Movie Review : Wonder Woman 1984 (2020)

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Ten days after Wonder Woman 1984 was officially released on VOD services, half of planet Earth has already seen it. That means half of planet Earth has an opinion on it, because it’s one of the only two blockbusters released in 2020 to have an opinion on. Audiences reactions were as polarized as expected, but not for the reasons you think. The internet is not making up nit-picky argument to claim that it sucks. It is making up nit-picky argument to claim that it’s good.

So which one is it? I’m leaning towards… somewhere down the middle.

The sequel to Wonder Woman is set 66 years after the original. After the heroic death of her paramour Steve Trevor (Chris Pine), Diana Prince (Gal Gadot) spent her time working for the Smithsonian Institute and catching bad guys outside business hours. At work, she meets a new gemologist named Barbara Minerva (Kristen Wiig) who’s tasked with identifying a recovered artifact by the FBI, which grants wishes at a sneaky cost.

That artifact is coveted by a Smithsonian patron named Maxwell Lord (the immortal Pedro Pascal) who wants to use it to make himself rich and powerful. Lord easily tricks the naïve Barbara out of the artifact and wishes to become the artifact himself in order to have as many wishes as he pleases. If that sounds weird and nebulous, it’s because it is. I usually don’t take two full paragraph out of a review just to recap the freakin’ story, but Wonder Woman 1984 warrants it.

What’s good, but ultimately doesn’t matter

There’s a lot of cool stuff in this movie that doesn’t have anything to do with Wonder Woman, DC Universe or good filmmaking in general. For example, the artifact that eventually becomes Maxwell Lord is the embodiment of something called the law of attraction, a popular belief that thoughts are loaded with energy and therefore have an influence on your life. It means that if you’re thinking positive thoughts, you are rewarded by the universe for it.

Co-writer and director of Wonder Woman 1984 Patty Jenkins doesn’t necessary say the law of attraction is stupid, but that it would be extremely dangerous if it was true. Because if choices would lose consequences like sacrifice, work and failure, everybody would want to have everything all the time and it would create a society more unjust than this one. That theme has nothing to do with Wonder Woman or feminism in general, but it was kind of original.

One more think I really like (that a lot of people didn’t like) was the metamorphosis of Maxwell Lord into a young Donald Trump. DC’s Maxwell Lord has more to do with Hank Scorpio from The Simpsons than Pedro Pascal’s rendition, but I thought Pascal was so dead on with the hair and the silly gestures that it felt appropriately corny. It also gives a strong backdrop of the eighties financial triumphalism and the fetichizing of the Wall-Street bully.

What’s terrible, but ultimately matters

I don’t think anyone would debate that Wonder Woman is a feminist superhero. Her purpose is to empower young girls. She was created by William Moulton Marston (a man), but was ideated by his wife. She was meant to be a different model of badassery, which can be found in the first movie. Diana does things out of love for others. She is selfless, smart and doesn’t always resort to the means of getting shit done her male counterparts would.

That brilliant, nuanced feminism is nowhere to be found in Wonder Woman 1984. The only reason why Diana is involved with that convoluted-ass plot is that she wished for her dead lover from 66 years ago to be back. Really? A shining beacon of feminism moped around the globe for 66 years because OF A MAN? On top of that, Diana reiterates over and over in the movie that Steve is the only thing she ever wanted and that’s why she brought him back to life.

There’s also the problem of Barbara, who could’ve been a really nice antagonist. If Wonder Woman 1984 would’ve focused on deconstructing the idea of toxic rivalries between women, it would’ve served a purpose. But it barely grazes the surface. She’s a support character who keeps coming and going whenever it’s convenient for the plot and… get ready for this (spoiler, I guess), she has a literal cat fight with Diana at the end.

I’m not going to cast the first stone to Patty Jenkins here, though. These dueling plotlines reek of studio interference. Some coked up Warner Brothers’ executive twisted her arm into squeezing Chris Pine into the movie because audiences wanted to see them back together or some bullshit. He doesn’t do much, except walking around hand in hand with Diana and look like real life Gary, from Team America World Police. This is why we can’t have nice things.

So, it is good or what?

Gneh. Not really. Wonder Woman 1984 is so bloated and all over the place that you get the occasional fun themes (the law of attraction stuff) or the good old schlocky fun (Steve and Diana’s impromptu fighter jet trip), but it is marred with ill-fitting puzzle pieces. Did I mention the Ninja Warrior introduction? There’s a fifteen minutes scene where child Diana plays Ninja Warrior with adult Amazons in the beginning of the movie and it doesn’t have anything to do…

….with anything?

I will not spend time going over the storytelling issues of Wonder Woman 1984, which it does have many. Plenty of other reviewers have went over it already. But I do believe there’s a decent, coherent movie lost inside this bloated, three-headed mess. There are cool ideas being thrown around, but they bounce aimlessly and eventually fall flat. Wonder Woman 1984 is not good. It’s not terrible or insultingly bad, but it’s definitely not good.

It is what happens when good ideas are mined by soulless corporations.

5.5/10