![]() But fresh goes better when Barb, who works in antiquities with Gal Godot’s Diana at the Smithsonian, happens upon the wishing stone one day at work. Wiig plays “Barb Minerva,” your classic klutzy rom-com ditz, who sputters awkwardly when spoken to, seems inexplicably invisible to men, and can’t walk well in heels. I suppose setting it in 1984 did allow for Kirsten Wiig to wear a bad perm. Wonder Woman 1984 maintains this perfect balance of refreshing / disappointing for the entirety of the film. Here again, it’s great that WB didn’t spend two hours on intense, Stranger Things-esque nostalgia pimping or do a rehash of all the same jokes from Hot Tub Time Machine, but it does leave open the question of why it bothered with the eighties at all. Oddly enough for a movie conspicuously set in 1984, the high-concept, Weekend At Bernies-esque plot is probably the most eighties thing about it. One of those one-off magical realist episodes sitcoms loved to do in the eighties. Here again the be-careful-for-what-you-wish-for rule is illustrated most acutely: WW84 has granted our wish for its plot not to hinge on heroes having to close a giant portal or battle a madman with a doomsday machine, but what we get instead feels like the plot of a Brady Bunch vacation episode, or a holiday-themed TGIF sitcom. Wishing on the stone grants the user whatever he or she wants, but with a catch (naturally). The plot of Patty Jenkins’ sequel - originally scheduled for this past summer, but bumped to a streaming release on HBO Max because of the pandemic - concerns a citrine wishing stone. In their place it seems to lack any guiding aesthetic principle at all. ![]() ![]() In fact, it embodies none of the many tired comic movie tropes we’ve come to recognize on sight. It’s not a jumbled collection of tie-ins. It’s not an extended teaser for a future movie. You probably already know if this is on your watchlist or not, but if it is, I think you should go in with lowered expectations.“Be careful what you wish for” is both the theme of Wonder Woman 1984 and what it represents in the comic book canon. There are no surprises in this story, and where the original felt fresh and invigorating, the sequel tastes stale and expired. There is no reason for this to be two and a half hours long, and you could easily make cuts here to get this down to 120 minutes, if not less. The most damning thing about Wonder Woman 1984 is its bloated runtime. I promise that you’ve heard these jokes before. I even had a disconnect with Steve Trevor as played by Chris Pine he still has that chemistry with Gal Gadot that you want to see, but they reduce him to the butt of tired fish-out-of-water jokes. They just wrote her the same way that The Amazing Spider-Man 2 wrote Electro, and that should tell you everything you need to know there. I also think that Kristen Wiig can’t do much with the sub-villain of Cheetah, but it isn’t entirely her fault. I know Pedro Pascal is a fine actor because I’ve watched Narcos, but he doesn’t have a ton to work with as this character who craves power for the sake of craving power. Instead, much of the runtime goes towards these villains, and I thought they were mostly lame. Even then, this movie suffers from the same problem as The Dark Knight Rises in that you get to spend a lot of time with the character in street clothes, but she isn’t in costume all that much. I still like Gal Godot as Wonder Woman, but that is the one compliment I have for this film. Not by much, mind you, but I do want to acknowledge that the thought crossed my mind. If I watched this with an interactive audience with audible reactions, laughter, and applause, I could have felt a bit differently about this. I will admit: I think this movie doesn’t do itself any favors on the small screen. This time around, I only had fun with the first ten minutes at the Themyscira Olympics, and I would have loved to see this story handled differently. I enjoyed it, and even though I have never felt the need to revisit it, I have a lot of goodwill towards it. Now I do still have positive feelings about the first Wonder Woman. I would personally argue that it is worse, but that’s just me. For better or worse, we now have Wonder Woman 1984 that is here to break the mold. I still don’t think we will see many blockbusters follow suit here, but time will tell, I suppose. It makes sense, especially given that these giant companies are bleeding money. All of these studios have been waiting for the other one to blink, and it was Warner Bros that struck a deal with HBO Max to release their movies for the next year on steaming while simultaneously going to theaters. Now it was only a matter of time before one of these big-budget blockbusters broke from the herd. ![]() He is determined to possess a gem that grants wishes, which could make him a formidable adversary. She has a new foe on the horizon: Maxwell Lord (Pedro Pascal). So time ticks on, and Diana Prince (Gal Gadot) has reached the year 1984.
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