What is it about Chris Pine that filmmakers love to keep killing him off on screen. His ill-fated pilot Steve Trevor met an heroic end in Patty Jenkins’ initial Wonder Woman (all the way back in 2017), and the Star Trek star voiced the version of Peter Parker who sacrificed himself in the early stages of the Oscar-winning Spider-Man: Into the SpiderVerse. When I mentioned this fascinating trend to Pine as part of the Wonder Woman 1984 press day, he gave me the above answer, which I found to be very funny.
I’m not sure, based on his reaction to the above-mentioned theme, that Chris Pine even realizes how many times that he has been asked to die on screen. There are a bunch of examples that I can list here from truly memorable movies, though they might be considered spoilers, so I will refrain from spelling them out. But as for his “acting challenge” for the upcoming year, Pine made the following know as he promoted Wonder Woman 1984:
I seem to die... I have to get in something where I at least don't die. I think that's my actor challenge for 2021.
Now, hilariously, I noted to Chris Pine that directors like Patty Jenkins can conceive of clever ways to allow him to reprise a role like Steve Trevor for a Wonder Woman sequel. I’m not going to tell you how Wonder Woman 1984 brings Trevor back into Diana Prince’s life. But he’s part of the marketing, so mentioning his return is not spoiling anything. I told Pine that we, as an industry, will just have to keep bringing him back from the dead, and he laughed and replied:
It's just going to become ever-more ingenious how you bring me back from the dead.
To which I pointed out that he’d be perfect for a reboot of Bill Murray’s seminal comedy Groundhogs Day, where the main character dies over and over and over but keeps waking up to relive the same dreadful day (it’s like Happy Death Day, with more morose self-reflection and humor). To which Pine quickly replied:
Yeah, there you go! Sure! Oh God, you can't fuck with that.
He’s right. That’d be a terrible idea, even though Chris Pine would crush it as the weatherman trapped in a hellish cycle of reliving the same day. So, you won’t see him in that movie anytime soon, but on Christmas Day, you can see the return of Steve Trevor in Patty Jenkins’ anticipated Wonder Woman 1984. The movie returns Gal Gadot as the DC hero, pitting her against the evil Max Lord (Pedro Pascal) and the menacing Cheetah (Kristen Wiig). The movie will play select theaters, and stream on HBO Max, beginning on the same day.
