Wonder Woman 1984 Review....More like BLUNDER WOMAN...haha...I'll leave now.
Oh boy, it seems like Hollywood is struggling to get back on its feet amidst a pandemic. And while a lot of studios are pushing back their release schedules of their movies to allow the world to get back to normal before enticing people back to the theaters, Warner Brothers wants to keep their blockbuster train moving at steady pace.
I believe (and I could be wrong) that Wonder Woman 1984 is one of the first big name blockbusters being released in theaters and on-demand stream (via HBO Max) on the same day. The event is truly bizarre and perfectly captures the awkwardness, insanity, and confusion that has filled 2020. Big multi-hundred million blockbusters being released concurrently in theaters and...on demand...shudders.. How could we, as a civilization, sink so low??
Anyways, on to the movie. I really, really (two times, not three) wanted to like Wonder Woman 1984 (WW84). I truly did. I actually thought the first movie was a good sign of things to come from the struggling DCEU. While the movie was very generic and Gal Gadot's acting was so monotonous it could put anyone to sleep, I thought the movie was executed fairly well. Everyone criticized the third act, but I don't recall it being anything but an ordinary showdown fight between the main villain and the protagonist. However, WW84 failed to realize the foundation it had created from the first film and decides to basically start over again. I think in doing so, they sort of took one step forward and two steps back. The movie also fails to progress Diana as a character. Somewhere in the movie was some sense of self-realization, but I felt like it could have been executed a lot better.
I also wasn't particularly sold on the idea of why the movie had to be set in 1984. Nothing of particular interest was happening then. I am not too familiar with Wonder Woman lore, so that even makes the choice more puzzling coming from the general audience perspective. Was it to capture a certain nostalgia? Was it to go back to a time where things were more pleasant? Either way, the choice of using the 80's was more of a shtick than of a setting. WW84 tried to put so many 80's tropes and montages into the film they forgot to make them mean anything or serve any real purpose. With a bloated two hour and thirty minute run time, I could feel the bloat of inconsequential scenes stack up.
One other thing is that I felt like the 80's was easy mode with people being blatantly sexist or racist or narcissistic. Every extra was just down right mean and each character besides Diana was one dimensional.
That being said, I really liked the central McGuffin of the movie. Wish fulfillment and its consequences is something that I have related to ever since I was a kid. The idea that your wish is granted but something you value is also sacrificed is something that can play well into crafting a good story. I just think WW84 fails on every level to try and craft a good story.
First off, the movie is two and a half hours long, and it really tries to make you feel the runtime. The beginning of the movie is a very long flash back that is supposed to teach Diana the power of doing things...the right way? And to make sure to follow the rules? I don't know. But it was supposed to set up something for an event later in the movie. I know this because the flash back was way too long to just be some cool intro. I want to say it's at least 15 (maybe even 20?) minutes long and it wouldn't be so bad but the movie doesn't seem to do anything with it. Some people would say that it sets up her "aha" moment in the third act, but I really don't buy it.
Secondly, the movie does a horrible job at explaining what the villain can and cannot do. It doesn't provide much context as to why the villain knows about the wish stone and how he knows it works. Maxwell Lord seems to know all about the wish stone (The main McGuffin) and all the rules without the audience knowing exactly how it worked. It isn't until way later in the movie that we (as the audience) are provided with the details and the rules of the movie. Meanwhile, the audience is left to speculate what is actually going as Maxwell asks for people to wish for something and then he apparently takes stuff from them.
Thirdly, Barbara Minerva's character (aka Cheetah) is just weird. She ends up using the stone to wish to be sexy and charming and confident like Diana and ends up inheriting her powers as well. But besides being mean to a guy that almost raped her, she didn't seem to have anything really taken away from her. It's only when Wonder Woman tells her what's taken from her (oh right, her humanity) that we find out that wish stone does indeed use the same rules as the monkey's paw. It just took an hour and forty five minutes to get to that. The movie took too much focusing on 80's montages and badly rendered fight scenes that it forgot to spend time developing Barbara as a good supporting character.
And I think some of this is because Gal Gadot doesn't really convince me as an actress. Her voice is always so subdued and quiet that it makes it feel like there is no chemistry between her and any of the rest of the cast. She reminds me of Tommy Wiseau's acting. Almost a bit tone deaf on how to emote. You can try and make up a reason that she is some immortal being from another world so she is supposed to act this way, but she left Themyscira over 70 years ago (WW 2017 was set in War World 1). I mean, if she hasn't figured to learn how to socialize, there must be something wrong with her.
Fourthly, the movie really did nothing to prove it needed to exist. There didn't seem to be a good take away from there. Motivations for all the characters were either non-existent or came way too late in the story. (If Maxwell Lord's son was his most valued thing in life, how come it never was taken away? Why was that told at the end of the movie as well?) It felt like the movie was a paper I wrote in high school where I just tried to let my citations write the paper for me instead of actually put some effort into describing how the quote helps my argument. WW84 just bloats its movie with a checklist of 80's nostalgia that it would have been better to have the checkbox shown on the screen. A nice little "ding!" as the checkbox gets filled in would have done nicely as well.
Comments
Post a Comment