(Spoilers) So like "Steve" and Diana in WW84.... are we gonna talk about it?

I really don't want to ignore the moral and ethical implications of Steve's return. Excluding the faulty logic of the "magic monkey's paw" in which nukes can appear from thin air but Steve needs to occupy some poor dudes body, what happened to this guy was rape right. Steve enters this guys body, is the guy just unconscious or is his soul somewhere else, and Diana sleeps with this guy. And this all happens without consent. Like Diana sleeps with a random guy, who in her eyes only is actually Steve, without the guy knowing anything....I'm pretty sure that's rape. This is not a good look. No one questioned this in production? Who thought that anything like this was a good idea? Like think about if the sexes were reversed; a woman takes over another woman's body and a guy sleeps with her.....I think that's bad right?

I just don't like what happened and there is no real explanation in the movie for it. We know that Diana was losing her powers because of her wish not because of Barbra, so Steve being in someone else's body was not the "take" from the "give and take" rules of the rock. This just adds another layer on a movie I thought was below sub-par to begin with.

I personally think it's worth discussing. Beyond even reversing the sexes (which is extremely valid as a point) I wonder, if this wasn't a WW film but just some other female superhero film, would people be as willing to ignore the really weird plot point?

If Wonder Woman (as a symbol in the semiotic sense) represents true equality and greater understanding and consciousness about things, shouldn't this be a perfect opportunity to discuss the 'blindness' around this the director/writers/actors had? Not to vilify or shame them but to acknowledge and discuss how this isn't something to ignore and to perhaps do better in the future?

I don't know man, even with your explanation, I don't see it. I don't think it's perverse, and certainly not a big deal. But you are free to discuss it.

This scenario was used as a trope a few times in the 80s, and I think once or twice, sex was involved with no air of "rape".

In my mind, Steve occupied that guy's body because the dude is Steve's soul reincarnated, and the "Steve Trevor" conciousness of said soul "woke up" when Diana made her wish. Maybe that's not how Patty and co. envisioned it, but that's how I saw it.

Peace and love to ALL!
Ray
**=w=**

Can't believe [some] people are still going on and on about this. It's a fantasy film about gods and amazons, superheroes and supervillains. A film in which a magical stone turns a woman into a werebeast, who then proceeds to fight the amazon who flies thanks to a magical armor and then on her own power (granted to her by the king of the Olympian gods).
But people (again, [I]some[/I] ) are gonna die on this hill? Over a silly movie trope that has been used multiple times in multiple harmless movies.

IDK how that made it out of the 1st draft, let alone into the theatrical cut of the movie. They didn't pay any mind to this dude's existence. As a matter of fact they walk around his apartment clowning his tastes. What was going to be the long play? Because if it didn't start inconveniencing Diana's ability to protect humanity, looks like they were prepared to move on as if nothing happened.

If you can materialize nukes out of thin air, they could've just "poofed" Steve into existence, and did a Thanos style "snap" when it was time for WW to send him away. No weird body possession stuff necessary.

Things like this make the movie feel like it was literally made in the 80's. Just because something was a popular trope at the time doesn't me it was ever a good trope.

She is Zeus's daughter after all.

It's disappointing that even a Wonder Woman adaptation can fall victim to this trope.

Not that this should be put aside, but did Diana seriously think it was okay to put this man in danger just because she (somehow) wasn't over Steve decades later? Of course it didn't happen, but imagine if Steve was seriously injured or killed during their multiple violent escapades. What would have happened then?

Not to mention that the film never bothers to say what happened to the real guy when Steve took over his body for days. Where did his mind or soul go? Could he see what was happening to him? Where were his friends? Does he have a job and did his office call? What about his family? Were they worried about him with everything that happened in the film? Does he remember anything?

This entire situation was just needless and pointless. It could have easily been avoided by just having Steve materialize or be resurrected through magic, like every other thing in the film. But instead it seems like this film was more interested in 80s gags, tropes and the aesthetic rather than any real story or characterisations, or elements 80s culture that could have been relevant to the Wonder Woman story in a compelling way.

I hate to sound like a men's right activist (because screw those guys), but I honestly feel as though Patty and her writing crew thought this was okay because Steve is an attractive, cis-gender, straight, white man, and Diana is an attractive, cis-gender, straight (as far as we know), white woman. We the audience are supposed to be happy or something about these two having sex regardless of the circumstances. If any of those factors changed or if the roles were reversed, this would have undoubtedly been a different story literally and figuratively. I just expected better.

I think it could have been explained better or they could have taken another route. But people are complaining about things that are literally not shown in the movie. Now maybe the movie should have shown more. But in the absence of information, we shouldn't just fill in whatever we want that sends the worst message. People are looking for something to be angry about and then confabulating the information they didn't get to show the story and the director in the worst light.

You literally don't see Steve and Diana having sex. You literally don't see what happens to the Handsome Man. You literally don't see how the magic worked its effect. You literally don't see what happens after Diana renounces her wish.

And in the movie, the wishes of others are dirty and sordid and they tarnish the people that make them. Why should Diana be any different? Maybe her desire for Steve was so strong it did blind her to the consequences. And maybe she has committed a great sin. But isn't that exactly what the movie is driving at? It's not trying to avoid the pain and the degradation of what happens in the world--it shows that. It shows that you can't have it all. You must pay a terrible price for thoughtless greed and selfish desires.

