DCEU Review Series
Wonder Woman 1984
2020
Director: Patty Jenkins
I had to take a long break from this review series in order to prep for this film. It’s such a disappointment compared to the tolerable first Wonder Woman. The 2-hour and 30-minute runtime does not help. The creators want to blame the pandemic for the horrible box office, which was likely a factor but when you create a film that can be used as the cure for insomnia, that’s your failing. Terrible sequels come from a lack of understanding of what resonated with audiences in the first film. Michael Bay is a great example of how to make bad sequels. He never understands what people liked about the first film and amplifies the terrible stuff audiences tolerated. James Cameron makes brilliant sequels and completely understands character growth from the first film to the next. He then takes those characters and inserts them into plots with their new perspective on life via the first film.
Wonder Woman 1984 opens with a 15-minute flashback where she’s running some triathlon and loses because she took a shortcut or something. Then some lame attempt at an inspirational speech setting up the theme of the film. Then we’re thrust into 1984 with interior designs and people dressed like it’s 1987. There’s some dramatic robbery at a shopping mall because it takes place in the 80s and there’s nothing more Hollywood cliché than making an 80s film with a shopping mall. All the performances in the mall sequence are so dramatic and over the top. It’s like we’re watching an episode from the 1960s Batman without any of the campy humor.
Wonder Woman is living the single 80s-gal life with her big shoulder pad blazers. She makes friends with Barbara Minerva who will turn into the villain Cheetah Girl. Of course, in the typical “all villains are gay in Hollywood” fashion, Barbara Minerva has an unhealthy lesbian crush on Wonder Woman. Cheetah Girl’s introduction has this really annoying visual inconsistency with the papers on her suitcase. With the kind of money tossed at this film, they should have digitally fixed the damn papers surrounding her suitcase. Each cut they are in a different spot. That’s a minor complaint in a good movie. It’s exponential into the quality we’re getting in a bad movie.
There’s a magic crystal that grants wishes. Wonder Woman accidentally wishes her boyfriend Steve Trevor back to life. Cheetah Girl wishes to have the powers of Wonder Woman. Everyone thinks she’s hot now or something but she’s not hot at all because Kristen Wiig is not hot, not funny, not talented in anyway.
They introduce us to a main villain Maxwell Lord who Cheetah Girl is all into but Wonder Woman thinks is a huge dork. The problem with Maxwell Lord as a character is he’s known by comic fans but not the general public. Since his character isn’t as well defined in the public eye, it allows creators to do whatever the hell they want and just slap a name from the comic onto it. That’s the case with this character. He’s super desperate in this film. In the comics he’s a giant douchebag, in Justice League Unlimited the animates series he’s a corporate stooge for Cadmus.
Steve Trevor comes back by taking over the body of a random dude. It’s a quantum leap scenario or something. Wonder Woman and him hook-up. There’s certainly ethical issues with their romantic interlude but it’s Gal Gadot so it’s unlikely any man would complain.
We get a lot of lame cliché 80s gag. Looking at the 80s from the point of view of Steve Trevor, a guy from the early 1900s isn’t original or done in an interesting way. They’re just wasting time. The joke could have been done in 3 seconds.
Maxwell Lord works a whammy and gets the powers to grant wishes. He starts giving people what they wish for. Really not evil super villain when you look at it. Certainly careless but not horrible. It’s causing a little chaos giving everyone what they ask for but it’s not being done out of evil or malice. The dude starts trading wishes for favors or wealth or something which after 1 hours and 20 minutes we finally get our first real action scene in the movie. The introduction race scene and mall action sequence has nothing to do with the plot. They are time wasters to try and hook the audience in early. This car chase is part of the plot but isn’t very compelling. Wonder Woman running down a desert road fighting Egyptian military. Wonder Woman is after Maxwell Lord because she thinks he has the wish stone and doesn’t understand he absorbed its power. The sequence ends with Wonder Woman saving some kids but it looks really cheap and hokey.
Maxwell Lord gets away, goes back to his office, keeps granting wishes to people. All this crazy stuff keeps happening which is hard to explain but actually makes sense in the film. It’s weird but Maxwell Lord is altering realty so much that all the nonsense fits with the plot. The character motivations are confusing but all the strange things happening fit with the story.
Wonder Woman appears to be losing her power because Cheetah Girl wished to have it or because she wished for Steve Trevor to come back from the dead or something. Cheetah Girl turns bad for no real reason other than wanting to keep Wonder Woman’s power. A nuclear war is about the breakout because of all the wish granting shenanigans of Maxwell Lord. The dude really needs to learn how to say “no.”
Wonder Woman renounces her wish for Steve Trevor to be alive, gets her powers back, runs away crying like a weak little girl. Cheetah Girl changes her wish to actually be Cheetah Girl because somehow that’s better than having the powers of Wonder Woman. The creepy furry community certainly supported the change. Maxwell Lord gets on the TV and starts going psycho with the wishes. The results are as bad as when Bruce Almighty said yes to everyone’s prayers and not nearly as funny or entertaining. Wonder Woman gets a powers upgrade to look like one of the winged people from Flash Gordon. It looked ridiculous in Flash Gordon, it looks ridiculous in this film. She fights Cheetah Girl in a terrible costume. The B-Movie, The Howling had a better costume for animal/human hybrids than this $200 million film.
Wonder Woman defeats Cheetah Girl and confronts Maxwell Lord who’s gone insane. She uses her lasso or truth, then there’s some speech about people or the world being better or something. A lot of generalized nonsense. He renounces his wish which voids everyone else’s and the world is saved. Pedro Pascal is a great actor who did the best he could as Maxwell Lord. Some movies are just badly written. In the denouement, Wonder Woman looks up in the sky with “wonder,” and anytime you end a film with the character looking up in the sky, you have a really shitty film.
This movie was boring. There was one major action sequence. The fight scenes with Cheetah Girl are boring. The characters are boring. There’s no fixing this because the plot was so terrible. The creators just wanted to make a film which took place in the 1980s but had no idea what to do about anything else. Avoid this film at all costs.
Written by
Joseph Ammendolea
Owner/President
“I Like To Play With Toys” Productions®
ILikeToPlayWithToysProductions@Yahoo.com
