Ty Talks Comics Reviews: Wonder Woman: 1984
When the first Wonder Woman came out way back in 2017, I was extremely elated to finally see one of my favorite female superheroes make it to the big screen after years and years of failed projects (especially the Adrianne Palicki show on NBC). When I finally did go see it, the movie blew me away and more than met my expectations up until the dreadful slog that was the third act. Overall, it was a fantastic movie that tripped up at the end and left me wanting more. So when this movie was announced, I had some slight fears that WW84 would face much of the same problems.
Even through the pandemic, the delays and 80s fatigue, the movie finally made its way to theaters AND streaming and surprisingly did a great job at continuing DCs recent string of successful comic book movies. My girlfriend and I watched the movie through HBO Max, so that may color some of my opinions as we didn’t get the big screen experience, but hopefully it won’t be too much of a disconnect between the two methods.
Wonder Woman: 1984 is, of course, the sequel to Wonder Woman, taking place in everyone’s favorite decade for the last five years; the 1980s! Sixty-six years after Steve Trevor sacrificed his life so that The Germans couldn’t have their deadly gas in World War I, Wonder Woman finds herself secretly fighting crime until a maniacal oil mogul, Maxwell Lord, finds himself with the ability to grant people their deepest desires in the form of wishes. Having accidentally wished Steve Trevor back, Wonder Woman and the love of her life must race against time to stop Lord from causing the collapse of humanity, but at what cost?
In stark contrast to Diana’s humble beginnings and finding her way through man’s world in the first movie, WW84 gives us a Wonder Woman that has lived in America for some time. She’s found her footing, a job she enjoys and occasionally saves the day and makes sure that no one knows that she’s still around from all the way back in 1918. She knows what it means to be a hero and has done her best to move on after Steve’s death, but still has some lessons to learn and I love that about this film.
While Diana’s main thread in the movie is learning how to let go of things and not take the easy route, her main antagonist in Maxwell Lord is just the opposite. His entire motivation in the movie is success by any means necessary in order to impress his son and he takes every opportunity that he can and runs with it, whether he needs to schmooze or seduce, as long as his end goal is met, it doesn’t matter who he has to hurt to get to it. What’s even better about this is that he doesn’t DIRECTLY hurt anyone until the end, but that in itself is only because everything else just keeps escalating to a point where a single snowball leads to an avalanche that almost causes nuclear war.
There’s also a subplot where Barbara Minerva, having also made a wish to become more sexy, confident and strong like Diana, morphs into the villainous Cheetah that probably should have gotten more screen time than she did. Her character arc follows a similar throughline as Electro,Tighten (from Megamind) and Syndrome in that her adoration for the hero of the story turns to hatred as she doesn’t feel appreciated nor does she want to give up the abilities that she’s gained and return to horrid existence she had before as a shy nerd.
While not as strong as the plot of the first movie it does bring on a lot more fun in the character with a few bits of campiness and humor in contrast to the mostly serious and heartfelt nature of the first movie. Even when Max Lord is in the hardest throes of his madness, there’s still a hammy nature that Pedro Pascal brings to his smiling performance that just infects you with how fun it must have been to work on this movie.
Many fans had wondered how Steve Trevor would return for this movie and I think that the way that they did it was inventive, fun and heartbreaking on many levels. Having his return be one of the first anchor points to drive the story was fantastic and the way it resolves makes you want to root for Wonder Woman more especially when you’re near the point of tears after.
The cast of this movie knocked it out of the park in almost every regard.
For all of the time that I’ve been reading comics, Maxwell Lord has always been this self-serious, anti-superhero telepath who only wants a world where humanity doesn’t have a need for capes, sort of like Amanda Waller, but maybe a bit more radical. Pedro Pascal’s Max Lord is a far cry from that and still finds a way to be compelling and charming as the character. He’s a shyster and it works on a level that I didn’t expect, so much so that I wish this version of the character were in the comics vs. the standard version that reappeared in Mariko Tamaki’s current WW run (even though it has been fun). Lacking in the sheer genius department, Pascal’s Lord relies on his guile to see him through most situations. He’s a fast talker, he has moxie and I feel like Jenkins, Johns and Callaham took their time while writing the screenplay to make him snappy and fun and not an overbearing bad guy.
Even more so than that, he's a loving father. One of the best things about this Max Lord is that everything he does is for his son as he doesn't want to be the same kind of bad father that his own dad was and it comes off as very sweet, if a bit misguided, when the ball of madness start rolling. His lack of success in the oil industry has made him desperate for a break and he even turns to magic when literally nothing else works and it's only his son that's able to bring him back from the brink.
Gal Gadot herself also brings her DC best as she’s equal parts funny and dramatic, bringing some fantastic personality to the character, not saying that she didn’t in the first one, but it was much easier to believe that she was Wonder Woman this time around. The same thing can be said for the young Lilly Aspell, who played a younger Diana in the first movie and returns for the opening sequence of this sequel. She showed the same kind of drive to succeed that Diana would later show in the future, while also imparting some hard lessons in her childhood that made her become the hero she is.
