In many ways, Wonder Woman is the ultimate symbol of triumph. Easily one of the most exciting and rewarding superhero movies in recent years, the film broke norms and firmly established itself as being – by far – the best of the official DCEU features. It’s not just that the competition paled in comparison. Man of Steel was so underwhelming that future Superman movies have been shelved for the time being. The recent Batman outings have been so hot and cold that The Joker has leapfrogged the caped crusader’s sequel with a solo film. Of course, Aquaman seems to be surging from the depths of DC’s lows, but the rest of the Justice League’s big players – Flash and Cyborg – have been put on the back burner, while B-listers like Huntress and Black Canary are taking the spotlight.
Not so for Wonder Woman, the first solo female superhero blockbuster in the modern boom of comic book movies, which made a huge splash at the box office and impressed critics. The Patty Jenkins-helmed hit starring Gal Gadot quickly earned a sequel green light. Wonder Woman 1984 is now one of 2020’s most anticipated cinematic offerings, but even Diana of Themyscira isn’t perfect– or at least, her filmmakers aren’t.
Yes, Wonder Woman has its flaws. Continuity flubs, anachronisms, and productions snafus – problems most fans totally missed. This is understandable. After all, we don’t want to tarnish our favorite demigoddess’ golden lasso!
Here are 20 Mistakes Fans Completely Missed In Wonder Woman!
Steve Trevor Zips It
In the stand-out “cave scene,” the rescued Steve Trevor is convalescing after the traumatic beach battle on Themyscira. When he wakes, his clothes have been taken to dry and Diana walks in on him. Embarrassed, he quickly dresses up. Diana can’t understand his shame as, for her, the human body is perfectly natural. Her moment of grace is lost on Trevor as he nervously zips up his pants.
The problem: zippers weren’t really a thing during WWI. While the invention existed, military uniforms like the one Steve was sporting still used buttons on the fly. Note to wardrobe: spend more time on historical research!
Machine Gun Trouble
One of the single coolest scenes in the movie is that moment when Wonder Woman runs out of the trenches and into No Man’s Land to take the enemy head-on. Defying thousands of bullets, she braves through the mud to cross enemy lines and save whole village. It was exhilarating, iconic, and wrong.
The filmmakers overdid the scene just a tiny bit. The machine guns shooting at her are supposed to be from WWI, but weapons of the time didn’t fire nearly as rapidly in real life as they didn’t in that scene. Understandably, the filmmakers need to up the tension and add more bang for the dramatic buck, but anybody who knows the history of firearms might just then have been shot out of the film’s carefully crafted illusion.
Wonder Woman juggles her drink
In huge cinema spectacles like Wonder Woman, there’s so much going on during shooting on set, with so many details that need tracking, that audiences can understand when continuity errors occur. A single scene that lasts seconds on screen might be the product of dozens of camera setups over a period of days.
Here is a moment where the left hand literally doesn’t seem to know what the right hand is doing. Once Diana has liberated the village of Veld, she and Steve are sharing some drinks. Diana holds said beverage in her left hand, then sets it down. Shortly thereafter, after Steve asks her to dance, we cut back to see the drink still in her hand – but her right one this time – and she sets it down again. Maybe we’ve had one too many, but that just didn’t look right!
Intel Breach
Screenwriters have a lot to live up to, especially when handling huge tentpole franchise properties. We can only imagine how overwhelming it all gets, not to mention intimidating. Under such circumstances, it may be understandable that scribes might miss doing their due diligence when it comes to historical accuracy.
In Wonder Woman, spies Steve Trevor and Etta Candy use the word “intel” to refer to intelligence. The problem? That shortened term didn’t come into use until 50 years or so after WWI. Unless it secret code back then, which is unlikely, this brings the audience right back to the 21st century.
A Clean Cut
Most superheroes live by a code of helping others and always protecting lives – even if that means abstaining from ending the lives of their foes. In the case of Ares, the god of war, Diana was ready to make an exception. Unfortunately for her, she mistook General Ludendorff for the unholy deity and, in her vigor, dispatched with him with the single strike of her sword.
Bizarrely, when she pulls the blade from the departed villain, the metal is immaculate. One would think there would be liquid or gory residue from the deceased bad guy’s insides. Instead, we have a cutlery tool that looks like it was just pulled of the shelf factory-new at an upscale kitchenware store!
