REVIEW: Cursory superhero film 'Wonder Woman 1984' lacks... wonder
Gal Gadot stars in Wonder Woman 1984, directed and co-written by Patty Jenkins.
This was supposed to be the one franchise DC and Warner Bros. gets right. The titular character was DC’s first big critical and commercial hit, and it made an immeasurable cultural impact as a female-directed, female-led superhero film. It made big leaps forward, and Wonder Woman 1984 was destined for bigger and better things. It was a chance for DC to make another big splash, but what we got instead was a bloated sequel that was more dull than super and more damsel than hero.
SPOILERS AHEAD
Set roughly 70 years after the events of the first film, Diana (Gal Gadot, who now owns the role) is an anthropologist at the Smithsonian. She’s smart, rich and beautiful, but she’s also super nice because she’s the only person who makes friendly talk with Barbara Minerva (Kristen Wiig, expectedly underutilized), a dorky co-worker with frazzled hair and low self-confidence. (Your typical ugly duckling with a mid-movie beauty makeover). A mysterious “Dreamstone” makes its way to the museum, and unbeknownst to both Diana and Barbara, the stone has the ability to grant wishes. One person who does know about the Dreamstone’s magical properties is the Gordon Gekko-like Max Lord (Pedro Pascal), a struggling businessman who wishes to use the stone to help save his oil company. The three principal characters (and several others, including historical figures) end up making wishes, and Wonder Woman must face the consequences as the world drowns under unfettered free will and chaos.
This all sounds pretty good on paper, right? But it takes about an hour for director Patty Jenkins to put all the pieces in place, and when the pieces start to move, not all of it makes sense. Take, for example, the decision to set the film in 1984 and bring back Diana’s love interest, Steve Trevor (Chris Pine). In the first film, Wonder Woman was forced into action because it was The Great War. Her decision to fight was both altruistic (supposedly the war to end all wars) and personal (she loved Steve), and the film concluded with the end of the war.
Kristen Wiig as Barbara Minerva/Cheetah.
WW84 made an effort to highlight the tensions and the arms race during the Cold War, but 1984 wasn’t really a pivotal year in that conflict. The USSR was already very powerful, Mikhail Gorbachev didn’t come into power until 1985 and the August Coup didn’t happen until 1991. In fact, the global conflict that really dominated 1984 was the crack epidemic and the Ethiopian famine, which would’ve been a very interesting problems for Wonder Woman to tackle. The only semi-relevant reason to set the film in 1984 was the advent of satellites and computer networks, which was also a plot point that only concerned Max, and not Barbara or Steve, another testament to how disjointed the movie is. It was an odd decision to include real-life figures such as Ronald Reagan, too, since Wonder Woman never meets him face-to-face, and despite the final climax of mutually-assured destruction, never referenced his infamous “bombing in five minutes” joke for extra realism. 1984 never becomes a character, unlike the desperation and bleakness of 1918 that forced characters into action.
Seemingly, that means setting the film in 1984 was just an excuse to cut a synth-heavy trailer (music we never got in the film, by the way) and let Pine make stupid jokes about fanny packs. Even if we forgive Diana – who’s supposedly the embodiment of moral good – for overlooking the fact that her wish temporarily traps a living soul in limbo and other such ramifications in a Freaky Friday swap, it’s debatable how much Steve’s character moves Diana or the story forward. It is a nostalgia trip for Diana – some small laughs, a romantic sequence in which they fly an invisible plane through fireworks – but there are much bigger problems to worry about. Steve becomes a distraction, despite Pine’s charm. The only conclusion that we come to, unfortunately, is that Pine’s popularity necessitated the inclusion of his character even though, narratively, he wasn’t needed. Throughout WW84, you’re constantly asking yourself why things are happening the way they are.
The action pieces were few and far between, and even when they were happening, there was never a real sense of danger because of how comical they come across. The mall fight felt like something out of a Saturday cartoon, the convoy ambush had funny physics and kids so dumb they could only exist in movies, and the final fight between Wonder Woman and Cheetah is completed shrouded in shadows and unremarkable CGI. Don’t forget, Wonder Woman doesn’t even defeat Max Lord with her strength or smarts; she does it by literally begging everyone to do their part to save the world because she can’t do it herself. Even if we accept the highly, highly improbably conclusion that everyone renounces their wishes, the final conclusion we draw is that Wonder Woman’s greatest ability is swaying public opinion without using a Facebook fan page, not her moral righteousness or her ability to do, y’know, superhero things.
Pedro Pascal as Maxwell Lord.
It raises questions about Wonder Woman’s role in the bigger DCEU and the Justice League. Debates about Wonder Woman’s new-found flying ability aside, there’s also incongruity in tone between the two Wonder Woman films. While Wonder Woman started off as a very serious and somewhat dark action movie, within the first few scenes of WW84, the tone had shifted to something dramatically brighter, campier and unrealistic because the physics becomes more video game-y than the blunt, emotional heaviness Zack Snyder had brought to both Batman v Superman and Justice League, both of which feature Wonder Woman quite prominently. And what does the Justice League really seek to accomplish? Besides defeating the big bad guy, there’s little in common between Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman. Batman tends to escalate the conflict (he’s got major issues), Superman accepts that collateral damage is part of what he does (which is still a problematic premise), while Wonder Woman wants to keep everything pretty low key (but who’s also not entirely unselfish).
There are many reasons for wanting WW84 to be good, but unfortunately that’s not the case. Warner Bros. seems pretty happy with the box office so far, but it’s still one digit shy of what it really should be. What it did prove, however, is that there’s still an appetite for movies at theatres, and also a pretty big demand for those who want the movie to be available on streaming on the same day. It’s a small win rather than the big win WW84 was supposed to deliver, and perhaps like the first film it will make a bigger impact on a cultural level for being the first film to set the new standard for how new movies will be released.
Wonder Woman 1984 gets two and a half stars out of four.
