1st & 2nd xmases: all i Know thanks to this video is it's 2nd xmas that has lance rubin as himself like i wish lance rubin's father could be here to see me perform "all i want for christmas is you" towards the end of the show....

& i Know both roles were also in the very first xmas show, but of course anyone's otherwise uninformed guess whether this went the same or similarly then or was a total first into second Shakeup. meanwhile feel free again w/the alternate angle from an alternate show from 2nd annual xmas here

3rd xmas: or the cozy ars nova one, as i like to think of it....plausibly the first appearance of mister macabee as well as that first iconis wrole ft. peter the coffee kid? well here's our aiwfciy video

ft. none of the potentially present dialogue before or after but jeremy morse is there Somewhere, potentially reprising [lance rubin's father], seemingly not in the backup singers / dancers group although mister macabee & will roland as will roland are, & christmas around the world, & the macarena, & seems that endzone riffing is making some reference to the "hooray for lance rubin's father showing up" plot point. [little of the audience shown] vantage point pros & cons

4th xmas: no rubins no morses this xmas show but again I Think the first sickly british ragamuffin perhaps? seen here in the aiwfciy with seth eliser's character, corresponding to will roland's officer rossi the christmas burglar, but who knows what relationship between [seth's character] & [ragamuffin] & what possible plot point here? not me

5th xmas: welcome to 54 below, bitch....

shoutout to again the sage sweater under red tee xmas outfit, jared weiss's christmas pants....again no idea about any possible plot points here, no helpful dialogue, adjacent ragamuffin & katrina rose dideriksen's xmas beach episode doesn't seem to give anything away. if there's a lance rubin's father it's not jeremy morse with whom we're getting perhaps the first baby it's cold outside & then fast forward to "not sure what the plot is around the presence of That Old Man but here's julia mattison intent on hitting that" reverberations between 5th annual mister maplestone & gladys levine & 11th annual melvin cooterstein & phyllidia krampington, 5th annual of the will roland mister chestnut's christmas medley (a sequence present in 4th annual xmas), of that likewise fancily filmed here comes santa claus, rocking & rolling for sure w/5th annual many videos....but before you think there's only Not AIWFCIY Family Reunionesque Info, there's also this:

lance rubin seemingly as lance rubin with a Plastic Novelty Candy Cane to be pensive over? like what holds the ashes of joe iconis as joe iconis's extended family from jackalope holler in more recent xmas years? (yes) & is that alexandra ferrara of what will be further xmas years' Magical Family Reunions With Lance Rubin Around AIWFCIY with slightly different choreography in this number & i could sure read into the "setting aside the candy cane to see & dance with this figure only for them to depart & you're dancing with the candy cane again but you'll be fine" as setting up later magical family reunions but that's all semi-informed speculation. forever lots going on with hard candy christmas sequences; again a floutist is there

6th xmas: & now, thanks to lyrics, it can be said by me we've Definitely made the journey from [all i want for christmas is you "reunion" with lance rubin's father] to [with lance rubin's sister]

is she a velociraptor(tm)? as you know, another one in the realm of i personally can't say....dancing gets me every time in these, i Can personally say. we can all also look at photos from this year, some more wrol mister chestnuts for you

& i bet a gladys n maplestone bico again it looks like, & one of those particularly genderously free for all virgin mary dancer years, & susan blackwell xmas villain whose redemption involves Is A Nun Now & whatever's going on there w/ragamuffin ft. maybe this doesn't have anything to do with lance rubin as lance rubin family reunions but he's sure reacting to it & adjacent to macabees reunion too, maybe not the first time we get this but the first time i'm detecting it. thanks, photos

7th xmas: great that there's more photo articles available about xmases now b/c don't think there's Videos of songs to help us out with this one. much to see, multiple ragamuffins even with just the one classic Sickly British lauren marcus role, introducing julia mattison xmas villain phyllidia krampington, introducing jeremy morse xmas villain ineffective henchman (as speculated at some length by me) the hick (in overalls), perhaps introducing will roland uncle peenie & aunt lorette? oh & a sweet baby jesus pic is here, reminding me to mention he definitely cropped up for 6th xmas too, extra relevant for potential miraculous reunions. & on the family reunions around aiwfciy note, as identified recently:

LANCE! AND NANCE!

