Some time has passed since we had a proper film release of a comic book/superhero film and we have one to bookend 2020 (the year where ideology and themes seem to conflict with each other both figuratively and literally) and it is DC Films’ latest entry in their comic book films called Wonder Woman 84, written/produced/directed by Patty Jenkins and written with Geoff Johns and Dave Callaham (DOOM-2005, The Expendables Trilogy). This is an important detail to mention but this film actually has a new team of filmmakers behind the scenes and Jenkins having more creative control over the film than with the first one. It is to provide some context to the shift in a lighter campy tone, setting it in the 80’s, and relying more on romance and humor to tell this next chapter of the iconic hero everyone loved from the previous outing. Does the film succeed where it matters in pleasing fans of the character and cinematically, or does it fumble about with conflicting ideas and visions that undermine the film they might have tried to make? Let’s sulk out of the shadows and see if our dreams of a good sequel come true with the plot for this adventure.
We flashback to Themyscira, to a young Diana Prince (Lilly Aspell) who is competing with her fellow warriors in a traditional athletic competition hosted by her mother and Queen Hippolyta (Connie Nielsen). Diana is doing well during the competition but makes a mistake that forces her to lose her lead, but inspires her to cheat her way to victory through a shortcut. Her mentor/trainer Antiope (Robin Wright) stops and prevents her from winning, as Hippolyta conveys in Diana the ideals of Truth through truly achieving those moments honestly and fairly as the statue of the Valkyrie guardswomen shines on the true winners of the contest. This serves as a starting point for what she conflicts with throughout the film, as we jump from her childhood years to 1984 in Washington DC.
The city seems to be booming, with kids enjoying arcade games (tidbit, Rampage & Operation Wolf weren’t around during that year at all), aerobic fitness all the rage for women and men, and it seems to be filled with a ton of slapstick criminal shenanigans until Wonder Woman (Gal Godot) comes onto the scene to save mainly women throughout her whole time patrolling from the cartoonishly villainous men of all walks of life (despite letting a bunch of girls get away with shoplifting from some poor male business owner). During this escapade, one of these criminal activities are looking to rob a black-market antiquity shop that contains a mysterious stone within the inventory (and she happens to be a female shopkeeper too). Wonder Woman busts it up at a shopping mall (in Looney Toons fashion) and goes back into hiding, longing for her deceased lover and living among humanity as she works at the Smithsonian Museum. Here, Diana comes across a frumpy, dorky Barbara Minerva (Kristen Wiig) being ignored by her colleagues and happy to be friends with Diana over a lunch and certain artifact that was sent to her after the criminal bust of that shop.
They unknowingly discover that the Dreamstone is supposed to
grant one’s deepest wish (unaware of the hidden catch behind it) and make it
come true as Diana wishes for her lover to return to her, while Minerva is
saved by Diana from being sexually assaulted by a drunk man. This inspires her to play into the stone, to
wish to be like Diana as strong and confident as her friend. What they don’t know is that a wish comes
with a price, as Maxwell Lord (Pedro Pascal) a slick talking yet failing
business man learns, looking for this very item to turn his luck around. At one event in the museum (after Diana gets
hit up by many men to just reject them), she comes across a random stranger who
is a Handsome Man (Kristoffer Polaha, that’s literally his character name) that
ends up inhabiting the soul of Steve Trevor (Chris Pine) with Lord wishing to
become the main source of the stone’s power.
Despite a night of blissful union (doing the deed with another
guy’s body), Diana puts it together that this magic could only be possible through
the Dreamstone and finds out through Barbara that it was meant to be shipped to
Maxwell Lord. This prompts Diana to find
Lord with Handsome Man possessed by Trevor to stop him from abusing the powers
of the stone before the whole world suffers the consequences of such desires,
compliments of a mischievous god’s creation that has wiped out civilizations
for centuries.
So, if that felt longwinded, the film itself doesn’t do much better with its structure and pacing being laboriously bloated and overlong by literally 30-60 minutes of dull and uninteresting character development that regresses many of Diana’s growth as a character from the first film and undermines where she ends up in the other films set in present time (Batman V. Superman & Justice League) within its 2½ hour runtime. The plot is a weird and oddly cliché hybrid of films like The Wishmaster (how the stone works), Batman Forever (the villain’s plot), Bruce Almighty (the entire third act), and Superman 3 (the excessive campy comedic elements and tonal whiplash from goofy to darkly serious). That should be a good summation of how unoriginal or even a complete mess this film is narratively, as it feels half-baked in conception and comes across unwittingly as a pointless sequel that serves only to cash in on the success of the original film’s success financially. As there is no holding back on the plot, let’s get into the nit and gritty of it with the additional disclaimer of spoiler alerts out of the way finally.
