I really wanted to like this. I really wanted it to be great. It’s been a really long year without cinema and I wanted the kind of entertainment that only this kind of movie could provide. Even if it was only for a fleeting moment, I wanted something joyous to take my mind off the otherwise funereal state of the world. Alas, Wonder Woman 1984 wasn’t that movie.
Leaving the cinema (yes, I was lucky enough to watch it on a big screen) I was unsure if my general apathy towards the movie was my fault. Had I put too much expectation on a commoditised Hollywood product? Was I wrong to try and hitch my happiness and general wellbeing to a piece of cinematic confectionary?
But the more I thought about it, the more the movie began to unravel before me. The narrative inconsistencies. The lack of a coherent message. The inconsequential action. And the sheer audacity to think that we wouldn’t notice as long as we were suitably distracted with enough whiz, bang, and pop.
When we meet Diana (Gal Gadot) again in 1984, it’s been 70 years since the last movie, and she’s working as an anthropologist at the Smithsonian while secretly saving pedestrians from being run over by speeding cars and brides from falling off bridges. No one knows she’s Wonder Woman (they won’t until many years later in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice) and she’s been living in a kind of limbo. She is in this world and yet not a part of it. She lives alone. She eats alone. She has no friends. And even though she isn’t quite pining (pun intended) over her one true love, Steve Trevor, she hasn’t forgiven the universe for taking him away from her either.
There is an emptiness in her life. As there is in lives of Barbara Minerva (Kristen Wiig) and Maxwell Lord (Pedro Pascal). The two villains of this piece. Barbara, Diana’s new colleague at the Smithsonian, struggles with being an invisible nobody. Maxwell Lord, on the other hand, is a smarmy snake oil salesman, cut from Trumpian cloth, who is just looking for more. More money. More fame. More glory.
Wonder Woman 1984 begins with an incredibly compelling premise. With Diana, Maxwell Lord, and Barbara Minerva, all facing the same existential crisis. They are different sides of the same coin. All three of them want something that they can’t have, and when they finally get it (by way of a McGuffin that really doesn’t require explication), they are faced with the dilemma of what they’re willing to sacrifice in order to keep it.
That kernel of an idea, that elevator pitch, which is either in a first draft, or scribbled down on a napkin somewhere, would have made for a great movie. Where the hero and the villains are distinguished by the decisions they are forced to make when confronted with the same quandary. Because the only thing that separates good from evil is often a selfish choice versus a selfless one.
Which is why it is so disappointing to see such a clever concept get muddled and mixed-up beyond recognition.
Wonder Woman 1984 doesn’t so much drop this ball as it fails to pick it up in the first place. Any semblance of an overarching theme is lost as soon as we spend any time with these characters.
Kristen Wiig, who gives a fantastic performance, is unfortunately weighed down with some terribly two-dimensional writing. Her motivations toward evil reduced to nothing more than an abiding envy toward Diana. Pedro Pascal isn’t even given that much to work with. In fact, we have no idea what he wants or why he wants it. And that lack of clarity makes his villainy feel cartoony. So much so that we never feel any sense of fear, or threat, or peril from either one of them.
In fact, the only relationship that works is the one between Diana and Steve – whose return, after that untimely demise in Wonder Woman, is handled with surprising grace. Gal Gadot and Chris Pine have outstanding chemistry and the stakes of their relationship outweigh everything else in this movie. It’s a shame that it’s given such a short shrift.
While there are many problems with Wonder Woman 1984, spectacle is not one of them. Patty Jenkins gives us some truly breathtaking set pieces. The movie’s opening sequence, a gladiatorial race through Themyscira, is equal parts action, competition, and girl power. Then there is a showdown in the dessert which is as fun and as exciting as anything you’ve seen in a Captain America movie. There’s that moment when she rides the lightning with her lasso. And even some Donner-esque slapstick action at the Stranger Things shopping mall.
Unlike Captain America and Stranger Things, however, the action here stops with just being cool. There are plenty of thrilling moments, but none of them do anything to further narrative or character. Diana looks incredible as she flips a truck and leaps over it in a single bound, but then what?
I want you to think about that scene from the last Wonder Woman, when Diana steps out from the trenches into no man’s land. It was a moment that was born from everything else that had come before. It was Diana standing up for everything she believes. It was Wonder Woman doing what no man could. It was a moment of power, and responsibility, and determination. It was a moment of inspiration. And then, as a smile slowly draws across her lips, both you and her know that she’s got this.
There is nothing in Wonder Woman 1984 that feels earned in that same way. There is nothing here that manages to encapsulate her character, or her evolution and growth, so perfectly.
Gal Gadot is my Wonder Woman. She inhabits this role completely.
Lynda Carter’s take on the character, while perfect, never felt like she belonged to my generation. Her portrayal was of, and for, the baby boomers who came of age in the 1970s. For an American populace still reeling from the Vietnam War and looking for the kind of escape that only a comic book hero could provide.
Gadot has managed to grow the part into something more substantial and relevant. She builds on Carter’s strength and optimism, but brings to the role a compassion and strength of will that is dripping with inspiration. She is superheroic. When she talks about truth and justice it never once comes across as corny or cheesy. She is a believer. And she will make you one too.
Gal Gadot is my Wonder Woman. And she deserves a better movie to tell her story.
Wonder Woman 1984
151 minutes
Director: Patty Jenkins
Writers: Patty Jenkins, Geoff Johns, and David Callaham
Cast: Gal Gadot, Chris Pine, Kristen Wiig, Pedro Pascal, Robin Wright, and Connie Nielsen
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