8th xmas: pics this time from bwayworld, ft. potential for more info with the captioning

novelly decidedly have the Joe's Flashback element, again as per the measure of: as far as i personally am aware. belly button puppeteers in the hard candy christmas segment (a wrole) & uncle peenie (another wrole) & aunt lorette more familiarly styled lol though variations are always possible, phyllidia/the hick as villain/henchman bico it seems, (the ghost of) bob dylan is here, another wrole as virgin mary dancer like 8th annual whew....

perhaps time for a sweet baby jesus miracle & lance rubin is there?

immediately followed by what sure looks heartwarming enough to be a magical family reunion towards the end of the show, perchance just in time for an all i want for christmas is you? only one party hasn't (known to me) already been a magical family reunion aiwfciy participant before? bit fucked up about like speaking of shaking up familiar looks, where's the red tee over green sweater. rolling w/it

9th xmas: but never fear, the red tee is back, as is wrangling playbill's carousel display format for these pics

which makes it seem more likely something other than an [as themself] role when there's a costume change (so was 8th annual's Different Outfit a Different Role as well?) here ft. The Flashback

ft. philip jackson smith (8th annual's flashback jason, 12th annual's flashback joe, 9th annual's flashback [???]) & alexandra ferrara of previous magical family reunions with lance rubin, ft. the baby tree

& of course seth eliser in the mix again for good measure

even better measure, some more Family Reunions materials

& of course now the all i want for christmas is you, with lance, alexandra, seth, & there's philip jackson smith as flashback [?] & sweet baby jesus just nearby, & the reference to the Time Traveling

10th xmas: pics a bit more mysterious like this is probably the flashback but you'd hardly know it from the article alone

later on getting likewise Mostly Inferrable reunion magic

& along the way krampuses, cardboard cutout gettyimages christian borles, first Definite To Me fancy tree, the little evalina role is here re: all i want for christmas is you presumably & the Immediate Adjacency of that song to magical family reunions, if patterns hold

11th xmas: bwayworld pics offer those aforementioned melvin cooterstein glimpses, plausible [the krampus sings hard candy christmas] year, eric william morris mislabel, no sign of end of show reunions unless you count a pic of little evalina as implicit aiwfciy, & Flashback looks ft. again afaik first definite look at extended family Animal Band of jackalope holler

truly with overalls but no white tank top more a Maybe still hearing his voice than with 12th xmas's pics ft. flashback joe glimpses & little evalino all i want for christmas is you post-magical reserections. & of course can crack into 13th xmas pics with bevested abf flashback joe, animals extended family band, little evalina aiwfciy, & the So Much More of every xmas. & of course, hell, look at 14th xmas pics

naturally too if you spin off of those first several christmas show's "if only my father could be here to see this" in terms of like as many elements as possible, like [reunited with long lost family, whether presumed or actually dead or alive. wanted] or [reunited with family, not that lost] or Reunions or Family or It Was More Heartwarming Before You Kept Talking But Oh Well Yaayyy or Gay Sex like christmas spectacularextravaganza elements are all around you

[sol1056]

three anons: what the hell was all that in S7

Picking out the three that are most to the point for this answer, but I’ve got another dozen or so that overlap. Not sure I’ll have time/energy to answer the rest individually, so hopefully this meta will be sufficient. 

I mean it could be that they had different execs back then who were better at their jobs and kept Shiro around. No one disliked black paladin Shiro, even the DotU fans were ok with it, and the writing in s1-2 was mostly very good. Changing all that was a bad idea. I would have left on the spot if Shiro died or was benched, like now, I'm only around for closure. Maybe they were different execs with this decision & the EPs leaped at the chance. Well, we know who's also gonna be in trouble if that's the case.