The only good bits within the plot were the romance subplot with Steve and Diana, as Godot and Pine still share wonderful chemistry that was established quite well in the original film. Their scenes provided some of the genuine levity and emotional enjoyment of the characters we grew to like from the previous adventure, but it means very little to the main plot other than a repeat of the same sacrifice that salvaged the last film’s finale to some degree. Also, the opening act was a good way to re-introduce us to the character and world of the Amazonians, despite not mattering much in the main plot other than introduce her armor outfit for the climax and the theme of truth that is weakly tied to the finale. Not much to provide in what was good about it, as it is a complete mess of a narrative with the answer to that problem being that we have 3 writers, each with their own creative ideas and visions clashing it out on the pages and into the big screen.
Before we get further, the elephant needs to be addressed
and that is the invert/overt sexist tone towards men as well as perpetuating
some pretty boring archetypes with superficial flaws. Throughout the film, the criminals end up
being perverted or dim witted men that are portrayed comically as one minded
and goofy. Steve Trevor definitely isn’t
portrayed like this for the most part, other than the fish out of water scenes
of him interacting with 1980’s culture and world. However, the criminals and assholes are
mostly males and that becomes distracting as well as unbearable, to pander desperately towards female dominance in a very thickheaded way. It is
more apparent in the beginning and middle acts of the film with the finale
going in a completely different direction with its own creative issue
altogether. Otherwise, it had to be
mentioned and it is both insulting and cringy to watch, as it seems to be a
running theme with the latest DC films (with Birds Of Prey being the
other one that relies on this asinine writing style to generate conflict
disingenuously). In regards to the
archetype critique, Diana is supposed be this strong independent hero but this
film makes it clear she can’t move on from her one true love and it feels
incredulous for her to not remember what she learned from the previous film
about loss and moving forward, as well as portraying intelligent people as
unattractive dorks turned extremely villainous surprisingly from many DC Films
(Batman Forever comes to mind with Barbara’s transformation into a
villain). It doesn’t help that argument
to tie her character arc to a romantic tryst with a male character (regarding
that character plotline), which further proves that this story wasn’t well
thought out and haphazardly conceived to undermine and retcon the other
appearances of her character that take place beyond this setting.
Moving onward, the story slogs for about 50 minutes after the opening with nothing but character development and/or exposition that is used for comedy or goes nowhere until she dons the suit again. This finally leads to a big action beat in Cairo, Egypt (where our heroes find the villain by coincidence through passing them by riding into town…ugh) that uses not only dodgy, fake looking effects throughout the action piece, but to convey Diana losing her power as a consequence of her wish (with a really terrible continuity error around her Lasso just reappearing in her holster after losing it saving the kids). This also creates a problem of how her powers fluctuate to the plot’s needs (if she is losing her power from a wish, then how can she turn a whole jet invisible, despite losing it with every day spent with Trevor?). It actually rushes onward to its cluttered and ultimately corny finale with some decent action beats at the White House, an anticlimactic showdown with a transformed Barbara into Cheetah, and a conveniently contrived finale, along with its resolution that is on par with how ridiculous the original Superman (1978) film was with its incredulous reset ending as well. Yikes, to just write it out makes it clear how much of a mess and completely unimaginative the film is as a whole. It is this weird love letter for Richard Donner’s iconic yet dated take on Superhero films, while just reusing elements of what made the first film work but less inspired and doesn’t land as well as it did before. Along with the sketchy reusing of plot points and character elements from other films (both DC related and of the films it cribs off of), there really isn’t anything unique about this entry and clearly comes across as half-baked along with being made up on the go, with no sense of rhyme or reason with character or story logic, as to how this entry moves the character forward.
Let’s get into the performances now, starting with the
self-titled hero herself, Wonder Woman/Diana Prince played by Gal Godot. She is reliably good in the character as
usual but does struggle with the big emotional beats of the story, despite
having wonderful chemistry with her co-star Pine. She still puts her stamp on the character and
makes her adaptation iconic, despite going through the motions with the writing
of her character arc. There is really
not much inherently wrong with her performance as it is a marked improvement
over the first film for sure, but the messy writing on hand really fails to
provide much for her to do or develop other than defeating the bad guys and
saving the world. So, perfectly fine
effort that is only let down by the script, which will become a running theme
with many of the performances in this film.
Through the power of magic and convenient writing, Chris Pine is back as Steve Trevor in the body of Handsome Man and he is still a great character that is ultimately wasted as a sacrificial lamb for the sake of Diana’s character arc. It doesn’t help that he is only brought back to rehash the fish out of the water plotline in a less funny and charming matter as well as only there to be a cheerleading romance for Diana overall (right down to a home run style sleepover). It is also convenient that he knows how to fly a jumbo jet plane, despite only operating WWI style aircrafts (Continuity is very much a messy fare here). Like before, nothing truly terrible with Pine’s performance but the script gives his character barely anything meaningful to do than just be character motivation for Diana and that just feels like a waste of a character for everyone that enjoyed watching him being an integral part of the previous film’s narrative.
