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Sunday, October 22, 2017

The ending of Wonder Woman got it backwards

This is going to be the first time I have talked about movies on my blog. I love movies and I'd like to talk about them more often. I think the best movies can transcend entertainment and become something that can teach us. In fact that is true for any media. The original Twilight Zone series is my favorite TV show ever. The video game Undertale is fantastic.

I remember listening to Ralph Nader's radio show and he said he didn't like superhero films because it's not healthy to think that we need someone to do everything for us and to save us when we should all be working together to achieve out goals. I agree with what he said but I'm fine with watching or doing something just for the sake of entertainment.

I think Wonder Woman could have been one of those movies that transcended it's entertainment aspect and been something really meaningful. But that's not where they took the movie.

I'm talking about the ending of Wonder Woman so obviously there's going to be spoilers. If you want to watch the movie first for yourself I suggest you stop here.

Diana is obsessed with killing Aries, The God of War. She thinks killing him will release his influence on humanity and the World War will end. Steve Trevor on the other hand thinks that he needs to destroy this deadly gas weapon that Ludendorff wants to use as an ace up his sleeve.

So Wonder Woman kills Ludendorff. But that doesn't stop the war obviously. So Trevor scarifies his own life to destroy the deadly gas weapon. It turns out though Ludendorff was not Aries but someone else was and shows up just to do battle with Diana. So the movie climax is the typical meta human battle. Diana kills Ares and everyone lives happily ever after.

That's completely backwards if you ask me.

I seen all of the DCEU movie and war doesn't end after Aries dies. So the ending of Wonder Woman conflicts with the other movies. So why would the war stop with Aries dead. Unless Steve was right and him taking out the deadly gas was the key to peace.

To make scene you'd only have to move some events around.

All these DCEU movies have to have some meta human battle. Okay. So Diana shows up and battles the real Aries. Then she could have asked why the war hasn't stopped yet. Steve comes in and tells her that killing one person was never going to stop the war. Then you have Steve sacrifice himself to stop the bomber with the gas weapons. Wonder Woman kills Ludendorff. That leaves Germany to continue it's peace negotiations.

See not that much needed to be changed in the storytelling. But it would have made the climax more meaningful.

Diana would have learned that she needs to do more than just kill on person to end a war. Especially World War One. The reason these wars start are not cut and dry.

It would have shown that Aries was right. He didn't make humans go to war he simply gave them better tools to kill each other. And after this movie they create more deadly weapons. So we didn't even need Aries' help to kill each other. And this would have made more sense going into the DCEU movies which are set in the present day. War hasn't ended in these films.

And doing this would have changed up the formula for ending all these movies will a meta human battles. I never found any of them to be entertaining. And even if they were it's good to do something different anyway.

When it comes to it's ending Wonder Woman played it safe. And to me that's not what the character is about. She's rebellious and she stands up for what she think is right. The reason she became popular in the first place was because DC tried something different and made a comic book about a woman punching Nazis in the face. Her gender made her different than Superman and Captain America. This would have been the pefect movie to divert from what is usually done in the DCEU movies.

I know I made a lengthy post about this movie. I'll end by saying that I did have fun watching this film. And that's why I feel so strongly about the ending because I do feel it would have even been better had they changed some things around.

It's not saying much but Wonder Woman is the best DCEU movie so far. I'd recommend that you check it out.

Friday, October 20, 2017

On The Campaign Trail 2018 10/20/2017

Just a few days ago I started doing the first door to door campaigning for my 2018 bid for Alaska House District 40's seat in the House of Representatives. All I did really was go around the block and tell my friends and family that I was running. And most people I talked to wanted to sign my pension to run. Some people don't like Dean Westlake. Some people would actually like some kind of democracy for our elections instead of just handing our seat to whoever wins the Democratic Primary. A lot of people just like me.

I'm far from ready to run but I just wanted to get out and do something. Well I'm also reading How To Win A Local Election by Judge Lawrence Grey and maybe that wasn't the best thing to do.

I didn't know how useful this book would be to me. When I was looking at books I could read on how to run a campaign there were a ton of them! So I decided this should be one of them because most of my campaigning will probably be done in Kotzebue. Certainly I want to go to the surrounding villages and elsewhere in the district but without a road to anywhere it's going to be expensive. But it's not like I'm running for President or Governor. The title grabbed my attention and it got good reviews from both sides of the political spectrum. So I bought it. I got to say for a political novice like me this book has really useful information about the pitfalls someone like me might and probably would have fell into.

I read that the minimum signatures I needed to get was 50. Sometimes I forgot to ask people if they were a registered voter. There were plenty of people who are excited about my bid to run but when I asked them the question if they were registered to vote in they revealed they were either not or were not registered voters in this district.

And to be honest the other day I didn't ask the question. I just let people sign. So what if I got 50 signatures but all 50 were not good? Well my plan was to get 100 signatures so that even if 10 of them were bad I'd still have 90 good signatures and that's more than enough to get me on the ballot. Or so thought.

Reading How To Win A Local Election I'm finding out something like that might have been used to keep me off the ballot. There are examples of people not getting on a ballot because of one or two bad signatures. And there's examples of a candidate losing his shot on getting on a ballot because they got a minimum amount of signatures and one person says they take back their endorsement and that ends their campaign.

If started to gather signatures in May and found out something like this it could have been the end of my campaign. Or even more embarrassing I could have turned in bad signatures and that would have been the end of my run as well. It doesn't matter what good intentions I have. I could have been dead in the water.

I don't think this is all bad either. A way of looking at this is this a system that weeds out bad candidates. If you're not willing to work hard and do it right you don't deserve to be in office let alone run for it.

But we're all human. I imagine I'll make mistakes on whatever road I take. We all do. Thankfully I started early.

I'm not discouraged at all and I don't see the work I did the other day as in vain. Now more people know I'm running and I saw who was excited about me. And lets be real I'd have no chance on winning if all I was planning to do was reach out to 50 people alone. There's many more doors to knock on and more signatures to get.

I'm completely new to this but that won't work as an excuse if I slip up somewhere. I think I'm going to finish this book before I knock on door again.