“Wonder Woman 1984” Film review

By: Keaton Marcus

I’m sorry but this will come out as more of an informal, downright disrespectful rant because I literally cannot contain my anger about this movie. WHAT. THE. F!_!CK. HAPPENED. This is coming from someone who genuinely thinks the first Wonder Woman film is the best the DCEU had to offer. After watching 1984, Jesus has wept, and this could be the worst in the franchise. From the nonsensical, convoluted plotting, the subpar performances pretty much all around, and the cheap action sequences, this film legitimately has little to no positives to it. Oh, I forgot. Hans Zimmer’s score does deliver in many places, and if you’re willing to close your eyes and listen to the godlike soundtrack, it should be a mildly enjoyable experience. At least that’s what I believe. Patty Jenkins proved herself to be a perfectly capable director, but a WRITER??!! NO. NO. NO. Her screenwriting is easily the worst of 2020, and perhaps the decade. Yeah, I’d rather f(-)cking re-watch Transformers: The Last Knight over this GARBAGE. Also, the running time is unbearably long, clocking in at around 2 hours and 30 minutes, even longer than its already overlong predecessor. If you think the final act of the first film was mediocre, get ready for the most hamfisted, bullshit, chaotic, CGI-filled disaster that the last 30 minutes of this film are. Alright, let’s get on to business.

I literally cannot comprehend the plot so it’ll be quite difficult to explain it to readers now considering I have a hangover from how F’ING BAD IT WAS. So Diana is still mourning over the death of pretty-boy Steve Trevor after DECADES of whining about it, and she really really wants him back so they can have sex again. Yeah, it’s a pretty horny film, I’m not going to lie. At her company or whatever, Diana meets this other chick called Barbara Minerva (Kristen Wiig, what the hell are you doing in this film?), a nerdy, unpopular gemologist (I forgot, ok?!) after stopping a mall heist. Wow. Way to up those stakes, eh, Ms. Jenkins? Despite getting some serious vibes whenever the two meet up, the romantic relationship never happens. And I’m telling you, it would have been far more entertaining if the two just started making out mid-battle. So Barbara is basically bullied by all the mean men every day and harassed by drunk men on the streets to the point of mental collapse. Yeah, one of the film’s messages is that all men are stupid, drunken, disgusting assholes. I’ll get into that later, however. At work, she is suddenly (and quite randomly) approached by Maxwell Lord (Pedro Pascal really trying to act), a cliched businessman (literally Trump) looking for some stone. This stone of unknown origin is able to grant anyone’s wishes, and it’s just sitting in a lab without any sort of security or protection. Smart one, Jenkins. Lord is trying to use it so that he is able to control the world with it, but when Barbara discovers it, she wishes to be more like Diana. You know, cool, attractive, popular, all the good stuff. Diana, on the other hand, wishes for Steve to return. Oh for God’s sake, imagine if this was the explanation for Chris Pine’s return. Oh F(-)CK, it is.

Alright folks, time to write about the performances. Gal Gadot was perfectly solid in the first film, but that was because she only had to shine in the action sequences, and was mostly blocked from real acting moments. In the sequel, Patty Jenkins ludicrously decided that she could really act, and gave her more dialogue than stunts. Just because someone can look convincing in action doesn’t mean they can be the next Natalie Portman. The movie itself (its predecessor) was at least interesting as well and gave Diana some interesting things to interact with despite Gadot not being a great actress herself. She tries really hard once again, and I appreciate that, but it ends completely flat. Chris Pine also returns as Steve Trevor, which was nice to see, but his role in the movie felt really out-of-place, random, and the explanation for his reprisal is absolutely horrible, as I explained previously. He isn’t terrible, and there are some genuinely decent moments, like when he tries on different clothing styles from the 80s, but his chemistry with Gadot felt extremely lacking. There was something charming and adorable about the two of them together in the 2017 movie, and now it’s all gone. Pedro Pascal, known from The Mandalorian and Narcos, hasn’t proved himself to be an actor with much range, and Jenkins’ script needed too much from him. His role required the actor to be a grand, big personality with large ambitions that he will enact at any cost. Basically, he was required to be a fictional Donald Trump, and for the most part, his performance was unintentionally hilarious. However, it was also the performance that had the most effort put into it, and for that, I respect Pascal. Probably my favorite performance out of all of them was Kristen Wiig’s Cheetah. She at least attempted to be a menacing and convincing villain, but the poor CGI and problematic character choices blocked her from being likable or even relatable. Her acting was mediocre at best, and despite a few comic moments that she nailed, Wiig was floored in the serious ones.

