Why Joe Biden would have made a better villain for Wonder Woman 1984
By Mark R. Whittington
Wonder Woman 1984 has proven off-putting to a lot of people for many reasons, not the least of which has been the unfair treatment the movie delivers to Donald Trump and Ronald Reagan. However, the movie would have made a lot more sense if the villain had been based on Joe Biden, the president-elect of the United States. Indeed, some might even think that Biden’s election as president of the United States could be the result of a wish-granting idol. It certainly wasn’t the result of any merit or effort on the candidate’s part.
Some spoilers may follow.
The McGuffin of Wonder Woman 1984 is a wish-granting idol. The magical item will grant any wish, but at a grievous cost. Diana, aka Wonder Woman, gets her beloved Steve Trevor, who died in the first movie, back, but at the cost of her powers. Diana’s friend, Barbara Minerva, becomes an “apex predator,” but at the cost of her moral compass. Maxwell Lord, the failed businessman/motivational guru, gains wealth and power, but at the cost of his sanity and, ultimately, the impending destruction of the world.
Trump, who Wonder Woman 1984 director Patty Jenkins claimed as the model for Maxwell Lord, obtained his wealth, fame, and power through hard work, intelligence, and ruthlessness. Reagan, who has a couple of brief scenes in the movie as comedy relief, achieved prosperity at home and the fall of the Soviet Union abroad through wise policy and phenomenal communications skills. Neither gentleman needed a magical item to achieve success.
The message of the movie, that cheating or taking shortcuts to attain accolades, wealth, or authority, is a powerful one. One might even suggest that the movie is imparting a conservative message. Even Diana gives her beloved Steve up to regain her powers so that she might change the world — duty over happiness.
Joe Biden, who as of this writing is due to become president of the United States, has not risen to where he is through hard work or intelligence. He has a history of cheating and corner-cutting, from his tendency to plagiarize going back to law school to his selling access through his son Hunter. In short, Biden is just the man who would seize the magical idol with both hands and wish to become president of the United States, though perhaps at the cost of onset dementia.
A great many people, President Trump included, believe that Biden won by cheating. However, no one has been able to convince a judge that things like ballot-box stuffing and computer hacking occurred to the extent of throwing the election to Biden. However, we do know that big media and big tech worked tirelessly to make sure that the former vice president became president.
So, what if Joe Biden used a magical idol to achieve his lifelong dream of becoming president? It makes a kind of strange sense, all things considered. Certainly, the creepy, sleazy Joe Biden would have made a much better villain on Wonder Woman 1984 than the ones we got instead.
Imagine the blank stare, the snarling of “malarkey!” as Wonder Woman urges Biden to give up the poison chalice of power unearned. He might even call her a lying, dog-faced, pony soldier. Nothing would work except for mayhem to shake the president-elect from his stupor and get him to renounce his wish so that he might spend his declining years in the care of his family and not mismanaging the country. Sadly, such an ending only happens in the movies.
Mark Whittington, who writes frequently about space and politics, has published a political study of space exploration entitled Why is It So Hard to Go Back to the Moon? as well as The Moon, Mars and Beyond. He blogs at Curmudgeons Corner. He is published in the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, The Hill, USA Today, the LA Times, and the Washington Post, among other venues.
