A new era of wonder begins.
Wonder Woman 1984 is a 2020 superhero film directed by Patty Jenkins, written by Patty Jenkins, Geoff Johns, and David Callaham, produced by DC Films, Atlas Entertainment, and The Stone Quarry, and distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures. The film is based on various Wonder Woman comics by DC Comics. It stars Gal Gadot and Chris Pine. This is the ninth film in the DC Extended Universe. It acts a sequel to Wonder Woman and will be followed by an untitled sequel. The film was not nominated for any Academy Awards.
"Greatness is not what you think." -Wonder Woman
Plot
Diana Prince lives in the vibrant era of the 80s now. While she has had crime under control as an unknown hero, she lives her own life in a lonely fashion. When she meets Barbara Minerva, the two of them discover a stone that is able to grant wishes. When greedy businessman Maxwell Lord stumbles upon the stone, Diana must take all of her strength and wisdom to save the world from itself.
Positive Aspects
The best thing about this movie is the action. This movie has better action than any other DCEU movie, and that is mostly because it deals more with hand-to-hand combat and choreography than an overuse of CGI. The finale doesn't do that as much, which was disappointing, but that was not the worst thing ever. We get to see Wonder Woman in her prime and at her fullest. She utilizes her lasso very well and we get to see a lot more Jedi-looking action, which I enjoyed quite a bit.
The story is going in both the positive and negative section. I had a fun time with it and liked that it showed the implications of the problems in the film. There was a lot of imagining to be done in this movie, and I liked that it included the audience like that. The specific plot device that drives the film is a bit ridiculous, but I enjoyed being able to think about that.
The acting was fantastic. Gal Gadot brought her usual charisma and charm to the screen. Chris Pine slipped back into his role like a glove. Their chemistry together was so organic and natural, making some of the scenes so incredibly powerful and more exciting because of their relationship. Kristen Wiig gives this great and awkward performance that transforms with her character. She manages to do it so that you still get the awkwardness even when she is turning evil. Finally, Pedro Pascal did a good job. His performance was insanely disturbing and creepy and sometimes a little bit too over the top, but I was able to deal with it just fine.
The stakes and ambition of this film is so much bigger than any film in the DCEU, including Justice League and Batman v. Superman. That was sometimes a good thing. It had a huge scale that made the finale very thrilling. This movie definitely strayed from the usual DCEU formula, which I appreciated, but there were some problems with that, which we'll get into later.
I also thought that the character arcs for everyone were pretty good. Without spoilers, obviously, Cheetah and Wonder Woman both had interesting arcs that I enjoyed. We see growth through everyone, even Max Lord. It made it so that the movie kept your attention throughout. Whenever the movie moved on to another character, you never rolled your eyes. You were always interested to see what was going to happen, and I liked that about the film.
Negative Aspects
However, this movie has some big problems. First of all, I do not like that Steve Trevor came back. I do not like how it was executed and it feels like it was shoehorned into the movie. He doesn't fully belong in with everyone else, and I really wish that the filmmakers had gone somewhere else with Diana's love life and made it more compelling than her boyfriend that had been dead for sixty years suddenly returning.
I also think that the story gets ahead of itself a little bit too much. At first, I was okay with where the plot was going, but as the movie kept going, this problem in the film kept getting bigger and bigger until the movie was too ludicrous for its own good. The plot stretched too far and got too big, and the movie's ambitious scale did not pay off entirely.
Another thing that this movie did was a classic superhero mistake: it sidelines the hero and focuses more on the villains. The film is two and a half hours long, and I am willing to bet that Wonder Woman is on screen for maybe an hour of that. The film is much more focused on developing Cheetah and Maxwell Lord than it is Wonder Woman. It makes her character feel the same as it has throughout the DCEU. Now that in and of itself is not a problem, because her character is great, but I would've liked to focus more on Wonder Woman in a Wonder Woman movie.
Finally, with the plot becoming so big and the movie raising the stakes so much, it got out of the realm of superhero movie. This feels like it could literally be the Endgame of this franchise because of how big it is, but it rushes to that point. The difference between Infinity War and Endgame is that they had ten years of setup. WW84 has to setup these massive stakes and huge scale in a two and a half hour runtime. That makes the movie have a fast pace, but it feels too rushed and too overstuffed. There is too much going on in this movie. What they should've done with WW84 is gotten rid of Cheetah and saved her for a third Wonder Woman movie. it would've worked much better.
Final Score
Wonder Woman 1984 has a few big and obvious problems, but it is an overall fun ride and one of the better entries in the DC Extended Universe.
I will give it a Savory rating. Age range is 8+.
"Wonder Woman 1984"
SWEET N' SOUR SCALE
Sweet (Great) Savory (Good) Sour (Bad)
Moldy (Terrible)
Fun Factor: 8.5/10
Acting: 8.5/10
Story: 6.5/10
Characters: 8/10
Quality: 7/10
Directed by Patty Jenkins
Rated PG-13 for superhero violence and action, disturbing themes, some thematic elements
Released on December 25, 2020
2 hours and 31 minutes
Gal Gadot as Diana Prince/Wonder Woman
Chris Pine as Steve Trevor
Pedro Pascal as Maxwell Lord
Kristen Wiig as Barbara Minerva/Cheetah
Connie Nielsen as Hippolyta
Robin Wright as Antiope
Lilly Aspell as Young Diana