Don’t play villain music when someone beats up a rapist.
By: Michael Mctighe
Tags: Rape, Gal Gadot, Wonder Woman, Kristen Wiig, Wonder Woman 1984

Maybe I’m not a director or writer. Maybe I don’t work in sound mixing or sound editing. Maybe I’m not a composer. One thing I do know, however, is it’s heroic to teach little girls to beat the shit out of someone who is attempting to violently rape them.

When Kristen Wiig was announced as Barbara Minerva aka the villainous Cheetah I got those old Tim Burton Batman casting vibes. She’s not your typical choice for the superhero film. She comes from Saturday Night Live, and her few dramatic turns came in films nobody sees (unfortunately) like The Skeleton Twins. We’re used to seeing her play stupidly hilarious characters like “Gilly”. Mainstream audiences would sooner expect to see her in a gender-bent version of Dumb and Dumber. Count me as one who was excited to see what she could do.

Her first few scenes were bad. Not because of her, but because they were poorly written. They used the cliche’ movie trope of “woman dropping stuff” and framed her in a way not far off from her SNL characters. Then she makes a wish to be like Diana Prince, confident and strong — not understanding how “strong” she would become. The first scene indicating her wish is granted involves her stepping out of a dressing room in a black cocktail dress and heels. If I were a female feminist this might have been the time I shouted “YAS QUEEN! SLAY!” Instead, because I am a straight guy I just went:

I don’t have many nice things to say about Wonder Woman 1984. One thing I will say is Kristen Wiig nailed it. She was, by far, the best part of the film.

There was one part of her performance that was bad: she ended up playing a hero.

It’s not her fault. She didn’t write the movie, and she just played the role as it was written. The movie presented her incorrectly as the villain.

Her arc is not an uncommon one. Spider-Man 2, way back in the days of yore also known as 2004, famously had the “good person who’s ambitions make them turn evil” in Alfred Molina’s incredible Doctor Octopus. In my opinion, one of the best comic book movie villains ever to grace the screen. They perfectly balanced sympathy for his situation with a man who’s blind ambition corrupted him in the form of telepathically corrosive metal arms. You could understand his actions without condoning them. The reason this is important is once you condone someone’s action they become the hero. That is, in effect, what a superhero does. Superheroes skirt the law, if not outright break it, in order to beat up people who really deserve it. People who might unrepentently steal, murder, or rape.

Yes, rape. Rape tends to be left out of most superhero movies because most of them are rating PG or PG-13. It’s very tough with the restrictions put in place by the MPAA to address the subject matter of rape without crossing into R-rated territory. Wonder Woman 1984 is not the first film to so. Zack Synder’s Watchmen contains the rape scene of the Comedian on Silk Spectre that is present in the comics. Wonder Woman 1984, however, completely botches it.

As others have pointed out Gal Gadot’s Diana Prince rapes “Handsome Man” (Kristoffer Polaha’s character) when his body is inhabited by Chris Pine’s Steve Trevor and presumably he is not conscious and unable to give consent. As creepy as that is, it is more a result of the film’s MacGuffin Plot Device that seems to play by no rules whatsoever. Somehow it’s able to conjure a wall out of thin air, but Steve Trevor needs to possess someone else’s body? Whatever, I’m done trying to figure it out.

What really caused me to check out of the movie was how it portrayed Kristen Wiig. Before she wishes to become like Diana Prince she has yet another case of the clumbsies in front of an alcoholic seated on a park bench in Washington DC. The man aggressively catcalls her, and then the scene gets progressively more uncomfortable as he violently assaults her and clearly tries to rape her. Seconds later, Diana Prince saves her. Given the way the guy seems to have parked himself on the park bench it is pretty safe to assume he does this a lot, and those other times Diana Prince was not there to swoop in and save her friend. This guy is a rapist. He’s not a cat-caller. He’s not a boorish oaf. He’s a rapist. Most likely he is a serial rapist.

It doesn’t stop there either as Barbara Minerva (Kristen Wiig) runs into him again. This time it’s clear he’s stalking her since he seems to know where she will be leaving from. However this time it is Barbara who has Diana Prince’s powers and she kicks the shit out of this guy. She doesn’t kill him as a colleague of hers just happens to be rounding the corner as Barabara flings his bloody body into the street. Would she have? Maybe. Do I really care? No. She has absolutely no reason not to completely fear for her life here.

Apparently, though the people who made this film thought this was the appropriate time to start playing villain music.

Killing a man who is going to violent rape, and possibly murder you, clearly, that is something villains do. No, it isn’t. We teach women self-defense. We encourage women who have to walk alone at night, career women like Barbara Minerva, to carry guns. We even publish comic books with heroes in them, heroes like Wonder Woman, to inspire women (and men) to feel empowered to stand up for themselves, and sometimes that means beating up people.

I don’t know where you come from but from unfortunate personal experience, I won’t detail I know that when you catch a rapist in the act you beat the shit out of that person. Imagine if Barbara Minerva were your daughter (or son) and you saw them being systematically stalked, harassed, and then assaulted by a man intent on raping and possibly murdered them? Would you show mercy? Would it be wrong for you to leave that person a bloody pile in the middle of the street? This isn’t a case of her tracking down the man while he was minding his own business. She was being attacked again by a serial rapist, and this time she had the means to defend herself and used them.

Villain music my ass.

If I had a daughter, I’d never let her watch Wonder Woman 1984.