WW84, Superman 3 and Movies About Movies – Part 3: Themes

PART 3 – THEMATIC SIMILARITIES

There are themes that run through both WW84 and SUPERMAN 3. In SUPERMAN 3, many of these themes came from Richard Lester’s less successful films like PETULIA. These themes are very unique for a superhero action film and when I grew up and re-watched SUPERMAN 3 as an adult it was quite interesting to see them built into SUPERMAN 3. It is also fascinating to see them repeated in WW84 but also see Jenkins take her own spin on them, deepening them into something more meaningful that becomes not only a commentary on the times but a commentary on the archetypal characters that are in the film.

You can find Part 1 – Visuals here: https://noscoopsclub.com/2021/01/04/ww84vsuperman3-p1/

You can find Part 2 – Characters here: https://noscoopsclub.com/2021/01/06/ww84vsuperman3-p2/

3A.) An emphasis on story and character – and almost no emphasis on lore or universe building

I just want to get this one out of the way, right at the top. Patty Jenkins does not prioritize lore or universe building. She wants to tell HER story HER way. And I love that. We don’t get some kind of motherbox easter egg for ZSJL. This ain’t the MCU and it shouldn’t be. DC is doing its own style – and I love that. Do I enjoy MCU films – hell yes. But I don’t need every comic book film to be THAT. I love that Patty Jenkins puts more of an emphasis on Diana and Steve re-bonding over 80s fashions or of a cameo of Commander Salamander than a cameo of like a 12 year old Bruce Wayne. Even the final post-credits sequence is not some kind of massive set up for the next DC film – like AQUAMAN 2 or THE FLASH. It’s a nod to Lynda Carter – a childhood hero of Jenkins who has become an inspiration both for Jenkins’ treatment of the character and her style of filming.

And while in SUPERMAN 3 the concept of a “cinematic universe” had not been coined or even thought about, that film really doesn’t even care about its previous installments. There’s no mention of Lex or Zod, there’s really no interaction between Clark and Lois. This is about Clark and Lana and the battle for Clark’s soul while fighting a brilliant hacker and a megalomanical billionaire. WE DON’T NEED the other stuff. Let’s just tell the stories we want to tell. And I love that. It’s not for everyone – and I do think people subconsciously knock both of these films because they sort of live in their own world. But I love it.

3A.) The Quest for Control Is The Path To Chaos

As the old saying goes, the tighter you hold onto something, the further it will slip through your grasp. So goes controlling the world – for both Ross Webster and Maxwell Lord.

Webster quickly finds himself a wanted man, absconding to the Grand Canyon when Superman returns to his full powers and begins to dismantle all of his previous wrongdoings. Both Webster and Lord tie their ambitions to variables that they ultimately cannot control. Webster is tied to Superman, who has gone “bad” due to some manufactured kryptonite. And while this at first proves beneficial, when Superman is able to cure himself, it becomes his downfall.

Similarly, Maxwell Lord finds that his becoming the dreamstone still will extract its own monkey’s paw toll from him. For Maxwell it is his health, which begins to rapidly deteriorate once he becomes the dreamstone. And it later becomes the fate of his son, who finds himself alone in the midst of a potential nuclear war that his father has created. Patty Jenkins’ decisions and storytelling here is really something else. Again, the Ross Webster and Maxwell Lord comparison is there, it’s undeniable, but what Patty does with Maxwell is so far beyond Ross Webster.

It is only when Wonder Woman reasons with him and shows him his own reasons for becoming this version of himself – he was in an abusive relationship with a parent, and ostracized at school due to his Latino heritage that Maxwell Lord realizes that the path to ultimate riches and power has extracted a heavy toll on his humanity, his health and ultimately his son. On a larger scale Jenkins shows us in these scenes, where Maxwell sees the humanity he has lost in his quest, that any time ANYONE makes a choice that benefits themselves at the expense of someone else, you lose a bit of your humanity.

3B.) The Easy Way Becomes The Hard Way

Gus Gorman is looking for a quick fix throughout multiple steps on his character’s journey in SUPERMAN 3. First, he is looking for an unemployment extension, that leads him to Ross Webster’s computer school/IT business which leads him to embezzling the rounded out cents from paychecks for his own good, which leads him to Ross Webster and hacking a weather satellite and creating synthetic kryptonite and then creating a supercomputer with the capabilities to kill superman. All because he just wanted a job. Now I’m not saying, “well if Gus had just got a decent paying job doing good old fashioned hard work, all of this could be avoided.” But I am saying that making choices based on cutting a corner will only provide a quick fix – it will not give any lasting relief. As soon as Gorman is able to pay off one con, another is calling – and it is always more dangerous and with greater damage to not only Gus but the world around him. Should he have taken the hard road and taken that job at a burger joint offered to him at the beginning, or stayed grinding away for little pay in the computer lab – maybe – but maybe we also should find better jobs and better wages for people like Gus, a clearly talented guy who can’t get a break (but then again if we did that, there would be no more superhero films). Now this is an advanced reading of the material, but if Diana was trying to solve the Gus Gorman situation, I would be hard pressed to think her reaction would be anything else as Diana always searches for a root cause, and indeed she does in WW84 in her resolution to Maxwell Lord’s situation.

Indeed, Maxwell Lord is looking for the quickest possible route to being rich. His goal is wealth, his goal is greatness, in its most comic-booky form. When he has a conversation with his son Alistair early on in the film it is easy to see how nebulous Lord’s goals are – which can become a major problem for anyone who just wants “power” or “riches”. In that sense, the dreamstone is the perfect vessel for Lord – sure he will be powerful and have riches but the pursuit is so incredibly asinine even when he has manifested the dreamstone. After finding out that he can no longer take oil from Emir Said Bin Abydos, the ruler of oil-rich Bialya, he simply turns to his now head of security and asks “where’s the next place we can find oil?” Comic-book-like goals – like being all powerful without really having a plan, create comic-book-like actions and dialogue. And I think this is again, part of Jenkins’ point. The 1980s were the Me Decade but it was completely superficial. As is repeated in both the opening and the finale – “Nothing good is born from lies, and greatness is not what you think.” In the 1980s, for many people, there was nothing beyond that superficiality – it was to look hot, get rich, be powerful – but with no real plan to implement it beyond quick fixes like reverse mortgages, junk bonds, savings and loans, as well as credit card debt. All quick fixes that ultimately just caused more problems for the real life people that adopted them throughout the decade.

But Wonder Woman/Diana’s method of resolving the situation is not to kill Lord, not to even kill her friend Barbara aka Cheetah, it is to call him on his lies and to make him realize the havoc that he has unleashed on the world. This is a complex problem and there is no easy solution. The only solution is for everyone to take responsibility for their own desires and wishes that have corrupted our world. It is a hard solution for a difficult problem and something so unique to WW84 (with no parallel in 80s comic book films, SUPERMAN 3, or any comic book films for that matter).

3C.) The Illusion of Looking for Love In The Past

One of the major plot points of WW84 is that Diana Prince has been missing Steve the past 66 years, since his death in 1918. As we take a look around at her apartment we see that it is basically a shrine for Steve and other friends now passed, including Etta and Napi from WONDER WOMAN (2017).

When Diana discovers what the dreamstone can do, she makes a wish. One of the most surprising things in the film is that Diana’s wish is quick and without ANY hesitation – and more importantly, other than the guy who wishes for a cup of coffee – she is the first person to do it. Patty Jenkins again wants to show that one of her characters, this time Diana, has agency here. It may not be the right thing to do but Diana CERTAINLY believes she has to do it. And her trouble in the film is all of her own doing.

