Classic Movie Monday: How "Casablanca" Influenced "Wonder Woman"

Before the release of Wonder Woman, director Patty Jenkins spoke to Fandango about her influences for the film. She mentioned the 1942 classic, Casablanca, and said, “I wanted a great love story where both characters have integrity and it might be set in the complexities of war, but it turns into a grand love story.” At first, I wasn’t quite sure how much Casablanca really factored into Wonder Woman. After all, these are two vastly different films. As I re-watched Casablanca, however, I began to notice similarities between the two that I had never considered. So, as I move forward with this article, I will talk about how Casablanca influenced Wonder Woman. More specifically, how it helped Wonder Woman become a great love story in a genre where great love stories are far and few in between.

I want to start off by talking about the characters and draw some parallels between the leads in both films. While watching Casablanca, I couldn’t help but compare Humphrey Bogart’s character, Rick, to Wonder Woman’s Diana, played by Gal Gadot. That sounds crazy, I know, but hear me out. In Wonder Woman, Diana has never been outside of the Amazonian island of Themyscira. Diana has never met a man, let alone loved one. She has been trained in battle, but has never seen the horrors of war. Diana is by all accounts an innocent soul. Rick, on the other hand, is the complete opposite. He has seen the world. He has loved another person and seen what wars can do to humanity. When we meet Rick, he’s a jaded man who has hidden himself from the world. The only thing Rick cares about is himself.

When Diana meets Steve, her entire world opens up. Unbeknownst to her, the world outside her island is in the midst of World War I. Steve’s arrival to Themyscira brings that war to her island. After discovering what is going on in the world outside her island, she knows she needs to do something about it, and she does. In the process, she falls in love with Steve without ever letting that love get in the way of the greater goal of ending the war. In Casablanca, things are a bit different for Rick. We know from stories that he was kind of a hero at one point, but after losing Ilsa, the love of his life, he became a different person. It is only when she comes back into his life that Rick finds the strength to once again fight for a good cause.

Where Wonder Woman and Casablanca relate the most to each other is in their endings, both of which take place in an airport-like setting. In Casablanca, things appear to be in Rick’s favor. He is perfectly set up to get in a plane with Ilsa and fly away to be together once more. Rick understands what that would mean for the war, however, and instead makes sure that Ilsa leaves with her husband. Rick knows the consequence for doing that likely means he will never see her again, but he is able to put his own feelings aside for the greater good. By letting Ilsa go, Rick provides a great help in the fight against Germany in WWII. In Wonder Woman, the ending is similar. Steve finds that the only way to stop a deadly bomber plane is by hijacking and blowing it up while in the air. Both he and Diana know that that’s not a situation from which he would come out alive, and yet she knows there’s no other way. It’s one life in exchange for millions of others, so she lets him go.

All of this to say that these characters are heavily driven and inspired by love, but they aren’t blinded by it. They understand that there is a big chance that things might not end the way they would hope. What I love about these two films is the fact that they show how tragic love can be. I think that love stories in comic book films oftentimes don’t work because they tend to be all love and rainbows. There is no weight to any danger they might encounter because you can feel that it is just there as a plot device. The few comic book film romances that really work do so because they aren’t afraid to be real. That means that they let their characters develop on their own as well as together. It also means showing the good and the bad parts about their relationship. Some examples are Steve and Peggy in Captain America: The First Avenger or Peter and Gwen in the The Amazing Spider-Man series. As Casablanca showed, love can be tragic. Seeing Rick let Ilsa get on that plane with someone else is just as heartbreaking as seeing Diana let Steve hijack the bomber plane.

It is no secret that Wonder Woman had an enormous impact on the superhero genre. Even though it is so much more than a love story, that aspect of the film is vital to the story itself. Many superhero films have tried and failed to include romantic plots in them, but Wonder Woman wasn’t one of them. By using Casablanca as a template, director Patty Jenkins was able to put together one of the very best love stories in any superhero film.