Until the very end, I was sure that Brandon Cronenbergdeeply disturbing Owner will be the best body horror of 2020. Like his father before him, Cronenberg tells a heartbreaking story about a killer (Andrea Riseborough) who performs her hits by “possessing” other people’s bodies, pulling their strings like a puppeteer, just long enough to complete the job. This is truly unsettling because we can all agree that the idea of someone’s consciousness slipping under your skin without your consent, pushing your personality into the void and manipulating your body like a helpless shell, is a violation that neither one person should never experience. Right? Right?? Anyway, Owner just lost my seat because of a little movie called Wonder Woman 1984.
The aftermath of Wonder Woman 1984 is dire
Nothing on screen in 2020 chilled me to the core - no, to the very soul - more than Steve Trevor from this movie (Chris Pine) the plot, which I will now describe in great detail, without embellishment and exaggeration. Several decades after the events amazing womanDiana (Gal gadot) stumbles upon a mystical wish-granting stone called the Dream Stone. Not believing he has the power, Diana wishes for Steve’s return after her blue-eyed beau died in the first film. But Steve does back… into another man’s body. Not a new, funny body made out of clay, but the literal body of a random Washington DC resident who was minding his own damn business when a World War I fighter pilot stole his body. Instead of reacting with horror at the thought of wearing someone else’s skin like a sock puppet, Diana and Steve - these two super-virtuous examples of righteousness and goodness - just sort of dip into this random, nameless person’s apartment and move on. , satisfied. that Steve’s presence meant the destruction of someone else.
“I only see you,” Diana says to Steve in that brief moment when he feels uncomfortable looking in the mirror and seeing someone’s face. And we also only see Steve as Pine’s face immediately overtakes the other in what feels like the fastest movie ever to apologize for a plot point he introduced himself. Wonder Woman 1984 never wants to reckon with this rudeness, which he did not initially need. The extent to which this is a completely unforced error, stunning. But this can of worms openedmy friends and Patty Jenkins — together with co-authors Geoff Johns And Dave Callaham — never go back to the truly horrific consequences of this theft of the body. Where is the mind of others during all this? What is more terrible: to assume that he was simply pushed into the void of non-existence, or to assume that this person has become a helpless spectator of his own life, alive, but powerless to stop his own movement? Again, we’ll never know! But questions, they haunt me.
This doesn’t even touch on the most disturbing element of Steve’s return, which is the fact that Steve and Diana have sex almost immediately. It’s easy to get caught up in the classic romance of bringing a long-lost love back to life, and the charm of Gadot and Pine makes it even easier, but stop and think about what’s really going on here… okay? Not only in the “ah, classic comic book blockbuster” sense, but in legitimately disturbing ways that the creative team doesn’t seem to realize. To dismiss a person’s lack of autonomy in a sexual situation with the words “I see only you” is dangerous lazy explanation. Especially in the film’s sequel, which was both sex-positive (that conversation on the boat!) and built around a character who learns to share humanity’s capacity for evil and humanity’s dignity of being saved. There is quite a long gap between World War I and 1984, but strangely, for Diana, the lesson was that if you live alone in a dirty apartment, you don’t really matter.
Magic stones and cat people
Again, the understandable initial reaction is to say that I’m asking too much of a comic book movie, but I really just can’t stress enough how much Wonder Woman 1984 there is no need to raise these questions at all. This is a magical wishing stone with divine powers! Not a single person on Earth would wonder how this brought Steve back safe and sound! it turns out Kristen Wiig into a cat lover! (Yes, this is the Monkey’s Paw scenario, but Steve’s new body isn’t the highlight; Diana’s loss of her powers is pretty solidly installed like a twist.) The introduction of the body theft element makes you believe there’s a narrative reason, but in reality it just acts as an unnecessary anchor dragging the movie down. This is an indication of how Wonder Woman 1984 oddly seems to misunderstand Diana as a character, not to mention the magic that makes amazing woman so fantastic. It’s a movie that suggests that Diana is useless without superpowers, that a person’s ability to be great comes from magical lassoes and gloves around the wrist, rather than some kind of inner strength. Nowhere is this cynicism more evident than when the film brings back the preternaturally handsome, fan-demanded character, gleefully destroying the common man.
His ghoulishness is not quite through, Wonder Woman 1984 ends in a Christmas setting in which Diana accidentally stumbles upon an unmarked meat sack that her former lover had been using as an Uber for about a week. (Who is presumably still going through a time where he lost days of his life without explanation.) The lesson here for Diana is that life actually has a lot to offer. But it’s pretty hard to forget the fact that this lesson comes from a life in which she’s been honest. thirsty take.
Source: Collider
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