And while I might have accepted Diana's preferred butt-kicking shoes as simple wish fulfillment before, I start to wonder if the lack of progress all around isn't a collection of exceptions, but a rule.
It is not enough, at the end of 2020, for a female hero to suit up and simply "fight a giant CGI shape just like every other male hero who came before her," to quote Thrillist's Emma Stefansky in summary of the 2017 film. Though the hero is still a powerful woman, the vocabulary of the film remains rooted in a male-dominated industry, from its use of tropes that historically demean women to baffling missed opportunities to subvert such portrayals. It's a shame, because the cumulative result is that Wonder Woman 1984 feels like two steps back from the forward stride of Wonder Woman. Either way, the ensuing battle between Barbara-turned-Cheetah and Wonder Woman devolves to being exactly that: a catfight. In better hands, there might have been an opportunity to comment on the way such competition between women complicates feminist solidarity and how Barbara is a victim of a system that upholds the patriarchy, but the script is either disinterested in such an investigation, or missed it entirely. Even Barbara's initial desire to be like Diana plays into cultural pressures that pit women against other women. While Lord wishes essentially for power, Barbara has a more jealousy-motivated wish of looks and popularity and being "special." It's sloppy that the writers (director Patty Jenkins was one-third of the otherwise male team) opted for such stereotypically gendered motivations for their villains. Then there's Barbara's wish, which stands in contrast to the movie's other supervillain, Maxwell Lord (Pedro Pascal, who refreshingly shows his face for this role). The makeover feels uncomfortably regressive: Don't we know better, at this point, than the trope of the "ugly girl with glasses" who removes them and is suddenly desirable? It feels even more out-of-place in Wonder Woman 1984, which has made such an example out of Diana wearing what she wants, only for Barbara's makeover to follow the most conventional concept of beauty. When the crystal grants her wish, though, she gets her glow-up: She starts wearing tight-fitting clothes, she can magically walk in heels, and - most tellingly - she ditches her glasses. Prior to her wish being granted, Barbara is coded as homely via the typical, sexist Hollywood clichés: She doesn't get hit on at work, she wears baggy clothes, and she needs wire-rimmed glasses to see. And despite the distinctly third-wave whiff of it all (beauty and power? In this economy?), the result was fun, even if it was " manically straightforward."
#CHEETAH WONDER WOMAN 1984 MOVIE#
When the first film came out back in 2017, critics described actually weeping through the film's then-revolutionary fight scenes: "This was the movie - female warriors kicking ass," reflected one.
#CHEETAH WONDER WOMAN 1984 SERIES#
The series is intended as an antidote to an industry of otherwise testosterone-fueled comic book movies, ones in which the gendered phrase "superhero" inherently implies the exclusion of super heroines. The intense scrutiny on the costumes in the trailer is in some way a testament to the success of the franchise: Fans look to Wonder Woman to uphold a higher standard.
Beyond the movie's intensely cringey script, its incomprehensible geopolitical backdrop, and the upsetting use of digital fur technology, Wonder Woman 1984 ultimately undercuts its own goals as a feminist superhero film by falling back onto regressive tropes about women. Diana's blister potential, it turns out, is the least of Wonder Woman 1984's issues (the film is out on Friday on HBO Max).
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