'Wonder Woman 1984' Is Fun But Falls Short Of First Installment
Starring Gal Gadot, Chris Pine, Kristen Wiig, Pedro Pascal, Robin Wright, Connie Nielson
PG-13
Action, Adventure
Run time: 2 hr, 31 min
Directed and written by Patty Jenkins
On HBO Max and theaters December 25, 2020
It is no secret at all that I really loved the first Wonder Woman movie in this new DC universe. I thought it was - and still may be - the best DC comic book movie. Note: I always think of the Dark Knight trilogy more as Nolan movies than DC universe movies. Diana is everything we love about Captain America but with a bit more of a fascinating background. And with girl power. Who doesn’t love that? Also, it’s Gal Gadot and Chris Pine, so at the very least, you get to watch two very attractive people be very charming. However, I feel like that’s the only real positive I got from this sequel.
Somehow, Wonder Woman 1984 has both too little plot and too much plot. While the entire story comes from one origin - the discovery of something that grants wishes but has some weird caveat, a la the monkey’s paw - it feels like there are multiple threads that are picked up and not fleshed out. Kristen Wiig’s character, Barbara, works with Diana at a museum, and one day she is wooed by possible-CEO-of-failure Maxwell Lord (Pedro Pascal) and then tricked into giving up this magic wish-granting-thing, but not before she and Diana have made what they thought were harmless wishes. And then, as with most tales involving a genie or wishes, things go horribly and are never like you would hope. And some punk always has to go and do a variation of wishing for more wishes, which really always ruins things even more.
Somehow, this incredible, self-possessed female demi-god of a superhero is diminished to one thing: a woman who lost the love of her life. We barely get to see Diana’s personality outside of her longing for Steve Trevor (Pine). She mumble-mentions something about the gods, and how some of them are super dangerous and then it’s just never mentioned again. Which is insane if you think about the fact that one of said gods was literally the big bad villain in the previous film in this saga. We get all of 28 minutes showing us that Kristen Wiig being a dowdy nerd because she has frumpy clothes and glasses, but then she wishes to be crazysexycool and now she can walk in heels and guys speak to her!
Maxwell Lord’s character isn’t that much better. He seems to just be a megalomaniac who wants power, more power and also power. And maybe some money and influence. But, there’s a twist! He has a child, who is somehow always has his dad’s weekends at the most inopportune times (and a thing that is literally never mentioned? The fact that this child, we can assume, has a mother somewhere). But he also may suck as a dad. Honestly, I had such high hopes for this movie. It was one of the first superhero or blockbusters I’d seen in a long time, and I was so excited. Somehow, the charm and talent of Chris Pine isn’t enough for me to want to watch this movie again. And, to avoid the risk of putting in roughly 8-14 more questions I have about the characters and plots in this film, I’m just going to say, well, at least I got to see a new movie.