Aditi AgrawalIMDb: 5.5/10
Wonder Woman 1984 is pursuing the best film ever made by the beleaguered DC cinematic world. The first Wonder Woman, published in 2017, was what DC had to be. In comparison to the gloomy brooding sound of Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice, it was cheerful and thrilling.
Unlike the Suicide Squad, her comedy efforts were successful. And, unlike Man of Steel, it was true that Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot) exuded optimism even in the worst times: World War I. Too bad Warner Bros. pressed for a generical climactic sequence against Patty Jenkins’s wishes even at the expense of the film. It was true of her character’s origins.
Wonder Woman 1984 Review: Our Take
Wonder Woman 1984, therefore, has immense space to fill. The sequel unluckily gets out of the hands of its writers, and regardless of what Gadot does – and she can do a lot – her coming adventure cannot be spared from a misfire.
Wonder Woman 1984 would still be larger and grander than her counterpart, which is the case for any superhero sequel. During World War I, Wonder Woman mostly happened. Where are you going from that scene? The sequel title shows that it was established in the ’80s and is particularly notable for selecting “1984.” There is an Orwellian relation, but oddly enough, this is not seen in Wonder Woman 1984.
It does not even use the reason to set retro songs of the 80s, like many other films and TV shows of the 80s. The only explanation seems to be thoughts about a nuclear holocaust, but Wonder Woman in 1984 was possibly the same in the 1960s. Why is it in 1984? The builders – Geoff Johns and Dave Callaham, the returning Jenkins – realize that they don’t care to tell anyone. They don’t.
As with our Wonder Woman 1984 review, according to the title, Wonder Woman 1984 has two items to concentrate on: the Amazonian goddess and the nostalgia of the 1980s, which the movie was most likely to bank upon. Yet, in any event, their maximum potential is not pursued.
Wonder Woman had the good luck to pick someone so good as Gal Gadot to wear the cuffs from among the few fascinating DC icons, and yet even she could hardly save a mostly soulless, wonderless film.
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How it all began
Wonder Woman 1984 begins her Amazon Games on her home island in Themyscira, with young Diana (Lilly Aspell)—like local Olympics, she is crazier. It is like their local Olympics. At the same time, Diana’s quest to become successful drives herself to be bigger, quicker, and stronger than anyone else while her rivals are almost twice her size. And even though she is smart, Antiope (Robin Wright) tells Diana that she always needs to be honest.
The film, which leaves World War I trench and German trenches for Washington DC in 1984, is a follow up to 2017’s Wonder Woman, is one of the best ongoing DCEU films to exist. Diana Prince took up her job at Smithsonian and spent her weekends protecting joggers from stumbling over and malls in nearby areas being robbed. Except for fashion, the 1980s had relatively little impact on the WW84.
The Music and the Filming
As while drafting the Wonder Woman 1984 review, I do not remember even if I could, as we were promised in the Trailer a year ago that we may get to hear a single groove in Hans Zimmer’s Gargantuan song. The music is more likely to transport you to the Shire and leave you there, especially in the Themyscira opening subject.
The filming fundamentals are, therefore, a much more significant problem for the Wonder Woman film. Wonder Woman 1984 takes about 70 minutes — very tedious — to get moving, but even though it finally starts, it routinely forgets that films are based on momentum.
This doesn’t mean there’s not a great deal happening — well, as we’ll speak in a minute about, Wonder Woman 1984 packs so much, but all of this seems to be work with no urgency and relevance for any of it. It has two villains underdeveloped, one not well served. It has a returning desire in passion, whose return is clumsy, ethically. And it never wholly deals with the seismic ideas and situations of the protagonist’s life.
In Comparison with Mulan
Oddly, this falls in the same month as Mulan, which also puts a tremendous value on being faithful to oneself. Naturally, this is the tenet that Wonder Woman 1984 needs to build itself upon. But the rest and the premise seem to be lost in the various plot strands that they are trying to balance, which is only half successful.
Well, with our Wonder Woman 1984 review, we have to be careful while making a distinction between the plot of Mulan and Wonder Woman so that we are able to present the exclusives of this movie.
Director Patty Jenkins sets up the moral lesson she will send this time with an overly long flashback beginning in Diana’s homeland Themyscira. In a shorter version of the Ironman Triathlon from the Amazon, a young Diana finds no dignity to take the short road of your wishes.
The reality will still surface as triumphant, and nothing will be achieved by deception. In her life again, more than 60 years since she has joined the human world, lessons and values emerge. These movies usually signal a weak script. However, moving on with our Wonder Woman 1984 review.
Diana and Cheetah
One day, Diana encounters a new colleague Dr. Barbara Minerva (Kristen Wiig), in the museum, who has become a specialist in several fields but does not has the natural charisma of Diana. She is mad, incapable of attracting people, and is forgotten quickly. Diana appears to be the right fit for Barbara, and she seems so amazed and enviable for what she is.
Barbara would like it to be just Diana. It is convenient for Diana from her point of view. And though Diana’s loss is that she lost all those who loved her, while Barbara, on the other, has yet to begin the experience of being loved. Wonder Woman 1984 soon proves that Wiig is the best choice to play someone like Barbara with her comedy experience and chops.
Diana becomes friends with the awkward Dr. Barbara Minerva, played by Kirsten Wiig. Together, they stumble upon an ancient rock that vows to make anyone’s dreams come true. But the mystical stone always seems too dumb not to turn your eyes to even in a premise that Diana, who is looked at as the goddess between men.
Diana, already in the demise of Steve Trevor’s death, wishes him to return, and Barbara wants a strong, handsome, and cool new friend like her. They all get what they want, but it comes at a high price, just like the Monkey’s Paw.
According to our Wonder Woman 1984 review, Kirsten is excellent in the most sinister moments, which are electric along with pretty good comedic parts. She hit a creep on the streets was one of the more humane ones, if not all-in moments of the movie.
But she still gets hurried and unjust treatment, with how she turns into Diana. It is a change, of course, when she helps her friend discover the true story of the rock, and soon after that, she beats her to the pulp and calls her a snob to believe she is not deserving of the same power as hers.
There is a really good center with Barbara about Diana being the only human exception, while Barbara itself isn’t an individual and she doesn’t have anything. When she becomes a Cheetah, she becomes what she wants (with a cost). But Wonder Woman 1984 does not bring back the requisite thread and ends up in a thematic cliché field before delving into uninspired areas.
Her combat turns her into an obstacle, instead of a destination to herself, on the road to the video game boss. In the first film (the 2017 wonder woman), Jenkins has been pushed into a climactic fight, but that’s all her own in the film.
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The Character of Pedro Pascal
It was quick to create Wonder Woman 1984 around this dynamic, but Jenkins claims that the combination should be suited to have a third wheel: Maxwell Lord (Pedro Pascal). He is an oilman, and a media guy promises to give money to average citizens who invest in his enterprise? Max is a small-time guy running a Ponzi scam behind closed doors.
He looks a little like Better Call Saul’s Jimmy McGill. Yet Max plans to change his luck with an old object that claims to have supernatural powers. And, of course, Barbara’s desk comes across with the item, where the polyglot Diana decodes that it makes wishes come true. Diana and Barbara chuckled, calling it “very lame,” but they desired their best wishes privately.
But Pedro Pascal’s slimiest, losing businessman Max Lord is the most desirous of the rock. He needs the genie to be contained in a bottle that is taken (so smartly) right from Disney’s Aladdin due to a failing company with his funds going empty. He switches to the main villain in the film, who takes the story to faraway lands.
As I am writing the Wonder Woman 1984 review, I can say that I personally like Pedro, but here Pedro takes fun being the pathetic King, it is difficult to say the same thing about the rest of us. He has a wide portion of the screen, maybe best split between Cheetah and Wonder Woman.
With Max, Wonder Woman 1984 tries to illustrate the value of integrity in its early morality. Max wants the universe to think only about itself—there is a late-game montage that shows us how he has built his worldview—but the real cost of the claims he creates is concealed. But these ideas are again not persuasively arranged, and the result feels half-earned.
Whether this arc is best-handled lies not in its conclusion like the always happening ending battle, but in Diana’s words and her message of empathy and harmony that interacts with the caring roots of the personality. In an increasingly distant planet, where biodiversity is more concerned than ever, “We cannot have all what we want” is a significant statement.
Steve is back!
But the main thing that hurt my heart while writing the Wonder Woman 1984 review was what was done to Steve Trevor. Steve was once a leading light and the savior to himself and is now reduced to an enthusiastic puppy, which goes along with the adventures of Diana.
He is only like an assistant, who is a sacrificial lamb who came to life. Diana and Steve’s tragic love tale, which was only parallel to Steve Rogers and Peggy Carter’s at MCU, hit the first series, although a sad heart. However, even the dead are not left for simple cash collection in peace here.
I know we love Chris Pine in a fanny bunch, marveling at the marvel of an escalator, a rocket, or a trash can, but one has to realize what our desires cost us.
Princess Diana herself
But in this mess, Diana herself is missing. The movie never really engaged in Diana’s core dispute (as it does not deal with the time in which she’s in), of the personal sacrifices she made in the men’s world, and how she has been stasis over a misplaced passion for over six decades.
In the person she is, she never really lets us explore what’s inside her thought process. Gadot performs much – Wonder Woman 1984 works precisely the same manner she plays—as she conveys the humanity of Wonder Woman, the charm, the elegance, and power in movement, her faces reflect her agony and resolve to do the best thing always.
She has made the role her own so much that everyone else can’t picture it. With our Wonder Woman 1984 review, we can say that Gal Gadot is Winder Woman.
Sadly, she works in a bundle that is overwhelmed and unaware of itself. The action pieces do not fit the original World War I series. Strangely, the first extensive action set piece in the desert often looks weak for a film that costs 200 million dollars.
If it was terrible CGI, editing, or action choreography, I couldn’t put my finger on this problem. The movie is better with a little sprinkle of romance and comedy. The return of Steve rolls the fish out of the water from the original.
The movie only has three additional characters, and they continue to hog Gal’s Diana’s highlight. Gal’s solid costume was still as glorious in the action scenes as the Wonder Woman though she was charming enough as Diana. Sadly, they’re coming so few and far between this time.
There are only four scenes where she can put her metal skirt and slide across the floor for a run-time that lasts more than 2.5 hours. And even in these four, from the first part of the unforgettable no man’s land, almost nothing comes nearby.
The film’s first hour is spent making these two new essential characters, but the villagers’ two original storylines are very sluggish. And it’s not that they have grown richly and deeply. It swings out from point A (uncool, nerdy, and uncomfortable, or desperate and on the brink) to point B (cool, sexy, and attractive or all-powerful and greedy). WE understand that reaction of yours while reading Wonder Woman 1984 review.
Patty Jenkins gave DCEU a film that it could finally take pride in. The positive bits were so fantastic that, in the end, they made you forget even the terrible CGI fight. I had hoped that Patty had complete control to do what she wished, share her story, and finish it the way she wanted. But I suppose she would not have wished wisely for a tale as bland and uninspiring as this one.
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Wonder Woman 1984 Review: Half-Baked and Unexplored
However, it is half-baked or unexplored in the beef and potatoes. And now that Wonder Woman 1984 launches HBO Max (although only in America) at the same time, I can’t help but believe that there can be miniseries about the character. This treatment is now being received by Zack Snyder’s Justice League.
This will send us episodes about how Diana does without her friends who died, episodes that encourage villagers to grow entirely, and events focused on the relationship between Diana and Steve after a miraculous return. It needs it because it struggles too hard to fit all in.
Since it’s 145 minutes long, that seems strange. But the stories it desperately seeks to incorporate into a single film take even more time to tell.
That’s all for our Wonder Woman 1984 review. Hope this helps you in deciding whether to watch it or not.
Baishaly Roy