Cheetah has never been one of my favorite Wonder Woman villains. I chalk this up to her being one of DCs many characters with convoluted histories and mantle switches almost on par with Donna Troy or Hawkman. It wasn’t until DC Rebirth that Barbara Ann Minerva became an insanely compelling character in my opinion in what I consider one of the best Wonder Woman runs ever made. The same can’t quite be said for Kristen Wiig’s Barbara Ann Minerva. While she did the character very well, from the meek personality to the sexy, catlike turn, she never had enough screen time to really breathe life into the role.
Hell, when she finally transformed into Cheetah, she was gone before anyone even noticed and gave some Cats flashbacks in the meantime with the CG effects. I feel like Wiig’s Cheetah needed a movie all to herself because so much of this one was taken up by Lord - depending on what the plot for Wonder Woman 3 will be, I would suggest she return as a puppet of Circe or Doctor Psycho, thus giving fans more emotional reason to be invested in her transformation since the way this movie ended left things a bit unfinished.
Steve Trevor was just a treasure. I don’t know that I’ve seen too many roles where Chris Pine has been able to flex some comedic chops, but the way that he portrayed Steve as being so fascinated with the 80s was unreasonably cute and adorable. His love for Diana also made him stand out as you never wanted him to leave her side, to get in serious danger again and it reminded me of why the first movie felt like such a joy to watch. Their chemistry together is amazing and he doesn’t come off as an incompetent goof, but as a capable guy that loves Diana with everything he has which makes the end of the movie all the more heartbreaking.
The 80s was a big time for consumerism in America. Brands, celebrities and media had their names slapped on everything from door mats to lunchboxes. Even your TV personalities were everywhere, just think of Letterman being in an issue of the Avengers! Wonder Woman 84 offers up something of a critique of Capitalism and the idea of winning by any means necessary, even if the way they go about it is made shallow by this being a superhero movie made by one of the biggest media conglomerates in Warner Brothers, owned by AT&T who, much like Maxwell Lord, don’t care who they have to fire, sell off or what projects they have to cancel to win the streaming war or get out of their immense debt.
DC Comics is full of corrupt businessmen and women. And despite what anyone says, Bruce Wayne is NOT one of them. When you have people like Veronica Cale or Simon Stagg (guess who has a minor role in this movie?), Wayne is a saint by comparison. Suffice to say, Lord’s actions in this movie are driven by the desire to be the number one oil man in the world. His lust for greed is so nearly insatiable that even in the face of worldwide nuclear war, he doesn’t want to give it up, very similarly to our world today. However, it is through the love of his own son that Lord is able to see the error of his ways, even if it is a far cry from a reality where people won’t even look at those lesser than them as worth a damn.
One thing that I praise this movie for is the opening sequence, something which Patty Jenkins herself has said that WB wanted her to cut from the movie. What made this succeed was that it showed that Diana was at one point willing to cheat to win and that she would never be a true hero that way. So when she has the opportunity to have something for herself, she has to make a decision that could lead to the destruction of humanity or begin the process of saving them all. One of the criticisms I read before writing this was that Wonder Woman would never have to think about the choice, but the difference is that comic Wonder Woman had 80 years to develop that heroism and movie Wonder Woman is still learning. She acts selflessly in the end and completes the arc that the movie set up for her.
I’m not the most qualified to talk about cinematography as I am about writing, but goddamn this movie is gorgeous and shot well.
If I did have any gripes about the first movie aside from the third act, it would have to be that it felt a little colorless. Sitting in line with the murky nature of WWI and producer Zack Snyder’s own predilection for washed out color schemes, there were quite a few scenes in the first film that felt a little dour. While this was definitely a creative choice as Themyscira itself was lush with greens and bright tones, man’s world was depressing and dark. WW84 does the exact opposite by placing more of the action in the daytime astride the many-hued looks of the time.
Bright yellows show up from time to time in regards to characters expressing their greed in regards to Maxwell Lord and Cheetah respectively; in fact, one of the biggest moments in regards to Lord making big moves took place in Bialya where the greedy President of the country accidentally makes a wish that his ancestral lands were returned to him and Lord, in return, takes all of his guards and wealth.
In contrast to that, Wonder Woman's scenes themselves don't stick to one particular hue, but allow for a more varied palette similar to Shazam. Her costume itself even seems a bit more saturated in its reds, blues and holds as she seems like an even happier and confident hero, which lends itself well to the tone of the movie itself, even when it's later moments become standard Zack Snyder fare.
The action scenes are shot fantastically with a faster and frenetic pace in comparison to the slow and dramatic cadence of some of the scenes in the first movie. There are lots of sweeping camera movements as Diana swings and slides into action, jumps from vehicles and even uses her lasso to move from lightning bolt to lightning bolt in some of the BEST "learning to fly" scenes in a superhero movie I have ever seen. There were many moments where I was at the edge of my seat with just how dynamic the movements were.
