The worst thing about Wonder Woman 1984, however, is probably the role occupied by Kristen Wiig.
On top of everything else, it makes no sense. Here is a woman who can stop bullets with her wrist plates but oh, hi, let’s give the guy with no powers not only two-thirds of the movie, but most of the fight scenes and the job of saving the superhero. Wonder Woman herself learns this lesson the hard way when, for a brief spell, she wins her heart’s desire – no, not world peace, a cure for cancer, or as in the first movie, the defeat of an evil overlord, but the return of the dead boyfriend. The problem with the US and the world, it suggests, is that nobody wants to work any more, they just want to snap their fingers and see their dreams come true.
#Wonder woman 84 movie
Hilariously, towards the end Wonder Woman 1984 delivers an anti-capitalist message – as if trying to launder a largely conservative movie through a quick liberal spin cycle. It’s that all of these fails are presented with the smug, dishonest air of a movie that purports to be critiquing the very thing it is selling us. It’s not even that WW 1984 commits the ultimate sin of engaging Robin Wright, jamming her into gladiator gear, then dispensing with her services in the first five minutes of the film. It’s not that, for long stretches, Gadot has nothing to do but look passively into space, pining for her dead boyfriend. It’s not merely that the script is terrible and that in the first half of the movie, after an encouraging opening scene, hours seem to go by in which nothing happens. Still, the fact it’s so bad isn’t only disappointing but enraging. It’s a big, dumb movie, not an arthouse adaptation of essays by Mary Wollstonecraft.
A lot of women I know, particularly those with young daughters, sat down that afternoon ready, once again, to lose their hearts and vaguely wonder if they should start weight training. Because of the pandemic, the movie opened simultaneously in cinemas and for streaming on HBO Max, and while the budget had gone up to $200m, most of the other details were consistent with the first movie, with Jenkins directing, Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman and Chris Pine, looking more like Tom Hollander with each passing year, as the love interest. For once, it wasn’t about the men.Ĭut to the release, on Christmas Day in the US, of Wonder Woman 1984. If the fight scenes at the top of the movie had a slightly porny aesthetic, the intended audience was other women. And yet, it seemed to me, you could tell there was a woman in charge. If Wonder Woman didn’t feel cynical, it was still formulaic and subject to the usual requirements it is hard to imagine Batman fighting crime in a suit that ended at the bum-line. Sentimentality for a commercial beast of that size was probably always misguided, like celebrating the “empowerment” of women pole dancing in clubs run by men. It was almost pitiful: how gratifying – moving, in fact – it was to see a woman at the centre of a $150m (£108m) movie. Superhero franchises are, for the most part, made by men for men, but this movie, directed by Patty Jenkins, felt like a rare exception. It was an afternoon showing and the entire experience – slinking off work while the kids were at school, paying extra for the posh seat, walking out on to the street two hours later confident that, if push came to shove, I could probably bend metal – reminded me how transporting big movies can be.
I remember very clearly, three years ago, going to the cinema to see Wonder Woman.
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