Bow down to ‘Wonder Woman’
Diana Prince’s love life
The first man Wonder Woman ever met turned out to be her perfect Bumble match.
Amazon warrior Diana Prince (played by Gal Gadot) and Steve Trevor (Chris Pine), an American spy fighting alongside the Brits in World War I, are brave, physical characters, operating with a sense of duty — and not too shabby in the looks department, either.
But it’s worth pondering: Why did filmmakers decide to swipe right on Steve? Could Diana Prince’s origin story have survived without a boyfriend at all?
Director Patty Jenkins says Wonder Woman deserved an equal. “In my mind, I always thought, just because she’s a woman (doesn’t mean she shouldn’t) have the great love, too,” Jenkins says.
But in making Wonder Woman (in theaters now), filmmakers kept a careful eye on how their Steve was drawn.
The last thing Diana needed as she set off to fight the god of war was to be in a condescending relationship, Jenkins says.
“With (Steve), there’s room for her to be the superhero that she is. If what we’re doing is living that dream of being the superhero you want to be, part of that dream is meeting a man who is a truly great man who has no problem with that and who wants to be with that woman.”
Slowly, Steve learns of Diana’s power while still aiming for something resembling chivalry.
“What’s great about the love story for me is that they’re both alphas,” says screenwriter Allan Heinberg, calling Wonder Woman his favorite superhero since childhood. “And neither one of them really wants a relationship. … There’s curiosity at first, but there’s definitely a struggle about who’s going to be in charge, (and) when.”
A love interest squares Diana with the boys’ tales, making her no different from Iron Man, Captain America or Batman, all of whom had love interests in their silver-screen origin stories. There’s also the source material. In the comics, Wonder Woman has dated a series of men, from Steve Trevor to Superman (and, ahem, even some women).
And Pine, 36, delivered: Critics have hailed the chemistry between the two stars, who banter easily throughout the course of a wide-eyed Diana’s acclimatization to a man’s world.
“Gadot and Pine have fantastic chemistry and Pine does well as the audience’s surrogate, displaying appropriate amusement and curiosity at Diana’s strange ways,” USA TODAY critic Kelly Lawler writes.
Case in point: Upon meeting Steve, Diana asks the chiseled blue-eyed spy if he’s a typical example of the male species. Later, as the two sail away from the allfemale island Themyscira, Pine clarifies that he’s more fairly described as “above average.”
In today’s Hollywood landscape, it can be difficult to find an A-list male star willing to play second fiddle in a woman-led story. But Jenkins says Pine was game.
No stranger to roles in bigbudget spectacles, from Star
Trek’s Captain Kirk to Cinderella’s grin-inducing prince in Into
the Woods, Pine acted as a sturdy foil for Gadot, 32, on Wonder Woman.
“She had the weight of the world on her shoulders in some regard,” he says. “I was just was there to support and make her laugh and flirt.”
“They’re both alphas. ... There’s definitely a struggle about who’s going to be in charge, (and) when.” Screenwriter Allan Heinberg