Wonder Woman 1984

Too long, too slow. Quite uninteresting. An absolute ton of plot holes. DC destroy another movie. Did Gal Gadot forget how to act? Don't waste your time.

I saw the first Wonder Women and kind of enjoyed it, even though I didn't grow up knowing the WW canon. But it was a fun film that played with the fish-out-of-water aspect. But this - WW1984 - what in the hell was this? Again, I don't know that much Womder Woman history, but this seemed like a huge conglomeration of crazy story line, special effects, philosophical ramblings... it was a total mess.

Gal Gadot and Chris Pine are pleasant, appealing actors, and certainly pleasant to look at. And Kristin Wiig had a great role that I'm sure she had fun with. But overall, this was just a total mess of a movie. And Pedro Pascal...I can't figure out if he was great, or just did one of the most over the top performances in recent memory.

The first film is outstanding, it's exciting, it's fun, and apart from looking amazing, it has depth.

The problem here, it's so slow, and goes on forever and a day, did anything actually happen in the first ninety minutes? There was absolutely no action.

Chris Pine felt wrong here somehow, eye candy only, Gal Gadot, I thought she was pretty good, the shining light here, I just felt like she was battling against a miserable script. You could almost sense that she knew the script was no good.

The Villains were generally inept.

I won't be watching again, 3/10.

The follow-up chapter to Wonder Woman and the ninth instalment in the DC Extended Universe, Wonder Woman 1984 is devoid of everything that was refreshing about the original. Poorly envisioned, shoddily scripted & lazily directed, the film neither has the heart nor the honesty of its predecessor, and is a bland, banal & bloated mess that's further marred by its soulless drama, insipid action, cartoonish effects & lame performances.

Co-written & directed by Patty Jenkins, there are far too many cracks in the script that the writers never bother to remedy, and the sloppy execution on screen only results in a nightmare that's all over the place. Despite the plot being set in the 1980s, the era's vibrant spirit is nowhere to be found in the final print and the gleefully fun vibe & escapist qualities that the trailers promised is sorely missing as well. Jenkins does aim for it but her attempts simply fall flat.

Its 151 mins runtime is strongly felt and is in no way justified. The new characters are thinly sketched, have no meat on their arcs, and are never for once convincing. Gal Gadot utters her lines as if reading from the script for the first time and while that helped add to Diana's cluelessness in the first film, it only exposes Gadot's limited range in this sequel. Kristen Wiig however tries to make something of her sidelined role while Pedro Pascal just decides to have fun in return for an easy payday.

Overall, Wonder Woman 1984 is vastly inferior to the first film and is undeniably amongst the weakest entries in the DCEU. Just about nothing works in this latest addition to the franchise, for the plot is dull & derivative, the direction is sluggish, the action is uninspiring, the CGI is cringeworthy, the pacing is tedious, the acting is forgettable, and even Hans Zimmer fails to deliver the goods. In short, Wonder Woman 1984 is a Suicide Squad-level offering wrapped in bright colours. One of the dullest films of 2020.

I am no expert in comic books myself, but what I expect from a comic book movie is to be striking, visual, stereotypical and above all, consistent with its past and its planned future. WW84 was neither of these! It wasn't awful for a random movie made by students, but it was really bad for a film made by a major studio and starring talented people and having so much material to draw inspiration from.

First of all, Gal Gadot had a supporting role in this film. She may save the day at the end (well, sort of), but the main character of the story was Max, the villain. Then every other supporting cast member had a development arc, while Gadot had about half of one if I am being generous. Second, the story pushed in the invisible jet and that Wonder Woman can fly (!?) in a clunky and hard to stomach way. You almost saw the outline of the executive shouting "she needs to fly in the next movie!!!". And third I am wondering if this film was misandric or not. Men were consistently portrayed as weak, abusive, violent, lacking impulse control and heartless. If it weren't for three male characters whose only quality was they were not evil - and that includes Steve Trevor and the random guy he inhabited, I would have seriously felt under attack the entire film.

The result was something that felt like a draft story for a writer class, with bad CGI, improbable deus ex solutions to problems that were hard to swallow in the first place, underwhelming characters, poor action scenes, pointless Trevor appearance, unnecessarily physical solutions to problems that could have been tackled by simply talking to a person on a phone or something and so on. And the ending was about how nice the holiday season is after a catastrophe that affected every person on the planet and almost destroyed the world!

So no. No! I am not taking it anymore. I am tired of movies that are not made for children but assume I am one, and a dumb one to boot. I want good stories, I want compelling characters, I want people who do their damn jobs!