As far as this being a trope from the long dead past, I don't see that. This trope is commonly used today for both male and female characters and it's the sort of plot that comic books like to exploit. Taking over other people's bodies and using them, adopting avatars to play out ones own fantasies, casting magic charms to get the person of their dreams--none of that has gone away. You'd have to throw out a large part of fantasy fiction, if you wanted to cleanse them of any possible negative interpretation.

It was creepy and awkward and Patty’s attempts to defend it are just making it worse.

Let’s be honest, if Snyder or Whedon or Ayer, etc did something like this, they’d be torn to shreds.

If the genders were reversed, the filmmakers would be torn to shreds.


Abs the worst part is, it was so unnecessary because there were numerous other ways to bring Steve back that wouldn’t have felt so icky.

The film implies that they had sex. I'm not about to rewrite the common film language of seeing a couple wake up the next morning in their underwear which has been used to imply sex without showing it for decades, just for this one movie so I can pretend it's somehow less problematic. That is enough to draw the conclusion that she did in fact have sex with Steve. What, are we gonna start bordering on the idea that it's outrageous for Diana to have sex now? It's not a nasty thing two people just do: it's a beautiful thing between two people that love each other and I'm not about to say that Diana just wanted to cuddle and sleep in bed with Steve after he magically comes back from the dead after decades, considering this franchise wants me to believe they're deeply in love with each other. And sure, Diana's wish is meant to reflect selfishness and "not the truth" or whatever, which is a fine character arc to give her but forgive me if I don't like that it comes at the cost of problematic messaging.

It shouldn't be okay for a film to suggest that having sex with or performing any kind of romantic, sexual or intimate act with another person's body without their consent is fine because two people people are so in love and the third person might not even remember it. It's such a weird thing that the film did not absolutely need to do, considering the morality of using that man's body is handwaved in a film trying to sport other progressive messages, one of which IS about consent. We're not in the 80s anymore and the discourse around sexual consent is thankfully a lot more advanced than it used to be. The film should have been smarter, regardless of the time period it was set in.

It feels like they wanted to do an 80’s movie trope (films back then had questionable stuff like this in them). But they didn’t realize that just because your film is SET in the 80’s, doesn’t mean that audiences in 2020 want those problematic 80’s tropes back.

[QUOTE=Blind Wedjat;5304071]The film implies that they had sex. I'm not about to rewrite the [B]common film language[/B] of seeing a couple wake up the next morning in their underwear which has been used to imply sex without showing it for decades, just for this one movie so I can pretend it's somehow less problematic. That is enough to draw the conclusion that she did in fact have sex with Steve. What, are we gonna start bordering on the idea that it's outrageous for Diana to have sex now? It's not a nasty thing two people just do: it's a beautiful thing between two people that love each other and I'm not about to say that Diana just wanted to cuddle and sleep in bed with Steve after he magically comes back from the dead after decades, considering this franchise wants me to believe they're deeply in love with each other. And sure, Diana's wish is meant to reflect selfishness and "not the truth" or whatever, which is a fine character arc to give her but forgive me if I don't like that it comes at the cost of problematic messaging.

It shouldn't be okay for a film to suggest that having sex with or performing any kind of romantic, sexual or intimate act with another person's body without their consent is fine because two people people are so in love and the third person might not even remember it. It's such a weird thing that the film did not absolutely need to do, considering the morality of using that man's body is handwaved in a film trying to sport other progressive messages, one of which IS about consent. We're not in the 80s anymore and the discourse around sexual consent is thankfully a lot more advanced than it used to be. The film should have been smarter, regardless of the time period it was set in.[/QUOTE]

Thank you, especially for your point about film language. For those who argue something like, "we didn't see it on screen so we don't know it happened" we actually did have it told to us in filmic language. Just not literal representation, nor in expositional speech.

Film, since its inception (and especially after censorship practices) has used visual style and metaphor to tell us exactly what it going on - even without sex being involved. For example, the expressionistic sets in early German films like "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" use trapezoidal shapes and expressionistic sets to foreshadow to us the insane mindscape the characters operated in... which becomes explicit at the end.

The film "Detour" uses strange focus techniques to let us know that the main character is going out of focus with himself... slowly losing himself internally.

Moving to the more romantic we get things like in "Out of the Past" where when the two main "love" interests finally succumb to their passion on the beach, the camera slightly pans until we see fishing nets, signaling that they are now trapped in their doomed fate.

When it came to straight morality censorship, we now get into the filmic language that Jenkins also uses. An overt example is the many films that have some variation of two people kissing, the camera pans to a window, that suddenly blows open by a strong wind. This was no secret in Hollywood or to the audience to clue them into sex occurring.

Waking up in each other's arms is another clear example that film and tv makers have been using for decades.

To use a prepositional language analogy. If everyone knows that the word "Cat" means, well, a feline, it doesn't make sense for someone to then use that word to mean swine or a trout.

Jenkins is so conscious of the filmic language, themes, and tropes of '80s films (considering how many she used in WW84) that it's insane to think she didn't know exactly what she was communicating with that scene as well.

And yeah, as far as I 'care' about a fictional character, I was actually more concerned with his missing time, the effects on his life due to that, and the risk to his life, suddenly becoming an action hero than I was about the sex... but that's really only because... y'know Gal Gadot. ;)