WonderWoman 1984 Review

Wonder Woman 1984

Directed by Patty Jenkins and starring Gal Gadot, Chris Pine, Kristen Wiig & Pedro Pascal

Wonder Woman 1984 follows Diana Prince as Wonder Woman, living in the 80's, a decade of wealth, excess, success, larger than life colour and the ever present concern of nuclear warfare between USA and Russia. A mysterious stone, the 'Dream stone' comes into the museum and it piques Wonder Womans interest as it has the ability to grant wishes but at what cost.

I went to see this with the wife shortly after Christmas 2020 - one of the few blockbuster movies to hit in the year of the pandemic so I was looking forward to it but I was a bit disappointed in this sequel. While I think the acting was good, it felt disjointed and I was often left with more questions than answers throughout the movie. 'What god created the dream stone?', 'Why was Steve put into some random guys body?', 'Why wear the golden armour?', 'Didn't Maxwell Lord's son already make a wish?', 'what happened to the random guy while Steve took over his body & why does he not question his absence from the world during the apocolypse?'. I know the idea is to show/lead the audience rather than explain to them - no one likes excessive exposition but I found that the movie was expecting the audience to gloss over some glaring plot holes and to make some pretty big logic/narrative jumps at the same time and I often found it really confusing.

There were not many action scenes, the movie focused mainly on the relationship between Diana Prince and the resurrected 'soul' of her long dead boyfriend Steve Trevor (Chris Pine) in another body. Wonder Woman herself only makes an appearance a few times - the first being the Shopping Centre (Mall) scene where she busts the robbery of the jewellery store (where the Dream stone was located). I found this a great scene which set a great lighthearted tone but it was quickly lost as the movie moved into the heavy exploration of love and loss between Diana and Steve but also the relationship between Maxwell and his son. The battle between Wonder Woman and Cheetah was particularly difficult to watch with the light dialled all the way down to the point where it was almost impossible to follow what was happening.

All in all, the Dream Stone is a great concept and the characters of Maxwell Lord and Cheetah were great but I think they bit off more than they could fit into this movie - especially at the 2 and a half hours mark so I suspect there was a lot more cut to get it down to that length. There are a lot of great scenes but it lacked cohesion and had a lot of mixed messaging.