AboutMovieWonderWoman

It doesn’t take long for Capt. Steve Trevor to discover he’s the sidekick.

He’s brought Diana, the heroine of “Wonder Woman” (many spoilers follow), to London and has been shepherding her about, dressing her in appropriate clothing and trying to keep her out of trouble, when the two are accosted by a group of armed German spies. Captain Trevor tells Diana to stand back, but she steps in front of him and starts blocking bullets with her bracelets.

“Or maybe not,” he says, as Diana quickly dispatches most of the Germans.

In the story that follows, Captain Trevor will occasionally try to protect Diana when she doesn’t need it, and he won’t always go along with her plans. But by and large, he will play second fiddle gamely, even eagerly, offering one of the most appealing onscreen depictions of masculinity in recent memory.

Diana is a demigoddess, the child of a god and a queen. Raised by a society of warrior women, she can create force fields, snare people in a lasso of truth, speak dozens of human languages and crush stone with her bare hands. Steve Trevor, a mere mortal, could be threatened by all this. Instead, he’s inspired.

In a pivotal scene, he and Diana’s other male compatriots literally lift her up, crouching beneath a piece of metal so that she can launch herself off of it and pick off a sniper, destroying a bell tower in the process. Far from being turned off by the sight of Diana standing triumphant high above him, Captain Trevor appears to be entranced — soon after, during a brief lull in the fighting, he asks her to dance and they end up in bed together.

Maybe it’s not such a heroic act to have sex with a beautiful woman despite (or, in part, because of) her ability to flatten masonry, but in a time when women are sometimes called intimidating for having full-time jobs, it feels like one. What’s more, Captain Trevor supports Diana in her mission to destroy Ares, the god of war, and he ultimately sacrifices himself for their shared goal.

“I can save the day,” he says, “but you can save the world.”

It’s a cheesy line, sure. But this is a cheesy movie. And Captain Trevor never forgets whose movie it is.

Much of the credit for the character’s charm goes to Chris Pine, who knows how to project confidence even as he’s stepping out of the spotlight. Diana’s mother Hippolyta explains at the beginning of the film that humans were originally created to be “strong and passionate,” and Captain Trevor is both, and when it matters, he can use those qualities to support someone else.

Especially in his (very tame) nude scene, Mr. Pine is working in a mode previously explored by Chris Hemsworth in “Ghostbusters” and Channing Tatum in pretty much everything — the preternaturally attractive man who wears his beauty lightly, who is both willing to be objectified and to make a joke of his objectification. A white, muscular man on the big screen isn’t exactly boundary-breaking, but even the acknowledgement that male bodies can be beautiful sometimes feels subversive, and an actor who’s willing to take a playful and self-aware attitude toward his own sexiness is a welcome break from a culture that frequently lays the heavy burden of hotness exclusively on women.

Misogynists have long accused feminists of hating men or masculinity, but Captain Trevor is a reminder that masculinity itself isn’t the problem. A swashbuckling spy who amusingly claims his physique is “above average,” he remains masculine throughout the movie in a fairly traditional sense — his masculinity just allows for supporting a powerful (O.K., superpowerful) woman, rather than undercutting or resenting her.

Of course, Steve Trevor isn’t real. But if it’s important for girls and women to see a female superhero, it’s also important for boys and men to see a man who becomes heroic by following a woman’s lead. And while big-budget movies aren’t necessarily the best model for our romantic lives, I’ll take a fantasy of a supportive man over a fantasy of a domineering one any day. Such fantasies affect us; they help us know what we can ask for.

When Diana leaves her island home, her mother tells her that mankind does not deserve her. It’s a measure of Steve Trevor’s greatness that, in his way, he does.

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Anna North (@annanorthtweets) is a writer and editor in The Times opinion section.