The Amazing Disappearing Bracelets
Wonder Woman has a nice bunch of magical gear at her disposal to aid her in battle. Her magic lasso ensnares enemies and forces them to tell the truth; her trusty shield keeps her protected from fast-flying projectiles; nd then there are her trademark wristbands. In the comics, they were more like bracelets, but either way, they were awesome defensive implements which the super-fast Diana used to deflect bullets.
If audiences pay close attention throughout the movie, though, they will notice that these powerful fashion accessories seem to disappear and reappear over and over again. Did somebody forget to tell us these things can teleport, too? It’s a pretty egregious continuity error that happens often enough to leave us scratching our heads.
Language Barrier
When making the type of blockbuster movie that Wonder Woman became, sharp filmmakers would be wise to think about international audiences. More and more, ticket sales overseas have been adding to the studio coffers in a way they never did before. Case in point: Aquaman made more than $90 million in its opening weekend in China– before it even debuted in North America.
In that case, why was Wonder Woman so careless with how it handled foreign languages? About halfway into the feature, a bunch of “Ottoman texts” appear, but it turns out the words were just pulled together and made no sense at all, resulting in sentences like, “Tunes pants cow foible rocket.” Turkey may not be the biggest market out there, but how hard would it have been to get this right?
Waterproofed notebook
When first we meet Steve Trevor in Wonder Woman, he has just pulled off an incredible feat. Stealing Dr. Maru’s secret book from the clutches of the enemy, he carries on his person a key to unlocking the nefarious plot of Ares and his human pawns. The plans therein prove their work on a poisonous gas are almost at fruition.
After olunging into the water with the book, one would think that the pages would have been severely damaged. Steve was under the waves for a good minute before Diana rescued him, but later in the film, the book is delivered by Steve to his superiors with no water damage at all. Was the darn thing laminated or what?
Time Before Time
Another anachronistic moment for Steve Trevor reveals a very strange thing about his wristwatch. At the end of the film, just as the dutiful soldier makes the ultimate sacrifice in service to the good fight, we get a close up of the watch. In this shot, we can clearly see the seconds hand ticking.
Seems normal, right? Except that before the 1970s, the seconds hands never ticked, but rather swept across the watch face without stopping. Only quartz technology changed that, more than half a century after Trevor’s final sacrifice– unless that watch was also a time machine. That could explain Trevor’s apparent return in Wonder Woman 1984!
Misfire in a Gun Scene
The back-alley bad guy beating is such a beloved trope that superhero movie should be sure to include one of these scenes. In London, Wonder Woman gets her chance when some armed criminals take aim at our heroes.
In the cutting room, editors missed a continuity error that messes the action up. In one shot, a gun is pointed at them fully cocked. The next time we see the same exact weapon, it is in the process of having the hammer being cocked back – as if the previous shot never happened. Could it be that Diana also pulled a Star Wars-type Jedi mind trick on the bandit? The answer more likely lies on the proverbial cutting room floor.
Swordplay Soiree
Infiltrating a WWI-era army gala is no easy feat. Security is tight and soldiers armed to the teeth are at all sides. Diana takes that risk – with a giant sword tucked into the back of her dress. So determined she is to dispatch Ares at the party that she makes this questionable choice rather recklessly.
At one moment, when she takes to the dance floor, the audience can see the sword shift – revealing that the prop is only the hilt with no blade attached. It shoud have been easy enough to write a “magic hidden blade” element into the script. Instead, we see Tinseltown magic fail on screen.
Steve’s magical hat
It’s bad enough when characters switch left and right sides from one shot to the other. Perhaps we can let it go when lips don’t quite match up to words for a fleeting moment. But when a hat goes missing from a head? That seems to be way too obvious for an entire crew of filmmakers to miss on a set.
That’s what happened in Wonder Woman. At the gala, when Trevor runs after Diana, he isn’t wearing his hat. In the next shot when he gets outside, he is wearing his hat. Now – if it had been the other way around, we could say the hat fell off. Last we checked, though, hats don’t tend to jump back up off a floor onto a man’s head.
