[Editor's note: The following contains spoilers for Wonder Woman 1984.]

At the conclusion of Wonder Woman 1984, Maxwell Lord (Pedro Pascal) has thrown the world into chaos by granting everyone’s wish. The whole world has basically wished upon a Monkey’s Paw and gotten twisted versions back of the thing they wanted while Lord only amasses more power. Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot), using her lasso of truth, is able to speak to the whole world and convince them to renounce their wishes to bring the world back to normal. Everyone agrees to give up their wish and even Lord realizes that the most precious thing in the world to him is his son.

In a recent interview with The New York Times, director Patty Jenkins explains that her movie is a metaphor for climate change, and that people giving up their wishes is about the sacrifices we need to make in order to make the world a better place. “Not to get too heavy about it — I don’t want people to even know it’s about climate change — but we’re about to lose this world,” says Jenkins. “What are we, when we’re at our most excessive, when we can’t stop wanting more? We all have a hard time changing our lives, but if we don’t, we’re going to lose everything.”

This is part of the “think globally, act locally” message where it’s contingent on each individual to battle the forces of climate change. We’re being too excessive, and if we don’t cut back on our excess, the world will pay the price. That’s a nice little story that feels like it could be about personal empowerment, but really it’s putting the onus of the problem onto the individual rather than realizing that big problems are about systemic change rather than whether or not we each make sure to recycle (also, recycling plastics was a lie and big oil knew it).

2020 was a rare moment in human history where we were all dealing with the same issue no matter what country we were in. Some countries dealt with the COVID-19 pandemic better than others, but we all had to face it, which meant most countries went into some kind of lockdown or needed to move to telework or institute some kind of change from our norms. These changes should have produced the kind of sacrifice that would move the needle on climate change, right? After all, the streets have never been more cleared of vehicles, so that must have made a dent in carbon emissions, right? Unfortunately, despite a 17% drop in carbon emissions, the effect on climate change was negligible. It will take real, sustained change and it will take more than just what individuals can muster.

A 2019 report by the National Resource Defense Council claims that 100 energy companies are responsible for 71% of all industrial emissions, and “the top 15 U.S. food and beverage companies generate nearly 630 million metric tons of greenhouse gases every year. That makes this group of only 15 companies a bigger emitter than Australia, the world’s 15th largest annual source of greenhouse gases.” This isn’t an individual promising to give up eating beef or to telecommute rather than drive to work. These are big, massive problems that require regulation from government forces and corporate accountability.

Even if you want to take climate change out of the equation, pushing personal responsibility in the face of worldwide problems is an approach that ignores the responsibilities we’ve given to powerful interests. The reason we’re sniping at our neighbors for wearing or not wearing masks is because there was an absence of leadership in the U.S. and masks became politicized. When you boil everything down to personal responsibility, it gives the individual far more accountability than they actually deserve while removing accountability from the forces that have the power to make real, systemic changes. Yes, individuals should collectively work together to force those powerful interests to change but Wonder Woman 1984 looks in the opposite direction and ends up making a very 1980s claim as its solution—government isn’t the answer; government is the problem, and it’s up to personal responsibility to affect any change.

But we’ve seen what happens this year when we throw up our hands and leave it to personal responsibility. Some individuals won’t be responsible. And those that are responsible will still have to live in the same world where governments flounder and corporations continue to focus on how they can expand their profit margins. Personal responsibility is worthwhile, but it’s not some silver bullet that’s going to change big, systemic problems that require the power, money, and influence that governments and corporations wield. When you boil it down to personal responsibility, then it gives way to personal blame while ignoring the blame that should go to powerful interests. That’s not very heroic.