Wonder Woman 1984 has radically changed Maxwell Lord's powers. The character of Maxwell Lord was originally created as a businessman who worked alongside the Justice League, a sometimes sinister figure whose wealth nevertheless allowed the team to operate independently from the world's governments. Over the decades, though, successive writers gave Lord an ever sharper edge, turning him into one of the most dangerous villains in the comics. Wonder Woman was literally forced to kill him in order to stop him.
Pedro Pascal is bringing Maxwell Lord to life in Wonder Woman 1984, and although writer and director Patty Jenkins insists the film isn't meant to be political, even she admits the portrayal is influenced by Donald Trump. "Trump's definitely one of the people that we looked at," Jenkins noted, "but it's any of those kind of mavericks of business success that was big in the ‘80s. Who went on to be major players in our world in potentially questionable other ways." The DCEU's Maxwell Lord is a businessman who is down on his luck, and willing to go to any lengths to achieve success - no matter the cost to the world. He's recognizably the same person as in the comics, but his powers are very different.
In the comics, Maxwell Lord was an ordinary human who was granted his powers when an alien race called the Dominators detonated a Gene Bomb on Earth, triggering superhuman abilities across the planet. Lord gained the power to mentally influence the minds of others, and he naturally used this power to his own success. Distrustful of superheroes, he began working his way through their psychic defenses until he could control even the greatest of them - Superman. In his view, the very fact he could do this proved the superheroes were too dangerous, because anybody else could as well. This was why Wonder Woman ultimately broke his neck; she realized there was no way to safeguard Superman from Maxwell Lord forever, and there was no prison that could safely hold him because he could just will his way out of it. It was one of the darkest decisions of Diana's life, and - because it was broadcast to the entire world - it furthered Lord's goal of ostracizing the world's heroes. He was literally willing to martyr himself in order to achieve success.
The DCEU's Maxwell Lord lives in a world where there are far fewer superheroes; in fact, with the film set in 1984, Diana is the only one currently known to have been active. Thus Patty Jenkins has been forced to reinvent Lord's story, and she's bound him to a mystical object called the Dreamstone. Created by the God of Lies, the Dreamstone grants any person one wish. But there's a catch: every wish has a flaw to it. The Wonder Woman 1984 junior novelization initially demonstrates this when one person looking at the Dreamstone jokingly wishes for a cup of coffee, and is suddenly given one that turns out to be so hot they scald themselves.
Maxwell Lord is too smart to live with just one wish, though, and he finds a way around this limitation. He wishes to possess the power of the Dreamstone himself - to essentially become a human Dreamstone, so that anyone who sees him can make one wish. He's a con-man who depends on his silver tongue, and he rightly deduces he can manipulate people around him into wishing for just what he wants. But, again, there's a flaw to this power: he appears to have a compulsion to exercise it, on an ever-grander scale. The latest Wonder Woman 1984 trailer shows a scene from the film's third act in which Lord's face is broadcast to the entire world, and he invites everyone who sees his image to make a wish. He's even standing behind a White House podium indicating that he willed himself into the presidency. It's safe to say the chaos will be indescribable - and the Wonder Woman 1984 junior novelization omits the third act, meaning it remains to be seen how she will put the world to rights.
