Wonder Woman 84'

Wonder Womaaaaaaaan

I really don't want to be doing this.  I loved about three-fourths of the first movie. I was looking forward to this movie. Even after all the delays due to COVID or Warner Brothers itself. What I got was a movie that I actively disliked. In the following paragraphs, I will go into more detail. I will warn you, there are going to be massive spoilers. I can't talk about what I didn't like without giving some explicit examples.

Let me start off by talking about the things I did actually like about this movie. The first ten minutes with young Diana is pretty great. We get to see how beautiful and picturesque Themyscira is. Seriously, why can't we spend more time here? These have the best shots of the movie each time. Lil' Diana is pretty precocious. I like that they are trying to set up the themes that will be essential to Diana's journey.

As with each time she steps into the role, I still really like Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman. I feel like you can tell this movie means a lot to her and she absolutely gives it her all. She absolutely carries this movie and I wish she was in every scene. She instills so much empathy and compassion into the role. I hope she is considered everyone's version of Wonder Woman for years to come. It was also nice to see Chris Pine back. He and Gadot have an undeniable chemistry.

I'm afraid that these are all the good things I will have. Now let's get to the bad. Some of this will feel nitpicky, so I will preface it with the fact that this is only my opinion.

So where to begin? Let's start with the acting. Pedro Pascal is a great actor. He was good in Game of Thrones, he's good in the Mandalorian. So what happened here?! He is hamming it up all over the place and I have to wonder what direction he was given. He is way over the top. At some points you question if he is just a bad actor or if his character is acting badly in a poor way to fool people. The worst part is you will get a lot of him. We'll get into his character arc later in the review. 

I will be plain. I don't like Kristen Wiig. This movie does not change my opinion of her. At the beginning, she acts like any number of her neurotic characters from SNL. When she makes her villain turn, she is more tolerable. The problem is, she goes full comic book villain instead of reining it in. This was probably the direction she was given. 

All the extras in this movie ranged from bad to terrible. I don't know what was going on, but the scene in the mall at the beginning is especially egregious. It is not exclusive to this scene, but it is the one that stands out the most and started my turn against this movie.

The action is not as good this time around. I've had more than enough of slo-mo shots in movies and this movie uses them excessively. All the action scenes are just too much. They did a good job of showing Diana's strength in the first movie without going overboard. Here things are ramped up to 11 in a bad way. While we are talking about action, let me take a brief aside and say I have never hated an accessory more than I do Diana's lasso. In this movie, it is the personification of a deus ex machina. Whatever is needed to resolve a scene, that lasso is there. It is catching bullets. It is catching rocket propelled grenades and letting Diana ride it. It turns her into Spider-Man as she swings on to things. She is literally swinging on lightning. It is just too much. Let me add that in addition to making people tell the truth, now all of a sudden, it can make you SEE the truth. It is awfully convenient in this movie. I hated it so much. The CG to show it's use was always bad. It was almost as if they were told that we can't have Wonder Woman punch people, so just use her rope. It is such a weird choice.

Let's touch on a few elements within the story. We see why Steve Trevor is back and although it works in the context of this movie, I was not a fan. I get Diana missed him and she wanted him back, but let's not forget she knew him literally for weeks and then he was dead for about forty years. I'm not insensitive, it just feels weird in these movies how much she loved him in such a short time. Here and in the comics, I never liked the relationship with Steve anyways. I feel like it weakens, Diana. I get that they are trying to humanize her, but she is more than human. It is okay to lean into that. I don't need Diana to be like us. She is supposed to be something to aspire to. To show I'm an equal opportunist, I don't like the Lois/Superman relationship either for these same reasons. For a moment, we get teased with a relationship between her and Barbara and I would have been okay with that because it would have shown that has fully moved on. Unfortunately, that was just a swerve. Let's be honest, she grew up on an island full of women. It wouldn't exactly be a stretch that she would fall in love with another woman. I almost feel like these movies go out of their way to show that Diana is exclusively into dudes. 

Maxwell Lord. Barbara Minerva. This movie falls into the trap of many comic book movies. Trying to juggle multiple villains and using the thinnest reasons to do so. Their interactions in the beginning of the movie are truly cringeworthy. I would have been okay if they had just focused on Barbara here. I think her story and arc is more compelling. I get that it is a trope that the person that is constantly ignored turns to crime when given the chance. However, I think we could have spent more time with her and the movie would have been better for it. The way Maxwell Lord is portrayed here is similar to the way that Lex Luthor is in the Christopher Reeves Superman movies. You do not buy them as believable foils to our heroes. Lord's sole motivation is so to not appear like a failure to his son. Maybe you can start by listening to the advisors around you instead of being bullheaded. Instead of growing, he jumps at the first opportunity to become a literal wishing well so he can take the easy road to success. Like I mentioned before, Pascal's portrayal of him is way over the top. He was completely distracting in a bad way. At the end of the movie, he is left to go scot-free.

I want to go to one more point in the plot and this is just my personal preference. I hate that there are zero consequences. Let's not forget that humanity chose to make selfish wishes that ruined the planet. Then one wish undoes all of it and then we are back to where we started. Like the first movie, I don't like that magic was the reason that people were terrible. Some people just are. That fact would make Diana's struggle to always look for the good in humanity to be a much bigger crisis. She is a beacon of hope and I would have liked for her to have some doubt because people still messed up. One wish can't undo all that. I want to see her have that internal conflict. This movie had a real opportunity to address that and it really doesn't. 

The special effects are not good. I don't know what it is with the teams that Warner Brothers use, but they are not great. I never have this problem with any of the Marvel Movies and I mean that with the smaller ones like Ant-Man. Cheetah looks terrible and her fight with Wonder Woman at the end is a mess, visually. I mentioned above that the lasso looks bad at times. Whatever they do to make Wonder Woman run always feels weird, like's floating over the ground and not actually running on it.

This movie tries to lean into an 80's aesthetic. The costumes and the clothes do that. If you want to make the argument that the cartoonishness of the plot also reflect that, I can't buy that. There is a way to do a movie that feels like it is in the style of an 80's and then there is this movie, which fails at that. 

At roughly two and a half hours, this movie is way too long and it certainly felt like it. It is a slog to get through.

After the last movie, I really had high hopes for this one and it let me down. Do I want to see another Wonder Woman movie from this team? Absolutely. We also know that we are going to get it. We get a cameo at the end from Lynda Carter that gives me hope. I just hope they get it together for the next one.