Fashion Faux Pas
Fashion can project confidence and elegance for everyday folk, but for superheros, tjeor gear means business. Batman’s utility belt isn’t there to score fashion points, and when it comes to Wonder Woman, her shoulder strap is carrying crucial elements to the tools of her trade. Wouldn’t such a skilled warrior would have a preferred way to wear such an accessory? Apparently not.
In Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, the snapshot of her and her WWI team sees her wearing the strap across her right shoulder. When the “same” photo is taken in Wonder Woman, the strap is on her left side. It’s not just a continuity problem; a professional soldier would be way more precise.
Music from the future
One of the most famous singers of all time is Edith Piaf. The chanteuse was the top musical star of her time and remains a national treasure in France. She was as famous and influential as today’s superstars like Lady Gaga, Beyoncé, and Ariana Grande. So it was not so surprising to hear one of her songs after Wonder Woman liberated the village in Belgium– except that in 1918, Piaf was three years old!
It would be like watching a movie taking place in the ’70s with characters dancing to Rihanna! It’s a really unfortunate choice that anybody could have double-checked with a quick Wikipedia search.
Bad Hair Day
For almost as long as there have been action movies, there have been goofy inconsistencies involving hairdos. Famously, James Bond always seemed to have perfectly styled hair no matter what insane conditions he was facing. Over the years, films have been a little smarter about being more “real” when it comes to the fate of actors’ follicles in a given scene.
In Wonder Woman, we can see Diana’s hair go from totally messy to totally perfect, over and over again. One can almost imagine a stylist chasing her across the trenches of WWI with a can of hairspray and a comb. Yes, this is a Hollywood film and Diana is demigoddess, but she’s also a warrior. Can we please keep her out of the salon when she’s in battle?
Booting Continuity
One of the coolest parts of Wonder Woman’s outfit is her footwear. She not only looks cool wearing her gladiator-style boots, but also uses them to kick bad-guy butt. However, there seems to have been an odd choice in their design.
Invisible visible breath
When it comes to filmmaking in cold weather, things can get strange pretty quickly. Very often fake snow can really stand out and ruin the illusion of a winter wonderland. Another troublesome element is seeing breath in chilly temperatures. Sometimes, movie sets have to be cooled down to freezing to create the effect. CGI is even employed to substitute for the real thing when appropriate conditions aren’t available.
In Wonder Woman, during a snowy scene outside the rural village, we can see their breath sometimes– and sometimes we can’t. This is a pretty obvious continuity error. It may have happened as a result of reshoots where the crew skipped making the temperature consistent, but some quick work in the visual effects department surely could avoided this issue.
An Impossible Shortcut
Turkey is not close to England. To get from the Ottoman Empire to the UK by boat, one would need to cross most of the Mediterranean and half of the North Atlantic. That’s thousands of nautical miles which, even today, would take a week or so to navigate. In Wonder Woman, that very same journey seemingly takes place overnight.
After sharing a tender moment on the evening of their departure, Diana and Steve seem to wake up the very next morning in London, which is totally impossible unless they flew on a jet plane. All the film would have to do to fix this is add one of those Indiana Jones map-following scenes to indicate the passing of time. Instead, the film’s boat travel illusion was sunk.
Impossible airstrip
These days, most people pretty much take modern aviation for granted. The skies are full of planes; airports of all sizes are common enough on TV and movies that even people who don’t travel much readily recognize them. But during WWI, there wasn’t even a proper air force yet. Not only that, it would be some time before planes were properly sheltered in hangars.
In the final battle scene in Wonder Woman, we see plenty of hard-shelters for aircrafts on the airfield. Such protective structures would not be commonplace until the 1980s, or about 70 years after this scene takes place. It’s another anachronism that rips audiences out of the film’s suspension of disbelief.
Magically Clean Boots
Along with some unlikely design features, Diana’s boots seem to have some additional improbable features. During the dramatic battle across the no-man’s land of the Belgian WWI trenches, we see Wonder Woman trudge through the thick mud which has become emblematic of that war. It’s quite a heroic feat, pressing on through such unforgiving terrain against a hail of gunfire.
After she’s done with the whole scene, her boots are shown to be spotless. Was there a shoe-shine boy handy during the conflict? Are those boots made of Teflon? Whatever the case, it’s just another continuity issue that’s tough to ignore. It can’t be wiped away like mud off a dirty boot.
Did you notice any other mistakes in Wonder Woman? Let us know in the comments!
