Wonder Woman 1984 > Wonder Woman 2020

Wonder Woman 1984 (2020)

I miss seeing movies like this in the theater. I probably would have enjoyed it more if I was sitting in a dark auditorium, shoving fistfuls of popcorn in my face. That is not to say that I didn’t enjoy the movie, I just didn’t enjoy the experience as much. The movie itself was a worthy successor to 2017’s Wonder Woman. It wasn’t as good, nor was it as clean, but it was better than most comic book movie sequels. There were a lot of technical issues, from a near immediate continuity error with papers in Barbara Minerva’s briefcase 10 minutes into the movie to obvious CGI transitions throughout many of the action sequences. I don’t mind the continuity errors, but I thought for sure that they would use the extra months to clean up some technical issues (I also understand that they may not have wanted to put more money into something that is likely going to lose millions of dollars).

Beyond the technical issues, the story was a nice story with some surprisingly deep character moments. It was a largely predictable story that is carried by the performances. The plot is a retelling of any story involving wishes with new characters and settings. It would not have been good without Gadot, Wiig, Pine, and Pascal. Gadot and Pine reprise their roles as Diana Prince/Wonder Woman and Steve Trevor and their chemistry and Pine’s awe of the era make most of their scenes work. The minor subplot of WWII hero Steve Trevor discovering the ‘80s was fun, but largely unnecessary. For as much as Gadot is on screen, it is really Pine who is the heart of this movie. If they had tried to replace Steve Trevor as a character or Chris Pine as the actor, this movie would not have worked. The two newcomers put in good performances as the antagonists. Kristen Wiig as Barbara Minerva was great. She was a creative and excellent choice for the role of Diana’s best friend turned enemy. Wiig tends to annoy me in many roles, but she reigned in her quirks to fit the character, especially after her dark turn. As her character inched towards darkness with each successive scene, Wiig showed off her chops and made her arc believable and her character threatening. Less threatening was Pedro Pascal as Max Lord, but that was how the character was written. Pascal was great as the character, who was essentially a prototypical used car salesman, getting by on charm and charisma. While Cheetah was mostly comic accurate, Lord is not the same character as the comics. As a fan of the comics, I wish they used someone else, because it was a stark deviation from the original character, similarly to how DC changed Black Mask for the Harley Quinn movie. But for the story, Pascal was an interesting villain.

Overall, Wonder Woman 1984 was a good movie. It is not game changing like the first Wonder Woman and it isn’t worthy of award buzz like The Dark Knight. It is a fun movie with a good enough story and message to be worth a watch while we are all stuck home. I give Wonder Woman 1984 400 out of 600 stimulus dollars that we may or may not get.