I wasn’t talking to you. I was talking to everyone else.
Okay, so, look, can I just not talk about the backlash and all the online drama and all that? Can I just not do it? I’m just going to talk about this movie.
This movie isn’t terrible. It’s also nowhere near as good as the first Wonder Woman movie. I’ve seen a movement online to try to convince people that we need to re-evaluate the first Wonder Woman in light of this movie and realize that the first Wonder Woman also wasn’t very good. Well, two things: 1. That’s not true; that movie is great. 2. I’m ALREADY TALKING ABOUT THE ONLINE DRAMA WHAT AM I DOING?!
Anyway, I think a lot of the issues people had with this movie just mainly had to do with the extreme tonal shift from the first movie. The first Wonder Woman was essentially a war movie with a super-hero in it. This one is very much trying to capture a super-colorful, very heightened comic book reality. I think the first Wonder Woman very much wanted to take place in the real world; Wonder Woman 1984 has no such pretensions to realism. This isn’t really my preferred tone when it comes to comic book movies. There’s a fair amount of just plain silliness in this movie; sometimes the movie is intentional about this silliness – but at other times, the silliness is a result of the movie trying to be incredibly serious when it has just gotten through being really silly. Some of the MCU movies have a tight grip on the wheel that enables them to be really precise about these tonal shifts and actually nail them. This movie takes some big swings and it just doesn’t always come off. So the movie ends up going for a tone very, very different from the tone of the first Wonder Woman and then it decides to actually go for a couple of tones, not just one, and then the tone switches aren’t handled particularly well and you end up with a movie that feels pretty out of control and not in a good way.
And then there are, I think, just a few mistakes the film makes on a foundational level. I think one of them is bringing Steve back. The film gets a couple of good scenes from this whole Steve plot, but, on the whole, I just kind of wish they hadn’t done it. Because I don’t exactly know how one might have done it better and it is quite poorly done.
Still, the movie is absolutely a load of fun. I think the movie does have a few highs that are close to being as good as the first film. That jaw-dropping opening sequence is perhaps a bit problematic from a character standpoint, but it’s unbelievably gorgeous and thrilling. As an aside, the film also didn’t seem too long to me; I know a lot of people think it was overlong and that the prologue would be an easy cut since it doesn’t really connect to anything on a story level. I disagree on both points there. The invisible jet scene was also an all-time great comic book movie scene in my opinion; when I realized they were going there, I almost fist-pumped. I wasn’t expecting an invisible jet in this iteration of Wonder Woman, but, damn it, they pulled it off and the scene is genuinely magical. It also features the two funniest lines in the movie.
As well, I liked just about everything with Barbara up until she actually became Cheetah. Kind of makes sense as that’s when you really lose touch with Kristen Wiig in the role since Cheetah becomes a creature of almost pure CGI at that point. I think Wiig is fantastic; she has a handle on the tone, I think, that the rest of the film doesn’t where she’s able to be funny and then very sad and then quite scary at times as well. As to Pedro Pascal, well, I will say this: he is establishing himself as one of the most fearless actors working today. I have my issues with his performance and with the way his character is written, but he swings for the fences and, while his Maxwell Lord isn’t entirely successful as a character, he’s pretty ******* entertaining to watch. It’s clear that Pascal and Jenkins were on the same page in terms of really taking that character over-the-top and they did a great job if that’s what you want. Is Gadot still good on the role of Diana? Of course. This movie asks her to justify some character stuff that’s iffy and she isn’t great at papering that stuff over, so her performance here is a little more spotty than her work in the first Wonder Woman, but, on the whole, her charisma and energy still works like a charm. Another sequence that I thought was pure magic is the scene where she learns to fly; Gadot really sells all the emotion of that scene, which is pretty intense. It’s a shame the script couldn’t figure out how to integrate that scene into the movie better; I remember thinking as I was watching it that she was flying to Lord’s hideout on the island, but, as it turns out, she is actually only flying from where she is in Washington DC to . . . her own apartment which is also in Washington DC and, by the way, literally within walking distance. So, if you ask me, she spent a lot of time up there just cloud-surfing while the most powerful man in the world was executing his massive plan.
So, yeah, things fall apart in the last twenty minutes or so. The entire “touching the whole world at the same time via particles” is ******* stupid. The concept of every person on the planet having a good heart is cringey to the extreme. And Lord’s redemption in particular is . . . well, Pascal can’t sell it and that’s because it’s not well-written. That part of the movie is pretty bad, all things considered. The first Wonder Woman also had something of this problem, but not to nearly this extreme. I get what Jenkins was going for. The first Wonder Woman is a movie that wants to paint human beings as deeply flawed, but also capable of true heroism and sacrifice. This movie wants to go even farther and the humanist message of the first movie gets turned into pure corn. Straight off the cob, as Barbara Stanwyck might say. So, the optimism of this film is ultimately just pushed too far, until you can’t buy it. That’s a problem.
But I think I’ve been overly negative in this review and maybe the resolution will surprise you. Because, end of the day, I was very entertained by this movie and I did love a lot of it. I see a lot of the problems other people see, but my enjoyment, for whatever reason, wasn’t particularly crippled by those problems. I went back and forth a few times between a three-star rating and a three-and-a-half-star rating. I decided to match the generous spirit of the movie with my own and give it the benefit of the doubt. It’s very flawed, but very fun. As I’ve been writing this review, I’ve kind of talked myself into going with the lower rating of the two I was wrestling with, but, hey, a somewhat discordant tone between the body of the review and the ultimate ending? Just aping the movie, I guess. 3 ½ stars.
tl;dr – very flawed and without a firm grasp of tone, this messy epic still manages to be massively entertaining and boasts some great performances. 3 ½ stars.