The filmmakers are happy to extend the film to a bloated 151 minutes and let filler scenes, such as a fashion show gag with Chris Pine and Gal Gadot, go on far beyond their logical limits. Unfortunately, this skipping of exposition is not done in order to streamline the film and make it as brisk as possible. Fantastical things happen in every scene throughout Wonder Woman 1984, but the film never spends time explaining how these things are possible within the framework of the story. It wants to inspire by telling the viewer to stop dreaming for the impossible- a truly bizarre and insulting message for a fantasy of justice and power.īut the simplest answer to why the film doesn’t work is its lack of exposition. But this makes no sense considering the film is about a woman who doesn’t age, can ride lightning with a lasso, and flies an invisible plane. If Wonder Woman 1984 had been a shameless remake of Batman Forever (a film I remain immensely fond of), I would’ve been onboard, but Wonder Woman 1984 still strives for profundity in its thematic focus on the cost of dreams and the pragmatic dimensions of what is possible in the world. It’s a film that embodies the campiest aspects of these early DC superhero films, which could be good, but it also shares their failure to cohere in terms of character, theme, and tone. Wonder Woman 1984 seems to extend the olive branch to the late Christopher Reeve sequels as well. In my review of Birds of Prey, I mentioned that the DCEU has recently rehabilitated the films of Joel Schumacher and embraced their candy-coloured, campy aspects. This isn’t automatically a bad thing, but it proves to be here. Thus, the emotional thrust of the story is centred on their histrionic, campy, entertaining performances instead of Gal Gadot’s muted one. And like the villains in Schumacher’s or Tim Burton’s Batman films, they are the true main characters of the work. In essence, Maxwell and Barbara are the two sides of Jim Carrey’s The Riddler from Joel Schumacher’s Batman Forever. Barbara becomes superpowered and confident, but loses the kindness that defined her as a person. Maxwell becomes drunk on power and greed, but loses sight of his relationship with his son. The meat of the narrative is devoted to Maxwell Lord and Barbara Minerva, who both get the emotional arcs denied Diana and Steve. She doesn’t get a comprehensible arc and most of her scenes are spent trying and failing to recreate the fish-out-of-water dynamic of the first film between her and Steve Trevor, except with each of them reversing their role from the first film. While Wonder Woman 1984 has been promoted as Patty Jenkins’ personal love letter to the character-she co-wrote it with DC Comics writer Geoff Johns and Dave Callaham and became the highest-paid female director ever to direct it-the film mostly ignores Diana. It also seems to be indifferent about the character of Wonder Woman herself. Everything seems arbitrary, because no rules are established for the stone or the world of the film. Events in the film simply happen, with no explanation or motivation. Unfortunately, it’s also incomprehensible. Diana has to stop him, but she’s too distracted by the reappearance of her dead love, Steve Trevor (Chris Pine), who has magically returned through the power of the stone.Īs this plot description shows, the narrative of Wonder Woman 1984 is silly, which is fairly standard for most superhero movies and not a problem per se. He becomes the Monkey’s Paw, in essence, and starts to gather all the powers of the globe to himself through the power of wishes. The oil charlatan Maxwell Lord (Pedro Pascal) is after the stone and eventually steals it and fuses with it, imbuing himself with the power to grant the wishes of anyone he touches, but with an unknown cost to himself and the wisher. For instance, Barbara wishes for Diana’s powers while touching the stone and magically finds herself strong and confident in the aftermath. Diana doesn’t think much of the stone until people start touching it and their wishes come true at a terrible cost. The plot kicks off when she meets a new colleague, Barbara Minerva (Kristen Wiig), an awkward gemologist who discovered a magical stone, “The Wishing Stone,” among her current objects of study. Poorly structured, haphazardly shot, tonally inconsistent, and with bland action scenes (that are few and far between), the film never manages to get going, let alone satisfy the bizarre vision of its ambition.Īfter a prologue set during Diana’s childhood on the island of Themyscira, the film picks up in the year of its title when Diana (Gal Gadot) is working as a historian at the Smithsonian. Billed as a brightly-coloured, triumphantly-positive sequel to the 2017 smash hit, the film not only doesn’t take advantage of its 1980s setting, but it fails to meet even the lowest benchmarks of competent blockbuster filmmaking. Patty Jenkins’ Wonder Woman 1984 is a disappointing mess.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |