Diana Prince: “Nothing good is born from lies. And greatness is not what you think.”
“Wonder Woman 1984” starts out promising with a stellar prologue showing Princess Diana as a child and competing in what seems to be a form of olympic games in her home world. Here we have a chance to see a grand setup for a gigantic two and a half hour runtime film where thematically I thought this film would be going to the right place. Unfortunately, as the film carries out its massive run time, I found myself increasingly bored and frustrated by how this film was pieced together and written.
With the rise of streaming service, HBOMax has done something that might start a chain reaction for other services to do. Releasing their top movies on their platforms while simultaneously dropping them in theaters for the upcoming future. As a person who loves the theater and experiencing films on the big screen, it is a comprehensible statement and potentially a hopeful one too. I hope it does not kill theaters, but I do understand that this was inevitable too.
But to the review though. “1984” sets up a decent entrance for Princess Diana, but once Diana is introduced to Kristen Wiig’s character, Barbara, this film spirals way out of control and becomes a mess. Following Wiig’s introduction, we are introduced to the Dreamstone that grants wishes for any and all people who wish upon it. And it could be anything. This to me is where “1984” starts to lose its footing. This wish stone, aka plot device, is used so improperly, but it decides to overtake the narrative due to its great power.
The film also carries a ton of cliches that decides to take the route of Pablo Pascal’s (who is amazing in “The Mandalorian” by the way) character, Maxwell Lord who, as predictable as his character goes, he obtains the stone and becomes the stone so he has the power to grant wishes. The cliche of absolute power for a villain is fine, but we have seen this type of outcome too many times before. And the kicker here is how the wish stone takes away a value possession for each wisher. Diana wishes for Steve Trevor back, and he comes back, but in a different body. But yet the film has the audacity to have wishes granted like a wall, and it comes out of thin air. This is how the film runs for the entire runtime.
There are ideas expressed in the screenplay, but then it takes a completely strange direction to escalate the chaos, which is the point from what I can gather, but it can be done remarkably better than what is given. There are not many pluses when it comes to personal preference for “1984” but I do not hate this film. There are still some decent things that came from it like the performances from most of the actors are about as good as they could be with the material they are given.
And again the opening scene sets up what could be a great theme for Diana to overcome in the film. The theme is not cheating your way through obstacles, which I figured would be perfect for Diana’s character arc in this film, considering the stakes that are introduced immediately in the story. But the narrative decides the introduction in the beginning is not important other than introducing armor that is worn by the greatest warrior. To me, when I found out right at the end of the film where Diana fights Cheetah that the theme that was originally set up is just thrown away, it struck with me that they clearly rushed this project and did not have a clearcut arc. There is no critical and abstract theme here other than: bad guys take over, Wonder Woman saves the day. The character arcs are so minimal that it creates so much irritation and disappointment for most fans.
As a person who only had a few issues with the first film, mainly considering its third act, I found myself in utter dismay and boredom with “1984” which is something I did not want to say about it. The first “Wonder Woman” has rewatch value, here I do not know if I can ever put myself through this again. I watched it once, and I know exactly how I stand with it. Most of the arguments surrounding this sequel are valid and understandable.
I always hope every film this massive is great, but sometimes films can end up like this unfortunately. As stated before, I do not hate “Wonder Woman 1984”, this film is coherent enough for me and it was not trying to retcon most of its decisions every second of the way. But this film is dull, lacking any sort of spirit or action you can find in the first film. There were way too many moments during this film I caught myself checking out due to how much of a mess was onscreen, narratively speaking.
And just like I stated back with my “Atlia: Battle Angel” review, films with this much money thrown at it deserve to be analyzed and criticized heavily. “1984” is a film that deserves the criticisms, this is a film that came out on Christmas day during a pandemic, where everyone was at home watching VOD most of the time this year. The expectation level was high and rightfully so, but this film does not bring the same energy and light the first film did. I am not asking for a carbon copy for the sequel, but I certainly was not asking for a mess that we got.
Run Time: 2 Hours 32 Minutes
Rating: C-