We finally get to the villains of this adventure, starting
with the over-the-top bonkers performance from Pedro Pascal as Maxwell Lord
dialed up to 11 in goofiness. His
character is essentially the generic sleazy businessman with parenting/daddy
issues like every villain in DC films (writers, what is up with the use of this
cliché archetype?). Pascal dials it way
up to 11 and just hams it up, especially when he acts maniacally from the start
to finish with his character arc. It
doesn’t help that his character is written to inhibit those 80’s villain
stereotypes but is literally another variant of Lex Luthor but from the Richard
Donner/Lester film entries of Superman.
That is just another dig at the unimaginative screenplay at work
here. Also, yet another established
comic book character that is barely developed beyond just the name and
superficial backstory that fails to take advantage of the wealth of history
that the character has been a part of, for decades that could have made the
character more than a cheap 80’s knockoff of sleazy, greedy businessman
stereotype that we still can’t seem to move on from, with creative
writing. Pascal is enjoyably bad in his
performance overall and you can tell is having some fun with it, even if that
fun didn’t translate to the viewer watching it.
At least that villain performance was memorably bad, better than a mediocre effort for Kristen Wiig as a temporary ally and eventual bad guy heavy against Wonder Woman. She actually does an ok job with the character and isn’t as awkwardly bad or off putting as her other performances beforehand (as Wiig has had good performances under her belt in other indie efforts mainly). However, she turns into a CGI mess by the end and literally becomes nothing more than an afterthought heavy for Wonder Woman to smack around for 5 minutes with the ridiculous armor costume shoved into this conflict for no reason but, toys! Wiig does alright with the role, despite how cliché and overplayed it is with her origin story resembling that of villains from Batman Returns or Batman Forever and how fakey and weightless she becomes as a literal villain heavy that matters little to the plot at hand. Those were the main cast in a nutshell and they were fine for the most part, but are ultimately letdown by the questionably flawed script and very ropey direction at play here.
Let’s finally get into the inner workings of filmmaking, the technical aspects starting with the cinematography and editing. The cinematography was handled by Matthew Jensen, returning from working with Jenkins on the first Wonder Woman. He has definitely changed the look of the film drastically from the dreary, grey tones of The Great War to the somewhat vibrant, colorful look of the 80’s when they showcase it. The film looks reliably solid and he captures the change in tone and look for the setting, showing how versatile he is with capturing a look in a film (as evident in his previous work, Filth comes to mind). The same can not be said for the editing, done by Richard Pearson to clock in at around 2 hours and 31 minutes (estimated 7-10 minutes of that being credits). The pacing of the film is glacier freeze slow, as it takes its sweet time for dull character development and horribly done humor that ultimately bogs the film down, made worse with the teleporting characters from one location to the next, with no establishing shots used to convey how the characters get to one location setting to another. This is also bad in continuity of scenes and action, the most egregious being Diana loses the lasso upon saving the kids, a good way from there but as soon as she is picked up by Steve, she regains her frigging lasso magically out of thin air. That other tidbits being green screen present in Barbara’s glasses, mismatched green screen on Wonder Woman’s return after 50 minutes being absent, and the lack of lighting clarity to hide the terribly fakey Cheetah’s movement in their showdown. This amounts to a ton of problems with editing that bogs the film down tremendously and negatively affects the pacing to its detriment.
Next up, the VFX effects and action set pieces for the film
that are shockingly only a handful of them to break up the romantic fantasy
drama as well as the surprising amount of ineptitude on display with the use of
effects. It tends to be a mixed bag all
around with the VFX with an overuse of green screen and CGI overload, some
really ropey ones in the later sections that feel weightless and very fakey
(hence why the whole finale with Cheetah is lit in the dark and infamously,
Wonder Woman rolling at the end of the Cairo section with clear as day kid
dolls!), and feels like multiple effect houses worked on this with varying
degrees of experience. The action set
pieces are also just bland, dull, and lack any sense of impact or excitement to
them outside of the Cairo piece and the Tournament sequence. There is a clear effort to sanitize the film
of obvious violent actions from the hero and villains (with the exception of
the brutal assault of the drunk man from a darker transformed Barbara) and the
bits that does involve punch ups are only for a few minutes. Overall, disappointingly subpar all around
and doesn’t even have decent action set pieces to break up the monotony of the
messy plot on display.
