‘WONDER Woman 1984’ has an optimistic and heartfelt worldview that is nevertheless obscured by excessive bombast.
The movie is two-and-a-half hours long, which is just way too much, and the themes and plot could have been handled in a tighter runtime. After all, the movie’s message amounts to “be careful what you wish for”.
Set between the World War One exploits in her origin film and the present day iteration of the character in Zack Snyder’s divisive ‘Justice League’, ‘WW84’ finds Diana Prince (Gal Gadot, doing solid work) laying low by working at a Washington DC museum while fighting crime on the side.
The movie very heavily leans into its time period, perhaps excessively so, with an extra bright colour palette and seemingly every character dressed up in absurd 1980s fashion. Every guy in the background has a bushy moustache and every woman has a blow out.
The era and the upbeat tone of the movie brings up comparisons to the Christopher Reeve Superman movies, which is nice given the cynical times we’re living in, but good intentions are not enough to make a good movie.
There are numerous references to Cold War and Middle East tensions, but it amounts to little more than window dressing to heighten the stakes.
The plot involves a blowhard television personality whose wealth is built on a house of lies (I wonder who was the inspiration here?), played by Pedro Pascal, who has his eye on a magical stone that can grant wishes.
Pascal, the Mandalorian himself, gets to have a lot of fun playing a duplicitous egomaniac.
Also in the cast is Kristen Wiig, playing a role very reminiscent of Michelle Pfeiffer’s Catwoman in 1992’s ‘Batman Returns’ - a mousy, put upon woman who is transformed into a femme fatale. Wiig does a good job of leaning into the absurdity of the character.
Chris Pine returns as Steve Trevor through a magical explanation that makes sense given the plot of the movie. Here Pine and Gadot get to reverse their dynamic from the first movie, where she was the fish out of water. Now he’s the one excited about the modern world.
The action for the most part is done really well, showcasing Wonder Woman’s unique set of powers and abilities. However, WW84 suffers the pitfall of too many superhero movies with a finale in the dark that depends on too much computer generated effects.
Superhero movies usually exist on a spectrum ranging from the self serious to the outright absurd. WW84 generally tends toward the latter, which in itself isn’t a bad thing, because it leavens that with a nice dose of sincerity.
Unfortunately, what could otherwise be a simple enough meditation on wish fulfilment becomes an overlong exercise in fulfilling blockbuster expectations. – The Vibes, December 27, 2020