With your theory on how storyboards were reused and characters shuffled around for cost cutting, might this not also partly explain the Adam flashback scene and how it was staged? I mean, they were originally supposed to be roommates and the scene was meant to appear in season 2 but got cut. What if they just reused the storyboard (or even animation, if it was already mostly done) the way it was and then just changed the dialogue? This could explain the lack of intimacy in the staging, too. Ezor and Zethrids interactions were more openly intimate maybe not (just) because they‘re villains who die immediately after, but because the decision to make them an item came before storyboarding was done, so the staging is more suggestive. I mean, if you think Shiro was mostly pasted in in the first half of s7, that might make sense.

If cost was the issue and they already had the black paladin Shiro version written, and got the greenlight to change it to Keith then things don't add up. Because they changed it once more! Which could have been avoided if they stuck to the Shiro one. And it goes without saying it would be better written to follow canon instead of the mess we got, like, I cant imagine this NOT discussed. So if it wouldn't be cost effective to change it again for Keith and it would be badly written, why did it happen?

Behind the cut: the most likely chronology of revisions, the clues in S7 as to its original form, and what this means for S8 and the Black Paladin position. 

This is everything I’ve been able to figure out between interviews, podcasts, tweets, plus researching the industry and a few reality-checks with friends more familiar. As always, any mistakes are my own. 

version 0: "five teenagers"

This would’ve been the first pitch after getting the green light, and probably only a loose synopsis, with just the pilot given a rough storyboard. A post-apocalyptic Earth conquered by the Galra, who are seeking Blue. The execs rejected JDS' mechanism for the discovery of Blue, in favor of simply having Keith ‘sense’ Blue. The execs also rejected the idea that Shiro would die only a few episodes in. This summary seems to be the basis of the "five teenagers" part of the teaser.

version A: "shiro kicks the bucket"

Timelines would've dictated moving onto an outline pretty quickly, detailed down to the episode level, including bits of dialogue, motifs, turning points or emotional beats. In this revision, Shiro dies/leaves at the end of S2 and does not return. This is the “originally we wanted him to kick the bucket” version, which the execs rejected.

version B: "shiro goes away for awhile"

If I'm interpreting the hints correctly, the "does Shiro die or not" question got tossed back and forth all the way into S1/S2 pre-production. Rather than rearrange everything, the easiest fix would've been to leave most of the story intact and write only a new ending where Shiro returns. The execs reject this rewrite, saying Shiro can’t be gone that long. This is the “we tried to just have him gone for awhile, but the execs said he had to come back sooner” version.

version C: "enter the clone"

Again, easiest fix is to insert Shiro/Kuron, remove Keith, and reverse that just before Shiro's return in version B. This impacts only the middle seasons (S3-S6); the clone compromise satisfies the execs. Kuron's characterization makes a lot more sense if it’s Keith, in visuals (ie Kuron leaning against the wall in Keith fashion), dialogue (fighting with Lance), and action (leaving without consulting the team). It's also why no one mentions Keith's absence. Because in the original version A, Keith was standing right there.

version D: "wtf is going on", aka Season 7

When JDS mentions having a full season written with Shiro as Black Paladin, it didn't make sense how they'd have a script and not use it. With @ptw30's visual detective work, I think I may've figured it out.

Technical notes: first scripts are all written for a season, then voices are recorded, and then the combined script+recording is used to storyboard. Production seasons are 26-episodes, independent of actual broadcast seasons; VA may be recording scenes across two 13-episode seasons completely out of order, since the recording schedule's going to be based on who's available, not chronology of the file numbers. The biggest staff changes are usually in April ('staffing season') when new shows get the greenlight and start sharking around to catch writers, designers, directors, etc.

