I finished 2020 by spending an afternoon at the movies and seeing a double feature of Promising Young Woman (review forthcoming) and Wonder Woman 1984, so I ended the year on a theme of strong women and fucking lies. In both cases, I did not get the film that was promised by the trailers. In this case, I received many messages in the last week from people calling Wonder Woman 1984 one of the worst superhero movies ever made. No, it isn’t. It isn’t even the worst superhero movie of the year (hello Birds of Prey). It also isn’t even the worst Wonder Woman movie. Some of you clearly haven’t seen the 1972 made-for-tv movie; watch that piece of shit and talk to me about worst superhero movies. However, WW84 is just fucking lame. I feel like I’ll be throwing around the words “fucking lame” quite liberally in this review.
The trailer makes one think that the plot primarily follows the creation of Cheetah (played by Kristen Wiig), who is probably Wonder Woman’s biggest enemy historically in the comics. If the trailer was wearing pants, they would surely be on fire because this is a goddamn lie. The Cheetah plot is secondary to the main plot of Max Lord trying to take over the world by taking control of an object that grants wishes. This is a monkey’s paw Wonder Woman movie. Now I can understand why the trailer lied to me, as they were trying to cover up the fact that this is a Wonder Woman version of the fucking monkey’s paw. Have I mentioned how lame this is? Oh, but Wonder Woman is able to save the world through the power of love. By the way, this movie is fucking lame.
I have so many questions about how the wish mechanics work in this movie. With the monkey’s paw (which is a gem in this version), your wishes are distorted in some ironic way that turns your own wish against you. In this, you apparently exchange something for the wish. I think. This is never adequately explained. So Max Lord is able to take whatever he wants from you by granting your wish….. I think, but again that’s not how this usually works. Why would the gem ever want something in return? Did the gem want to get rich and retire to the beach with hot female gems in bikinis serving it daiquiris? Why would it work this way? The mechanic is so unclear that it took me some time to realize that Wonder Woman is supposed to be losing her powers because of this. Why would Max Lord be obsessed with taking something from everyone on the planet? I understand wanting something from the president, but what would he want from me? My DVD boxset of Married with Children? Is that worth the trouble? And why does the President of the United States wish for more nukes? He’s literally the one person that could just make that happen himself.
Mild spoilers here, but I also have questions about Wonder Woman herself. She wished for the return of Steve Trevor, who then is resurrected in the body of another guy. What the fuck happened to that other guy? Is he dead? Why is Wonder Woman okay with this? She just killed a fucking dude to bring back her fucking boyfriend. I mean, really? Also, Wonder Woman can’t fly. I would like to repeat that for the writers of this film: WONDER WOMAN CAN’T FLY! THAT IS WHY SHE LITERALLY HAS A FUCKING JET! It’s also amazing how little time she actually spends as Wonder Woman in the film; at one point, I was checking the time because it had been so long since she had appeared in costume. There was over an hour between her first and second appearances as Wonder Woman and fighting criminals, which makes one wonder if this movie really needed to be two and a half hours long. Maybe more Wonder Woman and less Aladdin and I could have been out of there 40 minutes quicker.
The bright spot for me is Kristen Wiig as Cheetah, and I never thought that I would write that. I think I may love her performance because she is doing an almost note-for-note copy of Michelle Pfeiffer’s performance in Batman Returns (they even both have a cat theme, for fuck’s sake). As derivative as it is, I did love the performance and thought that her performance and character arc are the only things that really work in the film. Unfortunately, every time I started enjoying the Cheetah plot, the movie would revert back to being a superhero remake of frigging Wishmaster. Gal Gadot is also still solid and the film looks fine. Too bad it’s so lame.
It probably sounds like I hated this movie more than I did, but I was honestly shocked by how dumb and sloppy the main plot was. Even without the Cheetah plot, this would not be one of the worst superhero movies ever made (seriously, people, stop saying that; there is a Dr. Strange movie from 1978 that you need to see), but it is incredibly disappointing. It’s also really lame. Not sure if I mentioned that.
Image By: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wonder_Woman_1984#/media/File:Wonder_Woman_1984.png