In terms of intimacy, WW84 did an awesome job of allowing the quieter moments to speak for themselves and the few romantic scenes that Diana got with Steve to fill the heart with joy. Whatever Patty Jenkins asked Gal Gadot to think about, she’s absolutely focused on it because when Diana looks at Steve, she seems lost in him. Like her love is there more than ever, but tinged with the fear of losing him again. And Steve himself looks like a kid in a candy store with the surprise at being alive again. They do excellently with Trevor’s astonishment given that he would almost certainly have been a kid or teenager in the 1890s and shows how he would have viewed the future had he lived to see it initially.
Questionable Things/Negatives
Granted, this entire review has been me fawning over the movie and I won’t deny that. The initial backlash took me aback, so maybe my expectations were lowered than what they could have been initially and somehow, this movie being more than above average sent me over to the “it’s a good movie side.” However, that does not mean that the movie is without its flaws and downsides - what live-action DC movie isn’t?
*SMALL/BIG SPOILERS AHEAD*
Starting off with the biggest possible thing, the sheer amount of calamity that befell the world due to the events of this movie would have to have been taught about in schools and been subject to discussion WELL AFTER their passing. World ending events are par for the course in superhero media of all sorts, but we’re talking about nuclear war, societal collapse, financial rises and crashes the likes of which the world will never see again, destruction of all sorts and, retroactively, nothing in the DC Universe makes sense. We can chalk this up to just brushing things under the rug, but there’s that and then there’s flat out ignoring things or writing oneself into a corner that future directors are going to have to course correct into later on.
This could lead to great future explanations like Batman’s turn to a murderer being because he wished his parents back to life only to have them taken away again; Krypton’s destruction being due to Martha and John Kent’s desire for a son and them not reversing their wish in time; Atlanna and Tom Curry wishing to have more time before the forces of Atlantis come after her; hell, it could be the reason Dr. Sivana is so smart in Shazam and the way that Barry Allen’s lightning bolt found him years later after wishing for a way to solve his mother’s murder. (Remember, just my ideas cause this movie answered NONE of that and Bruce was almost certainly a kid at this point)
One of the potentially weirder aspects was that there’s a strange question of consent in regards to Diana and Steve having sex because the method of Steve’s resurrection was the possession of the body of some random engineer located close to Diana in Washington DC. It’s...strange to say the very least, but if you can get over it, then things are all fine.
There’s also the possible question of racism in regards to the President of Bialya being one of those world leaders who believes that the lands of his people belong only to them and wishing to have all foreigners kicked out and regaining the rights to his claimed land holdings. This wish causes a wall to spring up and trap his people within Bialya’s borders with no escape, incurring the wrath and hatred of his people. There’s also a moment where Wonder Woman swoops in to save some possibly Muslim children when Gal Gadot, a previous Isreali soldier with the Israeli Defense Force, voiced her support for Israeli soldiers in the conflict on the Gaza strip against Hamas. That one’s a bit of a heavy issue especially in regards to one review about a comic book movie, so make what you will with that.
Another potential plot hole that might spring its head would definitely have to be the likelihood that Wonder Woman was seen at any point during the movie and Batman would have known who she was a long time prior to Batman V. Superman. The amount of news coverage that there was in the movie, with her not doing anything to cover her tracks past the first mall robbery scene is BAFFLING to say the very least.
One aspect that I LOVED that I see other hating immensely was the fact that Wonder Woman learned to fly and had the ability to turn things invisible in this movie and never showed those abilities again afterwards. I loved the scene where Diana and Steve Trevor stole a WORKING JET from the SMITHSONIAN AIR MUSEUM with FUEL and WORKING PARTS and she used magic to give fans like me THE INVISIBLE JET. It was so stupid and dumb and non-sensical that my girlfriend and I just laughed at the implausibility and dumb-assery on display. It was AMAZING in every regard. Not to mention that I already talked about how much I enjoyed watching her finally figure out how to fly and testing out her poses.
As previously mentioned, Kristen Wiig’s Cheetah felt like something of a let down in this movie. For what could have been a very feminist villain, she came off as being very toothless when siding with the Lord, who had had a one night stand with her to get the thing that he wanted. If she had shown a little bit of fire after he pumped and dumped and made their relationship a little bit more tense in the, “I’ll kill you if you mess this up for me” kinda way, then she could have come off as a lot more threatening. And, I understand that the fight scene between her and Diana was set in the darkness to cover any flaws in the CGI, but the animation still looked a bit off in the Uncharted for PS3 kinda way. WB is a multibillion dollar company and, much like BvS, still didn’t want to put the money towards better VFX? Shameful.
And that still doesn’t even cover how limp the fight scene was and how we never saw Cheetah’s transformation into the “apex predator” that she wished to be. Her final climactic battle with Diana, where the princess wore the golden armor that we saw in promotional material everywhere, lasted all of maybe three minutes and consisted of Cheetah immediately destroying the armor, Diana using the Lasso of Truth to swing around and Cheetah being electrocuted to end the scene.
For everything that Wonder Woman 1984 does wrong, it does about three or four things well enough to cover its flaws. Whether or not I have to amplify my worry when Wonder Woman 3 hits screens is yet to be known. This movie succeeds in my eyes with a heartfelt story and great funny/dramatic moments, but is let down with a weak secondary villain and a nothing story with insanely high stakes. It’s a mess, but I like messes when they’re fun.
