Wonder Woman 1984 is a movie consumed by hype. The 2017 film was a marvel (one time, I promise) when it came out, with a perfect match of time, actress, and director. That film hangs over the head of 1984, which not only goes back in time in setting, but also in storytelling style, using a 1990s/early 2000s, maybe earlier, superhero movie storytelling style. That nostalgic storytelling doesn’t jive with what Patty Jenkins and Gal Gadot set up so perfectly with Diana Prince’s larger than life tale, though the movie can’t help but be brilliant here and there when Gadot gets to Wonder Womaning.
40 years after the events of Wonder Woman, Diana (Gal Gadot) is working as an anthropologist at the Smithsonian, still lamenting the loss of her love Steve (Chris Pine). After uncovering an underground stolen artifacts cache, Diana solicits the help of the shy Barbara Ann Minerva (Kristen Wiig), to understand some of the artifacts being shopped. Also on the hunt for these stolen artifacts is Maxwell Lord (Pedro Pascal, showing his face finally), a Gordon Gekko clone fully embracing the Reagan era of more.
With no real universe to tie to, Patty Jenkins was free to tell whatever Wonder Woman tale she wanted. Having expressed her love for the original TV show in the 1970s, Jenkins clearly takes part of that love and puts it into Wonder Woman 1984. Old superhero shows/movies would introduce the morality lesson they are trying to tell at the beginning of the show, then tell a tale about that lesson and resolve it by the end. Wonder Woman 1984 employs that strategy, using a flashback of a young Diana to hammer home the point that “no hero is born from lies.” So then we proceed to spend two and a half hours of Diana, Barbara, and Maxwell Lord learning that lesson. Jenkins paints the story in black and white for the most part, meaning unless Diana’s kicking some butt, you’re gonna want to pick up your phone a few times and zone out. The mythology is at best uninteresting plot device, and unfortunately, at its worst just plain nonsense. So much time is spent on the hunt for pieces of plastic that it makes me wonder if Jenkins saw Indiana Jones right before filming and thought about working in some of that into Wonder Woman 1984.
What makes the movie most frustrating though is there’s brilliance in the middle of the slog. The ways Jenkins and Gadot use Wonder Woman’s lasso are the best kind of movie eye candy, taking full advantage of Gadot’s athleticism and Jenkins’s ability to make Wonder Woman a larger than life figure. The mall sequence is what I was hoping WW1984 was going to be for fans. There’s a chase sequence in the middle that was unlike any car chase I’ve seen in a movie before that made my mouth open reflexively with what I was watching. And while Chris Pine coming back was executed stupidly, he helps draw out the best in Gal Gadot, bringing with him the funny, and the emotional impact of the pieces of plastic at the center of the story. No offense to Kristen Wiig and Pedro Pascal, but they’re too off in their little worlds to add much to Diana’s story here other than letting Diana look like a hero, which we already knew Wonder Woman was.
Like Barbara’s 80’s get up, Wonder Woman 1984 is a hot mess. Hot messes aren’t a disaster. They’re certainly capable of being hella fun and exciting in short bursts, but in the long run they are a tough hang and borderline destructive. The Wonder Woman franchise now has to face 1 of 2 realities, is it a Matrix: Reloaded, which shows the franchise about to fall of a cliff, or is it Thor: The Dark World, which did some introspection and pivoted into its strengths in the third film? I don’t know what will happen, but as long as Patty Jenkins keeps putting Gal Gadot in gorgeous eveningwear, lassoing around the planet, and beating the crap out of bad guys, there’s hope for the future of Diana Prince, a symbol of the power of a great woman for girls everywhere.