Rod and Karen review the Patty Jenkins directed sequel “Wonder Woman 1984.” We also discuss your feedback from our solo reviews.
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SMR 315: Wonder Woman 1984
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Thank you for reviewing WW 1984. I was waiting to hear your thoughts because it is clear that we have entered the pile on and dig your heel in stage of internet discourse when it comes to this film. The pile on people are slamming it just to be a part of the clique; the dig your heel in people are defending it based on their belief that a Pro-Marvel, Anti-DC conspiracy is afoot. I appreciate you and Karen honesty critiquing the film looking at the totality of the movie, rather than the selected bits and pieces that fit your agenda.
As someone who saw and liked the first Wonder Woman movie, the trailers I saw in the theater made it look bad at worst and cheesy at best. I was curious is that might have been intentional ala The Brady Bunch Movie that chose to poke loving fun at the series. Seemingly, this was not the case and that’s unfortunate. Hopefully, the filmmakers get it right the third time around.
Patty Jenkins is a good filmmaker, but Wonder Woman ’84 just ain’t in the cards. Before I talk about the original as a jumping-off point, I feel like the writers did everything but make this film or its characters nuanced. Shit is more Cuban B’d than…well, Half Baked’s Cuban B. Rather than explain things, the Exposition never finds the resolution to these problems. The CGI is indefensible. There’s no excuse for how poorly rendered & not cleaned up certain set pieces are. Like, at least, fix up the backgrounds, so we can believe they’re in D. C. or Egypt. Wonder Woman’s setpieces suffer greatly for it, too, with bad close ups in action scenes, specifically.
Kristen Wiig, to me, is the best thing here & does the best work as Barbara Minerva/Cheetah. She scenes have the best flow. Matter of Fact, when she’s whooping, Wonder Woman’s ass in The White House, that looked very good, for the most part, giving one of the film’s foes some conviction. The dialogue near the end of that scene was nonsensical bile about whose humanity, but Wiig carried it. I even like Pedro Pascal’s Maxwell Lord, even though, his role, literally, didn’t amount to much, unfortunately; but, just be a dude who scams people & got the power to scam peoples lifeforces. Chris Pine is fine, but he didn’t need to be here. The Trevor/Diana stuff was resolved in the first film, I wouldn’t mind a cameo, but to make that a huge part of the film? It’s a flow killer. Speaking of flow killers, was how WW “wins” both encounters with Cheetah & Lord. Both scenes are also badly shot, engulfing the whole sequence in darkness like the 3rd act of the first film. It’s all unfortunate.
Now, as for the first Wonder Woman, I still like it, as I also maintain, it’s still one of the best films in the DCEU. However, I can also admit, it got this bare minimum “Good for you, Timmy” pass. Scenes do have flow, but others lack weight. Could’ve used more light too. That being said, still a good film & Patty Jenkins deserves a pass, for the most part. She gotta eat this L for ’84, since, she has more naming contributions on this film than the first film. You produced, wrote & directed this? Can’t give you a pass, no matter what. You made a titular character in her film boring & that’s unacceptable. Even worse, the film has no stakes & both bad guys just get to go on with their own lives, as if they didn’t do shit? The more I think about things here, I just more upset at it & I’m going to stop writing this, so I can move on from this disappointing film.
I agree with you guys review something that was distracting for me. Was the choice they made of Pedro’s son. Maybe it was just my nigga eyes but “did that kid seem Asian to y’all?†In my Larry David voice. As always peace
I thoroughly enjoyed this film. It was a great change of pace for a superhero comic book film. I caught myself looking at Kristen Wiig like “she got cakes†especially when Barbara got confident. Like Karen I enjoyed the fight scenes and the grounded nature of them. You have a film centered on women and the producers allowed the choreographers to make the fights look more realistic. I even liked the rom com elements. As a reader of WW in the comics, specifically Dark Nights Death Metal, is that Diana’s center mission revolves around the heroes and villains knowing the full truth and accepting things. On the other side, the screenwriters could have done a better job of telling his story and building him up. Also they didn’t develop the lore of the Dreamstone very well. Finally did either of you catch the Easter egg regarding Star-Blossom?