There’s a lot of things to love about Wonder Woman—but the movie’s climactic battle between Diana and Ares is one of the weaker aspects of the film, with many ridiculing the God of War’s mustachioed visage popping out from under his spiky helmet. It turns out that Ares could’ve looked a lot meaner.
Concept artist Peter McKinstry took to Instagram recently to reveal an earlier design for Ares that definitely looks a lot more evil than David Thewlis did: a design where the god was much bigger and more muscular, and we couldn’t see his face.
And actually, it’s one we’ve seen before—it seems like the design we saw for the movie was implemented later on in production, as McKinstry’s design served as the basis for several bits of merchandise in the movie, from action figures to Lego.
Maybe a simply desire to have Thewlis still be visible instead of a wholly CG creation lead to the change, even if it meant a God of War stomping around with an old-timey mustache for good measure. But still, this feels like a much stronger design than we ultimately got. Man, what’s up with the DCEU and mustaches lately?
[CBM]