The ‘Wonder Woman’ Villain Has Been Revealed
The awesome trailers and posters for Wonder Woman play up the movie’s heroes: Gal Gadot as Princess Diana, who leaves behind her home of Themyscira to join the world of men; Chris Pine’s Steve Trevor, a World War I pilot who becomes her love interest, and Connie Nielsen’s Queen Hippolyta, Diana’s mother. The marketing does a great job of selling the movie’s action, tone, and mood — but it barely addressed who, if anyone, is the movie’s primary villain.
That mystery was apparently revealed by the French publication Studio Ciné Live who wrote a feature on Wonder Woman and dropped this key detail. Here’s what they had to say (via ComicBook.com):
Behind these scientific formulas, there is a deadly gas that could well annihilate humanity. Now, it turns out that this is precisely the goal of Ares, the god of war. He is jealous of humanity, which is a creation of his father, the deceased Zeus (he was killed by Ares when he rebelled against him, with the help of the Amazons) ...
Ares is a frequent Wonder Woman opponent in DC Comics, having appeared in the pages of Wonder Woman since the 1940s. He’s one of the Amazon’s signature arch-enemies, but pretty much all you need to know about him is he’s Ares, the God of War. He does war and stuff. That’s it.
Interestingly, Marvel has their own version of Ares, the Greek God of War, and while he initially appeared as a villain in comics like Thor he eventually morphed into a more heroic character who even joined one iteration of the comic book Avengers. While I wouldn’t expect Marvel’s Ares to appear in an Avengers movie, it wouldn’t have shocked me to see him show up somewhere in, say, a Thor sequel. This news seems to make that a lot less likely.
Wonder Woman opens in theaters on June 2.
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