In March of this year, S5 was released. At least some of the storyboarders were released in time for staffing season; in April, Hedrick moves to a new project. With S7/S8 being unchanged since version B, I suspect Hedrick delivered the scripts for S7 and S8 by winter of last year, at latest. Even that would be tight, since that's expecting animation to deliver 26 episodes in an 8-month timeframe. [edit: probably delivered much earlier, given the studio leaks show images we can recognize from S7/S8, so some amount of these seasons were in production by then.]

In June, S6 dropped, and a week later, Hamilton was announced as the new story editor via the Lets Voltron podcast. With the lead time required in production, there doesn't seem to be any reason to even need a story editor, at this point. All the pre-production work should be done.

In August, S7 dropped. Hedrick's editor credit is only for the first half of the season; Hamilton gets it for the second half. That means the last six episodes were written after Hedrick's departure. (May Chan's S2 script was reused in part, and she gains a belated co-writing script credit for that. Hedrick should've received the same; it's standard.)

Let's recap a few things we know (and a few we can intuit) about S7:

The season was already written with Shiro returning as Black Paladin, possibly also recorded and storyboarded. 

S6 reversed the S4-S5 trend, lending strength to exec arguments that Shiro is necessary in the story.

After S6 dropped, the EPs said the wolf's name was a spoiler. See this post from @pwt30; tl;dr is that perhaps the EPs intended the wolf to be Shiro's spirit. 

Despite Shiro's return, he's absent for the majority of the first half; when he is present, he barely speaks a half-dozen words, and none are plot-relevant. See @ptw30's post for more details. 

There's a glaring incontinuity when Allura says the paladin armor protected the team, yet Shiro is frozen with the other non-paladins despite wearing armor. 

Keith never offers for Shiro to pilot, nor mentions it, nor even seems to consider it an issue.

Not everything dovetails since I don't have the full picture, but here's my theory: S7 was originally outlined with Shiro's spirit in the wolf, rather than Black. I have no idea when/how JDS would've thought up the CA:WS parallels for his sole writing credit, but Shiro's "I died" and Lotor's psychotic breakdown are squeezed into S6E6, which was written by Josh Hamilton, Hedrick's later replacement. The only other Shiro-in-Black point is a few minutes at the end of S6's final episode. Shifting from Shiro-in-wolf to Shiro-in-Black really only affects one episode, with a bit of editing for another.

Anyway, S6 ends version C, and we segue to version B. For the first half of S7, the clone's body may have been in stasis while the team traveled through its various non-adventures. The episode we now know as S7E1 may have been the mid-point, with about six episodes of Shiro being unconcious. After watching the numbers drop from S3 to S6, the execs may've rejected another six episodes of where-is-Shiro and insisted he come back ASAP.

S7 only has two episodes that must be in order; the rest are pretty rearrangeable. All they had to do was insert Shiro into the background and record a few lines. (Several lines are pure voice-over, which also saves cost/time by not needing to animate moving mouth.) But the moved episode is only his memory/awakening, and the logical next episode would be Shiro's reconnection, and the rest of the season would roll from there. Without moving the entire second half of the season to the start, moving only his awakening episode would mean Shiro does nothing for 5-6 episodes and then abruptly reconnects.  

In a recent interview, JDS said at first the execs weren't enthused until JDS talked up the new mecha they'd give Shiro to captain. Honestly, there's no way JDS got to be EP without giving a really good pitch, but there may've been another element to his argument: nostalgia. The EPs seem certain everyone suffers from their same nostalgia dementia, which if you do, then you probably have been waiting for any glimpse of that og!Keith. If Shiro returns at the start of S7, then Keith's time in Black has been limited to a few disastrous episodes in S3, and a single big battle in S6. The beginning of S7 is the only time we'd ever see the Voltron84 formation working as a unified team, and returning Shiro too soon would defeat the whole purpose of showing how the team has grown in his absence.

The solution seems to have been to remove Shiro's reconnection completely, and keep Keith in Black. That would mean re-recording Shiro's lines from the midpoint onward, and editing in Keith over Shiro. The savings would be that only half the seaon would have to be reworked, not all. The loose end of the space wolf --- an artifact of version B --- was left in place.  