The movie itself was likely the worst aspect of everything. Let’s start off with the direction. Patty Jenkins did us DC fans proud in the first film. It was filled with a good mix of humor and darker tones while complete with thrilling, dazzling action sequences despite being undercut by an underwhelming finale. This film is like if that huge Transformers battle at the end of the first movie spanned the entire running time. Literally, every action sequence is a poorly-directed, cheap-looking, and terribly lit scene that looks like a TV series with a criminally small budget. Jenkins had 200 million dollars to make this film at least look cool. That’s 50 million more than its predecessor, and it looks so much worse. Everything is so ugly, and it’s unfortunate considering how badass the original was. In the final battle, Diana finally gets to fight Cheetah, and it seems as if she’s battling against one of those god-awful CG felines from last year’s Cats. Wiig looks terrifying, and it’s truly the stuff of nightmares. Getting on to the plot, it’s even more of a mess than the visual effects. Every major twist or turning point in the film is so poorly hinged on the believability of a WISHING STONE. Seriously, is this an animated film for the kiddies, or a DC comic-book movie? The first movie was a dark, sometimes even brutal story about heroism in World War I, and it is shocking to imagine that this was made by the same people. Unlike many people, I generally liked Zack Snyder’s installments to this universe. Batman v Superman was messy for sure, but it at least had a cool political thriller-type approach and awesome action scenes. Man of Steel was visually incredible and beautifully composed. Both of these movies took a darker approach to the origin stories of these iconic characters, and I prefer that. However, those two also have plenty of flaws, and the best DCEU installments happened to be Aquaman, Birds of Prey, and the first Wonder Woman, which all have a nice mix of R-rated violence or brooding, dark moments with lighthearted comedy. You’ve got to find that perfect balance, and this wasn’t it. There are positives to the film, however, to make it slightly less unbearable. The score from Hans Zimmer was almost magnificent and even better than his outing in the 2017 film. However, the film surrounding it is less than stellar, shall we say, and very undeserving of such a composer.

Just to top things off, two things really angered me and I want to talk about them. I loved Zimmer’s score in it, but the fact that this awful movie used “Beautiful Lie”, Batman’s best theme, in an unintentionally hilarious moment towards the end of the film baffled me. This was a gorgeous piece of music used in the opening sequence of Batman v Superman, which is still my favorite scene in the DCEU, and was then wasted in a crappy scene of a very, very bad film. Zimmer wanted to do an emotional callback, and that just didn’t work for such a terrible scene. Secondly, this film is so obviously man-hating. I am a serious defender of Rey and the sequel trilogy of Star Wars, and female-led films are usually awesome, but I couldn’t take this one. Literally every man it in is either an incompetent fool or a disgusting animal trying to harass a woman. Maybe one situation of a man being a jerk isn’t terrible, but like four? In the same film? Steve Trevor wasn’t the main character, but he at least did some badass things in the first movie. Here, he’s stranded to an occasional sissy fight while Wonder Woman twirls her lasso a lot and flies like Superman (what was up with that?). I hate when people call legitimately cool female heroes Mary Sues, but Diana has officially become one. Hopefully, they can change that in future movies. Ok, I’m done ranting.

The final opinion is: Although Hans Zimmer’s score and a couple of funny moments deliver, Wonder Woman 1984 is an overloaded, dumb, convoluted, poorly-acted, and directed sequel that no one should have to pay for in the cinemas…$KIP IT

Rated: PG-13 (for sequences of violence)

Genre: Action/Adventure

Runtime: 2 hours 31 minutes

Directed By: Patty Jenkins