What Went Wrong with Wonder Woman 1984?

There’s been a sensation within DC Comics movies over the past few years that they are trying to distance themselves from the rushed and rocky road of a cinematic universe. After Justice League, the next phase seems to capture a certain giddy and experimental wonderment that once seemed absent. Whether the prestige of Joker or the neon allure of Birds of Prey, there’s new freedom present to make DC’s lot not only more pleasing for an audience but far more distinct and experimental from the towering competition of Marvel.

Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman in Wonder Woman 1984. Clay Enos

In this context, Wonder Woman 1984 has a retro feel—and not for its throwback setting. Perhaps it’s because there haven’t been much in the way of sequels from DC with the exception of Birds of Prey, so we hadn’t had a chance to watch one succumb to sequel-itis. It’s a franchise disease I’d thought had been retired, but here it is again with all the familiar symptoms: too many characters, too many plots, and not nearly enough runtime to make any of it stick. While this doesn’t make it DC’s worst movie to come out of the Zack Snyder era, it does make it the most confounding.

After the events of the first film, Diana (Gal Gadot) has had many decades to get used to both the society of man and her role as Wonder Woman. Her day job finds her donning a suit and working at a museum, putting her knowledge of ancient cultures to use in archeology. She must keep her Wonder Woman outfit in a briefcase, as she seems to put it on on her lunch breaks for random acts of heroism. Still, it’s refreshing to see the opening act of her foiling a group of robbers who take hostages in a mall, resulting in her not only preventing casualties but inspiring some kids.

It’d be nice if the rest of the film could ooze that classic style of cinema superheroes that Richard Donner perfected with Superman. Imagine if it had had the wiggle room to let Diana slowly work her way into the public’s appreciation to attract a villain. Sadly, it has too much else going on, in terms of both its hero’s introspection and the villains she must best.

Steve and Diana reunite. Clay Enos/ ™ & © DC Comics

At the center of all this is a magic wishing stone that grants one wish each to three characters. Diana, who still hasn’t gotten over her brief relationship with World War I pilot Steve Trevor (Chris Pine), wishes for him to come back to life. It allows for Steve to return but with the catch of him inhabiting someone else’s body, an incredibly problematic development that is not once actually addressed. Diana’s coworker Barbara Minerva (Kristen Wiig) wishes that she could be just as strong as Diana, not knowing that she just wished for the powers of a godlike warrior.

The third wish, which changes everything, is by the failing industrialist Maxwell Lord (Pedro Pascal). Thinking about the long game, Lord exploits a loophole and wishes to become the wishing stone himself. The catch here is that while Lord has the ability to grant wishes in exchange for his own desires, his health dwindles. But maybe if he becomes successful enough, he’ll finally be able to earn the love of his stone-faced son, who doesn’t seem to love him no matter how much money he makes.

A lot of pieces have to fall into place here to get to the inevitable scenes of this film. Wonder Woman lore dictates that Barbara is to become the villain Cheetah, but her transformation seems confoundingly tacked on at the last minute, the only earlier tell being her love of animal print. Lore also dictates that Maxwell Lord will want to manipulate the entire world with his powers, but this development comes with a hefty dose of moral questioning in both the intentions of mankind and the mechanics of the stone’s monkey-paw logic.

Pedro Pascal as Maxwell Lord. Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures/ ™ & © DC Comics

But even without these comic book canon requirements, the intentions of this film feel sadly lacking. It’s clear the main reason Steve Trevor returns is so the chemistry between Gadot and Pine can continue. But even if you can distance yourself from the uncomfortable fact that Diana has to take advantage of another man against his will to make this happen, their time together feels dead. The montage of a bewildered Steve marveling at the 1980s feels standard and devoid of any major laughs, which is especially disappointing considering it could’ve been a great parallel with the previous film, in which Diana was the fish out of water.

One of the scenes that most perfectly encapsulates all the problems of the picture is when Diana decides to let Steve steal a jet for the purposes of her mission. Just as they start to take off, however, Diana mentions that she forgot there’s this thing called radar that can track them. Steve explodes with anger about not being told this prior. Also not told prior is the fact that Diana has been experimenting with turning things invisible and could probably make an invisible jet. It’s astonishing that the film has 151 minutes to burn and doesn’t have time to balance either Diana’s powers or the many plots in play.

The best I can say about Wonder Woman 1984 is that the action scenes have improved on a technical level. The scenes of a car chase in the Middle East and brawl within the White House have more weight and cleverness than having Wonder Woman zip around the screen like a CGI blur. Yet because there’s such a rush to get from scene to scene, few of these well-shot sequences carry the same heft as the previous film’s iconic battlefield scene.

It’s almost out of mercy that the film distances itself from the rest of the DC Universe to avoid further crowding an already bloated script. There’s so much going on that there’s hardly a moment for the film to question the severely mixed messaging in trying to showcase the emptiness of greed. Lord’s motto that life is good but it can be better is meant to imply humanity may be doomed if it desires too much and tries to take shortcuts to greatness.

Clay Enos/ ™ & © DC Comics

The film needs all those wishes to carry of vindictive nature to be worthy of a Wishmaster-style twist. After all, when the climax involves Wonder Woman trying to convince the world that the wishes are bad, how do you tell someone who wished for a cure for their cancer or to get out of poverty to go back to letting life run its course? Such questioning doesn’t come up because it’s about as uncomfortable as the idea that Diana at one point sleeps with Steve, who is using somebody else’s body. I’m not even going to touch the troubling depictions of the corrupted and divided the Middle East, which is a whole other can of worms.

It’s really hard to dig the film with all these mounting issues, but a lot of its fantastical elements, with the hero lassoing gunmen and literally riding thunder, are quite cool. While the film certainly does have some ambitions, too many of the morality angles are left unchecked that it’s a chore to let it all this slide for the sake of Wonder Woman saving girls and stopping mind-controlled minions without a single casualty.

I’m not willing to make the leap that this sloppy piling of underdeveloped ideas was entirely the doing of either returning director Patty Jenkins or DC veteran writer Geoff Johns, but there was clearly too much going in the production of this film for it to be anything more than a mildly mindless superhero story. It’s pleasing on a technical level, but any greater thought about the ramifications of the actions in Wonder Woman and Maxwell Lord makes the whole thing fall apart and reveals a morally untethered narrative.

At least it looked cool. Clay Enos/ ™ & © DC Comics