It’s the most high profile of 2020 film releases to go the video-on-demand route, and set the precedent for WarnerMedia to move all their 2021 releases to a simultaneous theater and video-on-demand release on HBO Max. But will that be Wonder Woman 1984‘s legacy?
Please note there will be spoilers throughout this review.
If given the chance to have any wish you desired – – fame, fortune, even a do-over for 2020 – – would you take it? Even if you knew what price you would have to pay for it?
That is the premise of Wonder Woman 1984. Perfect for the “greed is good” era of big hair and bigger wealth, we meet Diana Prince again about 70 years after the events of the first film, working for the Smithsonian as an artifact curator with a side hustle as her superhero self – – and still mourning Steve. But when a mysterious stone (the Dreamstone) comes into the Smithsonian’s possession that can grant wishes, Diana – – along with colleague Barbara Minerva (Kristen Wiig) and oil businessman Maxwell Lord (Pedro Pascal) all want their hands on it. Diana wants her love Steve back, frumpy Barbara wants to be more like her polished work friend, and Maxwell . . . well, he just wants it all. But this stone is the geologic monkey’s paw: it grants the wishes, but each wish that comes with a price. Then the race against time begins, as she and Steve try to stop Maxwell Lord before his desire for all the wishes leads to the end of civilization.
It’s as comic book and Saturday morning cartoon of a film as one can get, almost straight out of the 1980s. Like all those good cartoons, you have to suspend a lot of disbelief, particularly around the idea that a culture only a few years away from Gordon Gekko on the big screen would unilaterally sacrifice that desire for “more, more, more” in pursuit of truth. The narrative, the characters, the setting, all of it captures that larger than life feeling of the comic books and TV shows of our childhood. And the 1980s touches, from big hair to parachute pants to the Orange Julius in the mall to that fear of mutually assured destruction, will make those that came of age in that time nostalgic for the era. (Notably missing, though? All those great power anthems of the 1980s.) Go into this film with that mindset and understanding, and you’ll find this enjoyable, if a bit long.
But those of us who remember those bright and bold cartoons with our sugary cereals are now older, wiser, and jaded. Like Maxwell Lord, we want more from our superhero films, because we see how great they can be. We saw the beauty and truth that came from the first Wonder Woman film . . . a beauty and truth that gets cast to the side in favor weak character development for its female leads and a plot that was padded to fit its almost 2 1/2 hour run time that still had a lot of unanswered questions.
Gal Gadot continues to shine as Wonder Woman, less the innocent ingenue whose love of ice cream could rival that of Joe Biden, more the older and wiser woman who’s lived through a lot of history. And while you love the joy she has when Steve (Chris Pine) returns in her life (in a Heaven Can Wait-esque twist that leads to a few problematic moments for the viewer later on), one has to ask: why did it take his return to bring all that happiness back to her? Why does it turn out to be Steve that provides the major reveal of the monkey’s paw to Diana, when all the clues were there in front of her, like the loss of her powers the longer reincarnated Steve exists? Until the third act, when she finally lets Steve go, nearly every decision Wonder Woman makes is in the context of Steve’s presence in her life. The girl power from that first film is virtually nonexistent. It’s the antithesis of the Wonder Woman we all fell in love with from the first film.
Continued belowAnd Kristen Wiig’s Barbara Minerva (Cheetah) deserved much better. During the first half of the film, she’s set up to fill the hole of the strong women Diana left behind in Themyscira, but there isn’t enough time spent on developing their friendship to make you mourn for it when Barbara does her turn towards the dark side. Kristen Wiig’s resume is all about broad, biting comedy, which she brought to this film in spades. But it was also a chance to show how vulnerability can mix with that comedy, and outside of a few moments in the first act, the script wasted that chance. The reveal as Cheetah comes near the end of the film, and the entire storyline lacks closure. It’s a wasted chance to show off one of Wonder Woman’s classic enemies from the film’s era.
How ironic, then, in this female led film, that the real stars turn out to be the men. Chris Pine moves from romantic lead into supporting player, and he handles the latter very well, knowing when to step back and let Diana be Diana, but also when to be the moral compass and the hero. But perhaps the true breakout star of Wonder Woman 1984 is Pedro Pascal’s Maxwell Lord. This heavily sanitized version of Donald Trump is the perfect buffoonish cartoon character. Imagine Oberyn Martell gone corporate, with a pinch of everyone’s favorite space dad in a helmet thrown in for good measure to allow for just a little bit of sympathy and, come the finale, redemption.
All these actors did well with the script they were given, which took too long to get to the “aha” moment (again, while skimping on that necessary character development) and dialed down on a lot of the raw, emotional action that everyone loved from the first film. Fight scenes, including the climatic one between Cheetah and Wonder Woman, had an air of being phoned in and worked into the script for the sake of having some action. Seeing the Lasso of Truth was fun, but also relied on too much. Laziness in continuity also shows in the script, such as the omission of the documented causes of the fall of other civilizations that had possession of the Dreamstone. Doing that homework wouldn’t have solved everything, but it certainly would have helped. (There’s also a section of the film set in Egypt that has led to backlash for leaning hard into stereotypes about Middle Eastern culture.)
As for that distribution decision? Well, it was certainly convenient to watch this from the comfort of my own home on Christmas night, with the ability to pause for snack/drink/bathroom breaks. But there were some buffering and latency issues (no doubt due to server traffic) and some scenes, such as the opening athletic competition in Themyscira, lost some of the epic tone when viewed on a small screen. It’s a fascinating experiment, but I think right now hard to read the tea leaves on what it means for the future of cinema.
In this dumpster fire of a year, we should take any form of escapism we can get. And Wonder Woman 1984 does have that in spades, with well done performances (in spite of the weak script) and just the right beats of nostalgia to warm your heart. Would I have wanted more? Absolutely. But as this film teaches us, we don’t always get what we wish for, and we can find joy with the truth we receive.
Wonder Woman 1984 is out in theaters now, as well as video on demand in the United States via HBO Max. The film will also be available on video-on-demand in the UK on January 13, 2021.
