Wonder Woman 1984 (2020)

Director Patty Jenkins’s Wonder Woman was something of a revelation. After a few rather dour DC Comics-based movies, even featuring characters that aren’t known for being dour, there was a female-centric story about a idealistic, strong woman, lighting up the screen and making a distinctive mark in the nascent DCEU. Lead actress Gal Gadot really stepped into the role, and the overall movie reminded me in a good way of the first Christopher Reeve Superman film. I without question put it in my top ten list for that year and still routinely refer to it as one of the best superhero movies I’ve ever seen.

Naturally, there was anticipation for a sequel, and even with the pandemic, we got one both in theaters and on HBO Max (where I saw it), and here we are with Wonder Woman 1984.

The movie opens with a flashback to Diana’s childhood as the then-child competes in what can best be described as an Amazon obstacle course. The scene is bright, colorful, energetic, brings back both Robin Wright and Connie Nielsen as Diana’s aunt and mother, and is easily the best scene in the entire movie.

Unfortunately, the rest of the movie doesn’t quite rise to that level. Instead, we get to Washington D.C. in 1984 where Diana (Gadot) is living a quiet life working for the Smithsonian while occasionally putting on the red and blue Amazon armor to fight crime as an urban legend of some kind. A magical stone falls into the museum’s hands after Diana foils a theft of it, and from there, the real comflict of the movie starts as the stone does things, especially when it falls into the hands of desperate, wannabe oil magnate Max Lord (Pedro Pascal), with a side effect of doing something to Diana’s mousy friend and coworker Dr. Barbara Ann Minerva (Kristen Wiig). Diana has her own distractions, however, when her long dead love interest Steve Trevor (Chris Pine) returns for reasons I will not reveal here.

Now, there’s a lot to like about this movie. Jenkins, using a story she co-wrote, dispenses with any questions about the lives of Diana’s friends from the first movie with a series of shots of framed photographs in her home. Pine and Gadot still have good chemistry. Pascal and Wiig are good in their respective roles, neither of them outright evil so much as weak and a little desperate for something better than what they have. If anything, the movie’s theme is just that: people want what they can’t always have. And since Diana stands for truth, what happens when people just start to get what they think they want? Especially given the old adage of being careful about what you wish for?

But despite all the good, the movie never quite gels. It’s a bit of a muddled mess. Is it just a case where the first one was some sort of lightning-in-a-bottle experience? More likely, the movie was simply trying to do too much in the course of a two-and-a-half hour movie. Wonder Woman 1984, despite some good fight sequences, seems to aspire to being more than just a superhero slugfest. That actually fits the character of Diana pretty well: she’s a superhero who can fight and fight very well, but would very much prefer not to. However, the real evil in the movie is more abstract human weaknesses. Both of the movie’s villains are less evil as seduced by power they shouldn’t really have, and while that is something different for any superhero film, it does mean the end battle is of a more symbolic nature than anything else. And quite frankly, this movie isn’t quite up to that sort of story.

But that opening scene is still quite impressive.

Grade: C