What I'm not sure of is whether the following are significant enough changes to warrant removing Hedrick's name and replacing it with Hamilton's. It could be, if supervising the revision process is enough to override the previous credits. I have no idea about that part of the industry, and it's the kind of edge case you're just not going to find a lot of blog posts about, so if you know, tell me. Otherwise, your guess is as good as mine.

Anyway, this would've meant Shiro was switched in for Allura, Allura was put back in a lion, and Keith was switched in for Shiro. This would explain why Shiro speaks as the leader of Voltron despite no longer being a paladin, and the uneasy sensations a lot of people got about the characterizations. It was most striking in the last three episodes: Shiro felt like Allura v2, while Keith felt like Shiro v2. And that further, the Altean-Earthian ship just 'lighting up' for Shiro --- and becoming that oversized white mecha --- may've meant as Allura's fourth (fifth?) deus ex machina.

I'd be willing to bet that mid-battle, Allura repeated her stunt from the end of S2, heading out to destroy Sendak's crystal by herself. She wouldn't need Sam to hack her brain, and then we'd also have a call back to when she got knocked down by the crystal-ball thing on Naxzela. If she was the one meant to go toe-to-toe with Sendak, that would explain the bizarre neutrality of Sendak's words --- he says nothing personal to Shiro, at all --- and the even more bizarre silence on Shiro's part. Allura's words wouldn't fit Shiro, so he's silent.

And lastly, it'd mean that the one leaping out of Black to cut down Sendak wouldn't have been Keith. It would've been Shiro.

Where would the story go from here?

If I look at the events of S7, the first half is terribly disjointed, really. If Shiro was supposed to wake at the midpoint, an episode (or two) is missing. One for him to reconnect with Black, and a second that would provide some minor conflict to settle him back into position. Those two episodes were likely replaced with the unexpected and frankly over-told two-parter of the Earth flashbacks.

Two problems with that, one technical, one structural.

First, the flashback two-parter has a lot of moving parts. Brand-new designs, characters, and backdrops. It's far too elaborate to be done in an ultra-compressed timeframe, not without several heart attacks and therapy bills on the part of the animation staff. (Plus, the US-based storyboarding team is already downsized, so fewer hands to do the work.)

Second, it doesn't make a lot of structural sense, especially against the big revelations in S6 of an existing Altean colony. Within the story, there's no reason to halt everything and travel across the universe to take however long to build a new castle, when the Altean colony question is far more pressing. Returning to earth also violates the structure, because it's really just a standard milieu: start on earth, head out to have adventures, and return home at the end.

But here, they're returning home and then possibly leaving again. That's just... a rather peculiar and imbalanced way to do it. It doesn't help that doing so means literally telling Romelle her people are just gonna have to rot, the paladins are certain they need the castle more. Why would you take one of the more compelling storylines you've come up with, only to background it again, and wreck the traditional bookending milieu structure at the same time? Especially if that means coming up with major set-pieces and brand-new designs in the space of several months, after a chunk of your core staff are already onto other things.

I think those two flashback episodes -- and the rewritten finale episodes --- may've been cribbed from S8. In other words, the second half of S7 was the original end of S8. That would mean repurposing already-created storyboards and animation artifacts, so there's a huge time savings there (not counting the need to re-record voices and edit the visuals to match the changed-around parts). 

[note: if there’s anywhere you want to frontload introductions for the spin-off, it’d be in the final season, not the penultimate season. Here it feels like a big honking distraction, rather than an organic segue into the next iteration.]

That change necessitated that utterly bizarro mecha that appeared out of nowhere with the most ridiculously impeccable timing. There needed to be a reason to pull the team back out to space to deal with Haggar and/or the alt-Alteans and/or Lotor or whomever else it turns out to be.

So... where we go from here depends on when S8 gets released, because that’ll tell us how much they did (or did not) edit the episodes. Another clue will be whose name gets listed as head editor for an episode; if we see Hedrick’s name reappear at the top, we’ll know we’re dealing with episodes that are enough unrevised to qualify as being Hedrick-edited, that it’s a version B episode. 

My expectation? They’ll move Shiro’s reconnection to the first part of S8, and add an episode or edit pieces of another, to blend it into what would’ve been the first half of S8 (probably with filler to mask the gap). Then add an episode to segue into the version B finale of S7, where we’d end with the original VLD lineup. With the time needed for animation, that’d be the easiest (if potentially awkward) way to repurpose as much as possible of existing artifacts. 

If we don’t get S8 in the next 1-2 months, though, all bets are off, and there’s a much greater possibility that the entire final season is being redone from scratch. I’d expect Keith to stay in Black, in that case, but I’m always willing to be pleasantly surprised.  

edited to add: see this followup for another detail that supports the reversed-seasons theory

[duxbelisarius]

Wonder Woman Review

I was questioning whether or not to do this, but on the advice of @byzantinefox and @bantarleton, I’ve decided to make a post addressing the events portrayed in the film. I’m not a film critic or scholar (my wondertrev buddy @twoquickdeaths could probably say more about those aspects of it than I could), but I am a history major with a great interest in the First World War. Hence, I will be addressing the events of the film, their historical context, and the way they are portrayed. WARNING: Spoilers below!

So to start, let me make this point ABSOLUTELY clear: I LOVED Wonder Woman. I mean, I was squirming in my seat at dinner prior to seeing it with my family, my little sister and I humming the theme! Patty Jenkins and her team made a phenomenal movie (AND Zack, can’t forget the conductor of the DCEU orechestra), Gal and Chris were amazing as Wonder Woman and Steve Trevor (and I am now torn between Wonderbat and Wondertrev, which is saying a lot given that I grew up with the DCAU’s Justice League and Justice League Unlimited). The action scenes were awesome (Antiope and co. PHYSICALLY REMOVING the Germans from Themyscira set the tone very well for the subsequent fights), and Diana’s character struck an excellent balance of traditionally feminine and masculine traits as Marston intended (Gal and Patty deserve high praise for this as well). IMO, the tone of the movie balanced positivity and hope with hopelessness and loss more explicitly, perhaps, than BvS, MoS and SS. All of the DCEU movies dealt with those themes (in b4 HURR DURR GRIMDARK 2EDGY4ME), though consolation and desolation aren’t always easy to convey (even if you’ve read St. Ignatius’ Spiritual Exercises).

Having stated this, there were basic problems with it’s portrayal of history. I need to stress that I am well aware that this is fantasy/comic book hero stuff, realism isn’t necessarily possible in a world of super human beings, and I’m NOT going to complain about uniforms or epaulets being wrong (Sorry Ban; though there are British troops wearing French Adrian Helmets in the trench scene). I understand this was obviously not a documentary, and as far as modern historical films go there is far more attention to accuracy than in the past I’d say (see all those post-WWII Patton tanks that appeared as German tanks in Battle of the Bulge and Patton). My main issue is with problems of chronology and of important historical facts, especially those regarding how the war was fought and why (SPOILERS START HERE!).

From the start, Steve’s arrival on Themyscira and the subsequent beach battle with the German marines raise some problems. For one, even if Steve’s Fokker Eindecker E.III monoplane (obsolete in 1918!) could reach Themyscira (presumably near Greece) from Turkey, the idea that a German destroyer could search for him is questionable. Given that the High Seas Fleet was bottled up in the North Sea ports, it would have to be a German or Ottoman Turkish ship from Turkey, and then there’s still the problem of Allied naval dominance in the Mediterranean (The British, French, Italian and Greek navies MAY be a problem here!). These pose problems, but not insurmountable ones, for the plot; Steve might not reach Themyscira, but if he does, there’s probably no Germans following him and so Antiope lives and may well send Diana and potentially MORE Amazons to REMOVE THE HUN stop Ares.

So problems, but not big ones. It’s when they arrive in London that things get screwy. To start, the Armistice was not deliberated on months ahead of time in Parliament, and this completely ignores the unified command of the Allied Armies exercised by Marshal Ferdinand Foch (the French in general are completely ignored, though this is no different from Ridley Scott’s Dunkirk by the looks of it). The Imperial War Council, which was in charge of the British war effort (and was NOT the large parliamentary body it was portrayed as) comprised, at most, between 10 and 12 members representing Britain, India and the Dominions (Canada, New Foundland, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa), and it didn’t even hold a conference during the period of the film (roughly October-November 1918). Sir Patrick (played by David Thewlis AKA Remus Lupin) would not be proposing peace and an armistice as A) he would not partake in any Cabinet meeting, B) The Cabinet did not meet at this time, and most importantly, C) The war on the Western Front was all but won in 1918.

This last point is key, and I would never blame Patty for overlooking it when it’s a point that seemingly EVERYONE overlooks. The stereotypical British General portrayed by the ubiquitous James Cosmo (seriously, he’s been in Highlander, Trainspotting, Game of Thrones (as Jeor Mormont), Braveheart, Troy, the list goes on!) claims that he won’t “send troops into Belgium this close to the Armistice”, shooting down Steve Trevor’s plan. This blatantly ignores that British, French and Belgian troops WERE ALREADY IN BELGIUM.

This is relevant to the later quote made by Steve when Diana and her team reach “the front” (to quote In Bruges, “Turns out, it’s in Belgium”). “This Battalion has been here for a year, and they’ve barely made any progress,” a point that ignores the sweeping gains of the German Spring Offensives, and the equally large gains of the Hundred Days Offensives, technically the “122 days” when you consider that they started with the French victory on the Marne in June 1918. And this isn’t even taking into account rotation systems that, while often dysfunctional, did ensure that battalions on both sides received rest in the rear areas or reserve lines. While formal trench lines really ceased to exist from September 1918 onwards, the battle for Veld (the village Diana and co. liberate after taking the German trenches) does capture the conditions of fighting quite well: rushes across fields, canals and ditches, fighting in small towns, and all amidst the squalid autumn weather of North Western Europe. That “No-Man’s Land” means you can’t occupy/cross it as Steve claims, is demonstrably false; all due respect to the Eowyn, “I Am No Man” gifsets, but the men on both sides had been crossing and taking ground on a regular basis since March, 1918. 

That the Armistice was not proposed until late in the year, and negotiated even later, is again another point where the film diverges. Moreover, and here I’ll address Erich Ludendorff’s portrayal, the film missed an opportunity to show just how suicidal German leadership had become in 1918. The film reverses the Ludendorff-von Hindenburg (ship name: Hindendorff) relationship; Hindenburg, as exemplified by the iron nail statues built of him for German war bonds drives, was tall, solid, and stereotypically Prussian. It was a September 29th mental breakdown by Ludendorff, short, monacled, neurotic and nervous, that began the talks about a potential armistice. It was quite honestly shocking to see him portrayed, on screen, as shooting a captain with his pistol and having Dr. Poison gas Hindenburg and the commanders of the German Army with Poison’s hydrogen-based Mustard Gas. Historically, Ludendorff was the man who spent hours in September 1918 sitting by the open casket of his son-in-law, conversing with the corpse, after the latter had died in battle. Leaving aside Poison’s strength elixir, which Erich inhales to gain strength, he was far from the tough guy the movie makes him out to be. 

