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The Wonder Woman Movies Have a Women Problem
Exploring a half-baked franchise.
Spoilers for Wonder Woman and Wonder Woman 1984.
A week or two has gone by since Wonder Woman 1984 debuted in the United States…and a bit longer than that abroad…so I think enough time has elapsed to go into the pitfalls of a franchise that has already been greenlit for a third entry, despite its chasm sized problems with writing Diana, the Amazons, and its female villains. As the credits rolled and Diana soared off into the sunset, Barbara Minerva (Kristen Wiig) aka Cheetah was left on a craggy outcrop looking into the distance looking sullen and forlorn. As I saw her crumpled figure, I thought this imagery looked uncannily familiar. Oh, that’s right! This is precisely how the first Wonder Woman film ended with its female villain devastated, tears running down her face, fleeing into the night and out of the film.
The biggest disappointment with these paltry conclusions is the juxtaposition of Diana and other women, especially those that are positioned as her opposite or antagonist. In the comics and other media, Diana is renowned for her empathetic abilities, diplomacy, and utilization of combat (to disarm and kill when necessary) oftentimes as a last resort (or with no qualms depending on the writer/medium…but that’s for another piece). In these films, however, she’s pitted against other female characters — like they are ‘fallen women’ — just because they are villainous or have become so, with no deeper reflection or introspection as to how ‘man’s world’ has shaped these women with little to no options of recourse or survival. To include, the women that we have been introduced to in these films thus far are very traumatized individuals that seized their moments of power by any means necessary.
It should be noted that the films try to assert the narrative that because these women have been hurt they, in turn, hurt others, and that works at the 101 level of storytelling but this is supposed to be the pantheon, and we’re getting the dusty remnants of motion picture past. There’s no interiority to the female characters that we are shown throughout the…
