Review: Wonder Woman 1984

After a long ago Themyscira-set prologue, we flash-forward to 1984 America, with Diana Prince (Gal Gadot), AKA Wonder Woman working at the Smithsonian as a cultural anthropologist where she and mousy, awkward gem specialist Barbara (Kristen Wiig) make fast friends. There’s a new supposed ‘dreamstone’ Barbara has been looking into, one that as the name suggests grants wishes. Diana wishes to be reunited with her WWI soldier love Steve (Chris Pine), Barbara wishes to be confident and powerful…just like Diana. Then there’s sleazy loser businessman Max Lord (Pedro Pascal) who has been snooping around the stone and wants it for nefarious purposes. You see, while Diana and Barbara assume the stone’s powers are fiction (why would a superhero not believe in a mystically powerful stone?), Max Lord knows differently…and benefits from its powers greatly. Wonder Woman’s gonna have her hands full here, which is unfortunate because while Max and Barbara become more powerful, she seems to become weaker.

 

I strongly disliked the first “Wonder Woman”, apparently an opinion I was alone in. It seemed to be championed as a real feminist superhero blockbuster. I saw a big-budget Roger Corman swords-and-tits film without the tits, and featuring a wooden plank in the lead. I dunno, opinions I guess. So when I tell you that this 2020 follow-up from Patty Jenkins (the first film) and her co-writers Geoff Johns (TV’s “The Flash”) and Dave Callaham (“Doom”, “The Expendables”) is an improvement, just remember you already likely disagree with me about the previous film, so my views on this one might not be terribly helpful to you. This sequel is still an ungainly mess, just a somewhat more tolerable one. Honestly, I’d rather watch “Red Sonja” or “Deathstalker”, and they’re not good movies, either.

 

It’s a very pretty film, but starting the film with a 10 minute flashback of the same swords-and-lamery (my term, I invented it) the first film offered up was not ingratiating the film to me. Meanwhile, Israeli-born actress Gal Gadot still seems a ludicrous piece of miscasting as ‘Diana Prince’. I think people praise her for what the character represents politically than Gadot’s wooden plank of a performance on its own merit. She’s got no presence or charisma and her line readings fall completely flat. Even once we move the action to the 1980s and away from Themyscira, I was having a hard time getting into this as the film’s depiction of 1984 seems entirely derived from “Back to the Future Part II” and the excellent “RoboCop”. It’s unconvincing, clichéd, surface-level nonsense. It’s a lot of fashion-related nonsense, and it’s a shame Jenkins goes the “Ocean’s 8” route there of obvious sexist cliché/stereotype.

 

However, one thing started to work for me: Tone. Unlike any other DCU film of the modern era (and most MCU films too, for that matter), the film adopted a fairly light-hearted tone that somewhat resembled the kind of comic book film I could appreciate/identify with. For me, the genre peaked with 1978’s “Superman” (though I’ve enjoyed others since, even some of the modern ones), so I was glad we were getting away from the wooden, stilted Amazon shit and stoic, pose-y Snyder-verse nonsense for a while (I loved “Man of Steel” and “Watchmen” was interesting, but little else of that ilk). This one’s a little closer to “The Rocketeer” than “Justice League”, and that’s slightly more in my direction. Just look at the cool moment where Wonder Woman lassos a frigging missile mid-flight. It’s ridiculous, and exactly the kind of thing comic book movies should include. Speaking of “Superman”, we get an excellent Hans Zimmer (“The Dark Knight”, “Inception”, “Blade Runner 2049”) score that is in the very best John Williams (“Star Wars”, “Superman”) tradition. Meanwhile, the whole film seems a lot brighter and more vibrant, including Wonder Woman’s red, blue, and yellow costume. That’s more like it. I also enjoyed the slimy, sleazy, disingenuous schmuck turn by Pedro Pascal, who steals the majority of the film. He’s hilarious as a sleazy loser version of Lex Luthor turned “Wishmaster”, one of the better comic book villains of late. It’s a shame then that the film is so unwieldy and slow, taking forever to put the plot into motion, and thoroughly wasting the film’s other villain, whom you can see coming a mile away. That said, at least the plot here is somewhat interesting, I just think it could’ve easily been set up in 30 minutes instead of 60. It also results in a staggering lack of action in the talky first half. The entire film is far too long, the material really doesn’t lend itself to sprawling, near epic-length.

 

Although she brings out the best moments in Gal Gadot in sharing some decent chemistry, I was not very impressed by Kristen Wiig here. Admittedly I’m not a fan, and as always she’s completely unsubtle, distractingly mannered, and unfunny. 2 minutes of her typically terrible awkward-for-comedic-effect schtick and I was rolling my eyes so hard I was worried they’d never correct themselves. Wiig was fine in “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” but I find her insufferable otherwise and here she’s heavy-handed and out of her depth for the most part. With Pascal’s character, he’s written as an over-the-top schmuck, Wiig’s character isn’t meant to be like that. She’s just an unsubtle comedienne and uneven actress. Her character also gets the fuzzy end of the lollipop, it’s a hoary cliché that would border on homophobia except that the screenwriters forget about her character for so long that there’s only the barest hint of attraction between her character and the title character. Even then the faint whiff of ‘jealous lesbian goes psycho when rejected’ is there, much as the screenwriters have tried to semi-disguise it as envy rather than romantic jealousy. So I think the script deserves as much blame as Wiig, it’s too overstuffed and underdone simultaneously. I didn’t like Chris Pine at all in the previous film, but he’s markedly improved here. He’s likeable and plays the boring fish-out-of-water stuff for more than it’s worth.

 

Slow, bloated and flawed…but this is a slight step in the right direction for a change. An interesting if unwieldy plot and lighter tone really helps make this one at least tolerable, if still the furthest thing from a good film. Still, I was shocked at how different this one is in tone and did enjoy parts of it, especially whenever Pedro Pascal was around. At least it doesn’t disappear up its own arse like the other DCU films.

 

Rating: C