Moreover, as I mentioned in a post I reblogged before, there were GENUINE plans to prolong the war. The so-called Endkampf envisioned final bombing raids on London and Paris (not just London as in the film), and with actual incendiaries. These were intended to be one way trips, aimed at maximum civilian loss. Likewise, the High Seas Fleet attempted suicide-by-Entente and tried to sail out for one last clash with the British Grand Fleet. This actually led to mutinies which lead to Socialist revolutionaries (the Volksmarine) taking over Kiel, Bremen, and most of the North Seas ports. Far more sinister were the plans to forcibly conscript 600 to 800 000 German men and boys, from 16 to 60, to be armed and sent to the front, where they would partake in conventional rearguard and unconventional guerrilla actions against the superior armed, equipped and trained Allied armies. All the while, scorched earth policies were to be enacted, and were carried out at places like the Brie-Longwy ore mines, which provided most of France’s coal and iron ore. Almost half were flooded and sabotaged, taking the French years to recover economically. Destruction of food supplies would have left a dire situation for the Belgian Relief Organization, set up in 1915 by private American citizens and led by Herbert Hoover. Responsible for feeding almost all of Belgium (c. 4-5 million people) and close to 10 million French civilians, they would have been presented with a humanitarian crisis that would have compounded the starvation that Hoover had too meet in Eastern Europe and the former Russian Empire after 1919. Steve Trevor is right, millions would have died, but Dr. Poison’s notebook would not have been necessary. And we know that those plans were taken seriously; the Navy DID attempt a final sally, incendiaries WERE stockpiled, and ‘insurrectionary warfare’ was incorporated into postwar plans of the Reichswehr (the army of the Weimar Republic) by Staff Officer Joachim von Stulpnagel, and influenced Hitler’s Nero Order (which Albert Speer only ignored due to a lack of manpower to carry it out!).

My final point comes around to the film’s most powerful theme, that of human nature and the problem of evil. First off, the efforts of the Belgian Relief Organization alone speak to the nobility and goodness that humans can attain. But regarding this issue of free will, Diana hits right on the head in her final monologue, when it comes to motivations and reasons for fighting the film falls short at some points. Cosmo’s general is portrayed as the stereotypical Brass-hatted, red-tabbed ‘donkey general,’ dismissing Steve and Diana’s horror at the potential casualties from Poison’s concoction with the remark to the effect that “soldiers are supposed to die.” Again, ignoring the impending triumph of Allied arms on all Fronts (Bulgaria surrendered Sept. 29th, the Italians were nearing Trieste and the French and Serbs Belgrade, ANZAC, Indian and British cavalry were hauling ass for Damascus), it plays on the ‘Lions led by Donkeys’ trope that charges both military incompetence AND moral cowardice against Allied (esp. British leadership). The success I mention indicates otherwise, but Diana’s claim that Amazon generals unlike Man’s Generals, fight and die with their men, runs a foul of history. 78 British, 47 French (61 including deaths from disease while at the front) and 86 German generals were killed in action between 1914 and 1918, and in all cases the number of dead increased by year. Graham Maddox and Frank Davies have even recorded all of the British casualties among General Officers, 232 in total versus an active roster of c. 1000 and total wartime number over 2000. Charges of incompetence in tactics and management are in no way inadmissible; but the conclusion that must be reached given the amount of casualties, of which 8 were wounded twice and 10 were victoria cross winners (3 during the war), is not that they lacked moral courage, but if anything, there was perhaps an excess.

The film ends with Ares death, and the German soldiers around appear to have been woken from a haze; Diana is seemingly right, kill Ares, you kill the war. She admits, again, that humans are capable of great acts of good and evil, but the film again seems to suggest that Ares was more to blame (again, the the airfield scene indicates anything). That over half of the British soldiers in WWI were volunteers or Professionals, and almost all of the Canadians, Australians and Indians (between them all over 2 million men) were the same, indicates far greater agency on their part. And I don’t think that any of these omissions, esp. for the Generals, are done consciously and out of spite. These tropes are so embedded as to be taken as a given, though I hope this will change at some point in the future. History, esp. that of WWI, is my passion and I hope that the film inspires greater interest in the conflict as other media, like Battlefield One, have already done. If you’ve made it this far, thanks for reading!