#...i can't believe i'm writing wonder woman meta but I hadn't seen any articulation on this and this is where i'm at

[thegirlwholied]

I can’t believe I’m saying this, but my biggest disappointment in Wonder Woman 1984 was... Steve. 

Yes he’s the perfect Wonder Woman boyfriend; yes I love how he backs her up in the fight scenes; yes I love Chris Pine; yes they have great chemistry and are adorable...

and yes the scene in the movie that most hit for me was their goodbye. 

But uh. I get that maybe the creative team wanted to avoid the complicated stuff and just have fun? But Wonder Woman (2017) showed you can have both fun & address the complicated stuff. 

And Steve Trevor, in that movie, bearing the weight of war, was part of the complicated stuff:

You don't think I get it, after what I've seen out there? You don't think I wish I could tell you that it was one bad guy to blame? It's not! We're all to blame! (I’m not). But maybe I am.

My father told me once, he said, "If you see something wrong happening in the world, you can either do nothing, or you can do something". And I already tried nothing.

1984!Steve is not complicated. He’s delicious. He eats Pop-Tarts. He is a Pop-Tart.

There’s a reason, when plots with time travel involve World War I, there’s usually That Moment. You know, the what do you mean, World War I. It’s probably a trope by now. But tropes exist for a reason and that one exists because it is one HELL of an emotional beat. You sent this man to the National Air & Space Museum, founded after World War II with an initial collection of mostly post WWI & WWII aircraft, and had him in DC within walking distance of war memorials, and had him in Diana’s apartment where she had a concentration camp photo... and you’re not even going to spend a beat on that?

The guy who we were introduced to, who drew Diana away from her island, talking about the ‘war to end all wars’, and we don’t get a beat? Who was worried about ‘weapons far deadlier than you can imagine’ and how ‘every kind’ of weapon now kills innocents, and the plot is set amid the specter of Cold War nuclear annihilation...and not a beat? 

I’m not saying it’s a plot-hole; you can handwave it with off-screen conversations or the lack of PTSD as ‘well, he did just come from heaven’. I’m not saying everything needs to be on-screen: we don’t need to know the details of Steve ‘trying nothing’, for example. 

But the movie is lesser for ignoring it, and Steve’s character is shallower. Hello, Pop-Tart. A perfect boyfriend, but one who, when he’s insisting any other guy could do for her (not exactly sounding like the guy who pointed out he was ‘above average’, and I’d buy he feels he’s not worthy but I’m not sure I buy his faith in other men being automatically more worthy?)... is not exactly demonstrating a lot of depth beyond, well, being charming Chris Pine, making crumbs in bed look appealing. He’s a dream! 

...honestly he almost felt to me like not-real Steve, versus the Steve who argued with Diana, who, yes, things were good with but also difficult with, but since the movie neither explored a) the question of ‘is dreamstone!Steve real’, pretty much just running with ‘yes’ rather than making us wonder if he was more conjured from Diana’s wish/memory versus his true self, but that is a whole different plot or b) how it’s a lot easier to love the memory of someone than the more-complicated real deal, but real is also better... that’s all moot.  

Yes, there should have been joy at more time with Diana and modern marvels (...though, uh, I question the choices of subway and escalator; they were in 1918 London, which would already have had escalators in its Underground). But in the first movie, for all Diana’s delight at babies & ice cream & snow, it’s balanced with recognition of the horrors of the world, which when seen through fresh eyes are so much worse than those taking them for granted, just as the joys are made new again. And so the echo aimed for, of Steve taking in 1984 with fresh eyes, was muddled for me, by its lack of depth. The movie reaches at commenting on ’80s greed & materialism & Cold War threats, but it almost doesn’t matter we’re in 1984, because it doesn’t use that right-there tool - the perspective from the past, with values pulled straight out of a more-despairing time - to add any color. It’s all pop, no tart. 

When I find myself dwelling on media it’s always because a) it was just that good, b) it was just that terrible, or, most often, c) it just missed being better, being great, and sometimes I’m not sure how they missed it - Wonder Woman 1984 just missed, for me, and this is the central reason why. Did I enjoy watching it? Do I love an Indiana Jones callback, and the Diana/Steve chemistry, and Kristin Wiig and Pedro Pascal? You bet. I enjoy eating a Pop-Tart, too. 

But it leaves me still wanting something with more substance.