OnScreen Review: "Wonder Woman 1984"
Ken Jones, Chief Film Critic
Patty Jenkins’ Wonder Woman was a genuine hit in 2017, a superhero movie that looked at the genre with fresh eyes and offered a ray of hope for fans of the overly serious and dour DC Extended Universe (DCEU). Shazam and Aquaman followed in the footsteps of Jenkins and company with enjoyable entries as well, even while the overall fate of the DCEU remains in limbo. Despite that uncertainty, Wonder Woman 1984 continues the story of Diana Prince. Unfortunately, it falls quite short of the expectations set by the first movie.
As laid out by the title, the film is set in 1984, and the film is intent on making sure the audience knows it is 1984, really hammering home the questionable fashion choices of the era. Parachute pants and bad hair aside, the film really digs into the 80s ethos of excess and greed that has come to define that era of consumerism. Diana (Gal Gadot) is living in Washington D.C. and fighting crime on the down low; the film opens with her thwarting jewelry robbers in a mall. When she is not fighting crime, she is working at the Smithsonian. Also working at the Smithsonian is the social awkward Barbara Minerva (Kristen Wiig). The heist at the mall turns up a mysterious stone that Barbara and Diane both take a professional interest in, but it also attracts the attention of Maxwell Lord (Pedro Pascal), a businessman running a Ponzi scheme known as Black Gold Cooperative. He has been searching for this stone, this mystical Dreamstone, which grants wishes to whoever possesses it, but does so at a cost.
The Dreamstone is also the convenient plot device that the movie uses to bring back Steve Trevor (Chris Pine), the lost love of Diana from the first movie. The movie must twist itself into some ethically questionable knots to bring him back; Gadot and Pine’s chemistry in the first movie was too good to not rekindle it for the sequel, but there could have been ways that were less problematic. Interestingly, where Diana was the fish out of water in the first movie, Steve is this time, as a man from the 1910s finding himself trust into a world 70 years later and Diana is the one explaining things to him this time around.
Of course, Gal Gadot continues to be a compelling lead that elevates the material. Gadot as Wonder Woman is a perfect pairing of actor and role. She may be entering the Charlize Theron/Emily Blunt conversation where she is just as believable in action roles as she is in “normal” roles. You buy her emotional struggles with the choices she must make. And they still position the character as one that is intended to inspire and to also serve as an alternative to the empty-headed brawn that passes in generic action movies and even other superheroes.
Wiig and Pascal are curious casting choices as the two eventual villains of the movie. Barbara is nerdy and socially awkward and wishes she could be like Diana when she meets her. Unbeknownst to her, she does not realize what her wish truly entails, and so begins her change from caterpillar to butterfly until she eventually becomes Cheetah, one of the more popular villains in the Wonder Woman rogues gallery. Though I am not as familiar with Wonder Woman’s main villains, I suspect that some fans may be disappointed, as the Cheetah persona is given less service than Barbara herself by the movie. It is a quality role for Wiig and one she does well in, getting a chance to perform in what is, to date, an atypical role her. It is easy to see this a potential launching point for her into more varied roles going forward.
Pascal is a good actor who has gained a lot of fans after his work in Games of Thrones and now The Mandalorian. Maxwell Lord is a very different character than anything I have seen him play to this point. He has normally played reserved and stoic characters whereas there is a hint of manic desperation in his Maxwell Lord. He is a salesman trying to keep all the plates spinning while trying not to drop any of the juggling balls. Unfortunately, why he is angling for the Dreamstone and then why he does what he does is not effectively explained. As a character with influences like Donald Trump and Gordon Gekko, his driving goal just seems to be “more” but there is no final goal for that “more.” There is no ultimate goal he is striving toward, or at least what is ultimately given at the end does not feel earned.
In many ways, Maxwell Lord and the disease of more is symbolic of what ultimately holds this movie back. It suffers from sequel-itis, when a sequel of a successful movie thinks the answer to everything is, simply, more. In that way, 1984 is a fitting period for the movie. In true 80s fashion, the ending of the movie can also be viewed as following in the footsteps of several 80s movies that attempted to serve the dual purpose of entertaining audiences while also serving as PSAs to varying degrees of success, like Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, Rocky IV, 2010: The Year We Make Contact, and even Superman IV: The Quest for Peace.
Surprisingly, much of the action falls flat in execution. The early jewelry heist scene at the mall looked wooden and over the top. The eventual fight between Wonder Woman and Cheetah is shrouded in darkness and shadows and the visuals are muddled while the camera, and the characters, swirl around. The one exception is a thrilling chase sequence on a stretch of road through a desert involving several vehicles.
Wonder Woman 1984 is a sequel that was eagerly anticipated. It is more of a mixed bag than the roaring success of its predecessor. While the performances from the returning Gadot, Pine and newcomers Wiig and Pascal are praiseworthy, the story itself is not as captivating as the first, lacking the clarity that the previous movie had. There is still promise in the character and there will most certainly be a third entry. Perhaps, no longer as beholden to the original, the next entry can attain greater heights.
Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
(Wonder Woman 1984 is in theaters and streaming on HBO Max until 1/24/21)