MOVIE REVIEW: Wonder Woman 1984(2020)

Finally. I’ve seen it.

After what turned out to be more than a full year of waiting from November 2019, to June 2020, to August, October, November and finally December, I can finally say this with confidence about Wonder Woman 1984:

It would have made a billion dollars if it weren’t for the pandemic.

Thanks to the unfolding global trauma of COVID-19, which has wrought havoc on families, businesses and industries across the world, we as a movie audience, in pure “first-world thinking” have to deal with a situation where we look at box office in a post-pandemic sense, which starts with the sequel to 2017’s Wonder Woman since it’s the first of WB’s new hybrid release experiment between theatrical exhibition and HBO Max on the same day. The fact that many theaters across the planet are still closed, while the ones that are open aren’t even at 50 percent capacity in many places, eliminated the chances of a pre-COVID box office for Wonder Woman 1984 right off the bat.

So in an effort to finally release the film and cut their losses, WB gave the audience a choice of seeing the movie in a theater if they could, or joining HBO Max and watching it while it’s available on the service until January 24.

Let me repeat that for all the angry theater purists who think this is the beginning of the death of theaters: audiences CAN and STILL ARE seeing Wonder Woman 1984 in theaters. I know many who revealed they had bought their tickets and gleefully attended as safely as they could.

I watched it on my new 50-inch 4K Vizio TV, a surprise Christmas present.

Alright, onto the spoiler-free thoughts about the movie, which for the record I am writing without having seen a single reaction from any mutuals on Twitter, because I wanted to get my purest thoughts down without any influence from anyone else.

I liked it. It didn’t blow me away like Man of Steel or BvS and I didn’t have as much fun with it as I did with Aquaman, Shazam or Birds of Prey, but I did like it quite a bit.

What jumped out to me the most was how much it felt like a bunch of other comic book movies I’ve seen over the years, which I don’t think was an intentional choice by Patty Jenkins at all, it’s just how I processed what I was seeing. Overall it reminded me of how I felt about Hellboy 2: The Golden Army. With that movie, the first hour was too campy and goofy for me and I wasn’t digging it, but the second hour with the golden army plot line itself was fantastic and I loved it.

The first hour of Wonder Woman 1984 is a little too on the nose 80’s campy for me at multiple times and I wasn’t sure about the deliberate pacing, which also reminded me a bit of Dark Phoenix, but the rest of the movie after the plot really starts going was VERY good. There’s a point where a global “chase” occurs that begins with a very special flight. From that point on, I LOVED the movie and really dug the choices that were made with the story and the acting. Just had to get past that slower, campier first hour, which wasn’t painful, just not really what I was expecting out of the gate.

The movie has a clear message and a theme that you’re introduced to at the very start of the film and you might wonder why it went on as long as it did, again speaking to the pacing situation. It’s paid off big time in the third act after a good amount of bread crumbs. I felt quite satisfied about it at the end and completely understood why they chose the 80s to tell this particular story. It fits that decade well.

No issues with the cast. At all. Gal Gadot is still the definitive Wonder Woman, with all due respect to Lynda Carter, it was cool to see her enjoy some renewed chemistry with Chris Pine’s Steve Trevor, even with the weird but still within the rules of the movie explanation for why he’s alive, and Pedro Pascal is a very solid villain as Maxwell Lord. The movie does what you should do with a strong villain, which is spend enough time with them to get a backstory on who they are and why they are threatening whoever it is they are threatening. This is much less one note than Ares ended up being in the first film, no question about that, and Pascal applies his talent extremely well to it throughout the film.

I can’t call Kristen Wiig’s Barbara Ann Minerva a villain because she’s really an antagonist. You’ll see in the film, she not’s entirely all bad or completely corrupted. Just enough that her own selfish wants take control of her decisions at the wrong time. Similar to what I thought of the whole movie, it felt like she was going to be mostly comic relief in the first half of it. Then she turns a corner halfway through thanks to a repeat incident, and there’s nothing comedic about her character for the rest of the movie. I dig it. Was never a fan of Wiig’s SNL comedy, but have grown to appreciate her range in film now. She is a worthy addition to the DCEU rogues and antagonists.

You know how I feel about VFX if you’ve read previous reviews or listened to any of my shows. Yes there are some parts that are better than others, but there was nothing in this movie visually that took me out of it. In fact, some of the visuals and fight sequences in the movie are downright phenomenal, especially given the not so astronomical budget this movie was made with. Diana’s powers and capabilities are on full display here. So much so that I’m ready to see her present day version do some more of it, because it was awesome.

I listened to Hans Zimmer’s score before the movie released. First time I had done that in while for a new movie. It was immaculate then and it was still pristine in the film itself. Even the campier parts of the movie still worked well with his style, which is very well known in the DCEU for sure.

Oh and yes, the piece of music that he repurposed from a previous DCEU film he scored was PERFECT. If you don’t know what it is, I won’t reveal it here but you should know it instantly once you hear it if you’re a fan of his previous DCEU work.

Wonder Woman 1984 isn’t perfect……but no movie really is and it didn’t bother me overall. There were some choices I didn’t dig in the tone and story and a few things I wish they had shown that they didn’t show at all that seemed kind of cheap and you wonder if we’ll get some deleted scenes with it later, but it was hardly enough for me to downgrade the whole movie by any means. The movie still had exactly what I expect from a DCEU film: a plot with a deeper, more emotional meaning for the audience that connects in a real world sense, organic situational humor instead of cheap one-liners and banter, and a vibrant creator-driven narrative that doesn’t feel exactly like any of the other movies in the franchise. At the end of the day, whatever I think of all the choices made, I’m confident that Patty Jenkins and Gal Gadot made the movie they wanted to make, and now I’m glad to have finally seen it even if it wasn’t in an IMAX theater on opening night this time.

It would have made a billion dollars if not for the pandemic, I have no doubt of that. So with that in mind, make plans for the third one, make a point to involve the coolness you teased in the mid-credit scene, and let’s see Diana Prince do battle in a present day setting where the world knows who she is and what she can do, because the cat is well out of the bag for all of us in the audience by now.