This brings up to art direction and costume design as it also exhibits a problem of capturing the look of the time period, as well as even featuring elements that weren’t even around that year. For the most part, you have the superficial looks of the hairdos and flashy clothes brimming with color but you mostly have people dressed normally like they could still exist in this time period too. The most blatant example of literal historical inaccuracy is the arcades games of Rampage & Operation Thunderbolt were not released until 1986 & 1987 respectively on top of the lack of usual pop cultural iconography that was very much of that time period (Michael Jackson and Miami Vice, as examples). What really exacerbates the problem of visual identity in this film and time period is how much of it takes place in labs, apartments, and offices that could exist in present day today. Ultimately, the art direction along with costume design and the time period setting seem to be nothing more than surface dressing at best and lazy implementation of cultural aspects of 1984 at worst.
Lastly, the sound design and score of the film also exhibits that same, low energy effort other than the soundscape of the film coming through powerfully on surround system setups but the same can’t be said for the score. The film projects a Dolby ATMOS 7.1 surround format and comes through strong with everything hitting hard and fast from the score to the action that does take place on screen. So naturally, this is a very good workout of a sound system if available, despite feeling like overkill for a film that harkens more towards romantic comedy/fantasy adventure than an action driven, exciting superhero film (which this isn’t at all). Where the film really drops the ball is the somewhat disappointing and shockingly low effort of Han Zimmer’s score and as well as the lack of licensed period piece music from 1984 for the film. Why there is no songs used from that time period is baffling and clearly adds further to how removed it feels in representing that time period visually and audio wise. As for the score, there are times when Zimmer adds more upbeat and heroic flourishes to his theme for Wonder Woman, which standout as quality work. However, when the music for some reason transforms into Temp Track (placeholder songs used to emphasis the emotions of a scene) for a pivotal scene, that can really take you out of the moment and just remind you of a better film (in this case, John Murphy’s Adagio In D Minor from Sunshine). This is further made worse with the reusing of another piece of his work “A Beautiful Lie – Bruce’s Theme” from Batman V. Superman in the climax and feeling so out of place, it invokes a bit of an emotional dissonance for its climatic moment, in other words it falls flat and deflates the conflict at the worst possible time. This seems like a good cap off of what has become very obvious by the end of this journey, with the powerfully crafted sound design, coupled with a forgettable, weak score/soundtrack.
This has taken long to write up as it has become painfully
obvious of the overall quality of this film, after 2 weeks of release. Wonder Woman 1984 is a shockingly
inept and messy sequel to an enjoyable if flawed first entry that really
established the character into today’s pop culture mindset and opened the door
for a new hero to take the spotlight from DC comics in cinematic form. Well, this film not only set the genre back
by decades with the creative intent and purpose coming straight out of the glory
years of Richard Lester’s campy takes on Superman or even the numerous junk
that came from the 90’s, but it has somehow shaped its entire efforts on an
inconsequential, dull story overall.
That the plot is an amalgamation of everything that was of terrible
quality with comic book films of the 90’s specifically, filled with filmmakers
that didn’t understand or could make the character and his/her world work
cinematically ends up careening back into present day film workflow, ironically
enough. Despite the few enjoyably
competent to funny bad performances on center stage here, they are at the mercy
of a script that was clearly written by the director and two writers with
questionable track records that have no sense of understanding for the
character, in contrast to the first film’s writing team that had at least one
writer (Allan Heinberg) who had written at least 1-2 Wonder Woman books and
worked extensively on Justice League stories.
The takeaway from all of this, is the script literally sunk the film’s
chances of being a worthy follow up and it was made even worse with the
shocking creative decisions made in the filmmaking process as well.
Score:
DC Films/WB’s Wonder Woman 1984 is a major misfire overall and a completely dull mess of a sequel that somehow manages to feel like both a throwback and outdated all at once with the questionably handled direction on display making the questionably awful script into a reality. This harkens back to the good old days of comic book films being made by creatives that had no understanding or creative inspiration to make these characters not only come to life but adapt the many stories available to them. Instead, the writing team literally reworked a reheated, outdated leftover of the Richard Donner/Richard Lester era of comic book films and done so ineptly to make it feel pointless as a sequel and continuation of the hero everyone fell in love with. The positives are only a handful, mainly in the exceptional quality of the sound design in the way it projects sound wise and the competent to enjoyable funny bad performances on display here (mostly from Pascal, as Wiig is just meh overall in her performance as a boring adaptation of Wonder Woman’s arch-nemesis). Coupled this with overlong and bloated editing, shoddy mixed quality of VFX work all over the film, very little exciting or enjoyable action set pieces, and a story that is pointless and inconsequential that it relies more on its themes and message, than actually developing a story that shapes these characters and pushes them forward to change for this somewhat insulated sequel. It’s a shame that the first film now feels like a fluke and WW84 feels truly like a studio mandated sequel made to cash in on the success of the first film and not build on that foundation disappointingly.
