Director: Patty Jenkins
Distributor: Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.
Duration: 151 minutes
Wonder Woman 1984 (Blu-ray) – Movie Review
Arguably, 2017’s Wonder Woman might actually be the best female superhero movie ever made. That is an awfully big claim for us to make, but even so, many others do not come close to the overall quality of the reboot of the Wonder Woman ‘series’. It was only a matter of time before this film would spawn a sequel, and it did during a global pandemic. While this already made a theater release nearly impossible in many places of the world, it was also directly released on HBO Max to cover more ground. Nonetheless, early critiques already stated that his movie was not half as good as the original. While certain remarks may be a bit ‘over the top’ from some, it’s true that this sequel doesn’t live up to the hype.
As the title states, for this sequel we are taken to 1984, where Diana Prince (Gal Gadot) is working at the Smithsonian, all while doing her job as Wonder Woman secretly as well. The movie first starts off with a trial of Diana when she was young, but the relevancy eludes us, except for the armor that is shown during that snippet. Nonetheless, in the ‘present time’ she bumps into the very clumsy Barbara Minerva (Kristen Wiig), who has been hired to perform a task at the Smithsonian for the FBI. Barbara gets pretty much steamrolled and/or ignored by anyone around her, except for Diana. They form an odd friendship, but Diana is also interested in the investigation and thus wants to see what Barbara is up to. It seems she is investigating a wishing stone, which allows one to make a wish, making it come true immediately. Diana wishes for Steve (Chris Pine) to be alive and with her once more. Barbara also makes the wish of being stronger and much more like Diana. All these events come true, with Barbara clearly becoming more confident, and Steve actually being resurrected. It seems that the stone has a catch though, as Steve is inhabiting the body of an innocent bystander, somewhat forcefully taking over someone else’s life. When Max Lord (Pedro Pascal), a washed-up businessman who knows about the stone, arrives on the stage and wants it to gain power, things turn quite sour.
The movie has issues pacing itself, and this is mainly noticeable with the different subplots going on. On one side there’s the ‘revival’ of Steven Trevor, but on the other side, there are the insecurities of Barbara Minerva, Maxwell Lord’s empire, the wishes being made, and so on. This all results in a very convoluted plot, where the movie never truly seems to make up its mind. This is also clear in the introduction sequence, which actually doesn’t add that much to the overall story. It was supposed to be a lesson for Diana, but they somewhat missed that mark at the end of the movie to properly embed those past events into the story. There’s only a small correlation between the introduction and the golden armor used at a later point.
Gal Gadot plays a perfect Diana Prince, and there’s almost nothing that could change our mind on that matter. She plays the role believably and even in this movie, she also shows a very humane and selfish side of her, making it easier for you to relate to her. Nonetheless, the entire body snatching thing in this movie was quite wrong as a whole, especially with an innocent man’s body being violated and all that. Nonetheless, most cast members do a proper job bringing this movie alive, and even the now somewhat overrated Pedro Pascal plays a formidable villain in this superhero flick. He is not only driven by evil motives, which becomes clear rather quickly, and it also makes him a lot more relatable.
Kristen Wiig, who has been getting a lot of negative attention for playing Cheetah also takes over a chunk of the actual screen time here. The issue doesn’t really lie with her playing Cheetah, but the overall motivation and characteristics of the normal persona she plays, Barbara Minerva. If her real age correlates with the movie, it’s actually quite sad to see someone approaching 50 acting like an insecure 10-year-old. We don’t mean this badly for those struggling with fitting in, but she befriends Diana, and still wants more, even though she clearly had a lot of chances in her life to finish different educations and allowing her to perform a prestigious job. Sure, social contacts are important, but at no single point in the movie, you actually can relate to her character, or even understand her motivation and choices. Also the fact that she often is typecast as the ‘odd one out’, doesn’t help either.
Even if the movie does not get the same ‘epic feel’ as the 2017 original, the Blu-ray does have some great selling points if you want to add this film to your DC movie collection. This edition comes with about an hour and a half of special features. Many of the separate extras handle how the movie was made, but here are a few featurettes that are just for fun as well. We truly enjoyed the extras, also upping the score of this release a bit.
Conclusion
Wonder Woman 1984 doesn’t even come close to the quality of the first film, in terms of story, flow and acting, but it still is a fairly enjoyable experience if you’re into the DC universe. While the movie itself may be a bit long-winded, it does have a few real Wonder Woman elements embedded into it, showing what this project could have been. We use the term project, because it feels like that, rather than a fully-finished product. We feel that this story wanted to implement too many elements at once, making the plot convoluted and rendering the film unable to properly pace itself. That being said, it’s nowhere close to being as horrible as the recent Harley Quinn movie. Its main selling points, however, are the special features included in the Blu-ray edition.
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