When Steve returns, Diana is at once completely overjoyed but there is also a sadness in their meeting. Diana is perhaps more sophisticated and withdrawn over the ensuing years, she is not the fish out of water that she was in WONDER WOMAN. But there is a maudlin aspect to the entire enterprise. While the last thing Diana wants is for Steve to go again – deep down we get a sense that she knows this is not right, she knows this is not what she really wanted. Even without losing her powers, Diana is aware that perhaps she has gone too far, both in her wish for Steve as well as in her own personal growth and development. And this is a greater lesson that we grow beyond the people that we were in relationships in the past. Like Thomas Wolf once wondered, you can really never go home again. But the tragedy is that it is only in going home that we realize this.

Clark Kent has a similar journey in SUPERMAN 3. As Margot Kidder’s Lois Lane goes on vacation to the Bahamas, Clark goes back to Smallville to cover his high school reunion, leaving the two star-crossed lovers of the first two films separated. Interestingly in Lester’s version, Clark does not sit around pining for Lois, instead he is beguiled by his own high school sweetheart, Annette O’Toole’s Lana Lang. The two were a couple in high school but lost touch when Clark went to Metropolis to be a reporter. Lang is now a single mom with a child, different from the person she once was.

And yet in some ways, this is one of the few times I liked Lester’s version a touch more. Because we see that both of these adults have grown into new people and found each other anew. Sure, they may not turn out to be lovers in the long run – and they are not. But they are friends, and Clark even finds a job for Lana at the Daily Planet by the end of the film. Now is this a bit “pie-in-the-sky” for real life? Maybe but its also a very realistic outcome. Clark and Lana do the dance – literally at the class reunion, go on a picnic, as Clark gently courts her, almost unknowingly. Ultimately he is distracted by her son who is constantly getting into trouble and Ross Webster and Gus Gorman who begin to create trouble for Clark/Superman. But when the dust settles, the two find each other again, back in Metropolis for a dinner, which includes Lana’s son. The dinner may not be romantic, but there is certainly a lot of sentiment here. We may not be right to strike up a grand romance with a love from the past – but we can have true friendship built solidly on a shared history. 

D.) The Next Generation Will Redeem Us/ There Is Good In Everyone

This is a small but interesting similarity and although it deals less with main characters and perhaps peripheral ones, I thought it was no less important. As previously mentioned it is Maxwell Lord’s son Alistair Lord, and the memory of his own very traumatizing youth, that calls Maxwell back from the brink with the use of Diana’s lasso. Maxwell has one of the most powerful moments that I can think of in any superhero film, realizing what the psychological traumas were that caused him to take such a path of destruction. He thinks of being ostracized for eating a lunch with a tamale and thinks back on first opening Black Gold Cooperative when he saw the world in a more hopeful way. But how do you actually reconnect with that past and those feelings – not through a dreamstone or a high school reunion – but you do it through the next generation. And by Diana invoking these memories, Maxwell transforms from the man he has become to the man he once was.

Similarly in SUPERMAN 3, it is Lana Lang’s son that is able to call out to Superman when he leaves a bar, and which causes his psychological schism that ultimately saves the good Superman from the corrupted version born from Gus Gorman’s manufactured kryptonite. It is Superman here, in a far less elegant way than in WW84, who remembers who he once was – that doe-eyed and hopeful kid from Smallville that came to the big city of Metropolis with hopes and dreams.

What are these two choices trying to say? I think mostly that the youth, the kids, are both the reason why we do what we do and also the way to help us remember why we do what we do when we have forgotten or lost our way. This is very similar to Diana’s own choice to call on the people of the world to renounce their wishes in the finale. Patty Jenkins is highlighting, through Diana’s speech, and the action of the world that we have the power to make a difference. We may not be superheroes or meta-humans but we are people who can make a difference with our actions no matter how young or old we are – just like Maxwell Lord and Lana Lang’s sons did in the respective films.

This has been a fun series and I think I am all out of topics and comparisons between these two somewhat underappreciated but in my opinion brilliant films and what started as a bit of a lark – but there was clearly so much more there.