Dr. ThurmThurm’s Wonder Woman 1984 Review
Save for a few solid performances and some good ideas Wonder Woman 1984 is an atrocious film and the worst thing I’ve watched this year. I was excited to watch this movie on Christmas day with my parents, but sadly I spent most of this two- and half-hour movie shaking my head in disgust. If there’s a Lifetime or Hallmark channel equivalent of a superhero movie, this is it. Predictable, cringy, and eye rollingly terrible at almost every turn.
I’ll start with the good. Gal Gadot is great, Chris Pine is great, and Pedro Pascal chews up scenery every chance he gets as the villain. The chemistry between our hero Diana and her long-lost boyfriend Steve is still great. I’m glad they brought Steve back even if the set-up is corny. He brings humor and heart to this film kind of the same way Diana did in the first film. He’s the fish out of water this time instead of her, and it works. The 80’s setting is also a nice departure from other superhero films as well. The colors and fashion really pop and give the film a unique aesthetic. That’s all I got.
The bad here is pretty much everything else. I can overlook a boring film. This is an aggressively bad film. The story here reminds me a lot of the Disney channel made for tv films I used to watch as a kid. People’s deepest wishes are being granted by a magical stone, which is of course awesome until it’s predictably not. The villains keep wishing for more, and more, and Diana has to learn a lesson about true victory, blah blah blah, cue the bad action scene and forced side villain. Executed well this could have been fine. It was not.
There are no good action sequences here. There are mediocre ones and outright terrible ones. There are multiple shots where it looks like Diana is awkwardly running on a treadmill towards the camera with a half assed picture hanging behind her. Characters pick up heavy objects like they are made of styrofoam. Nothing moves right, and nothing looks right. It baffles me how director Patty Jenkins looked at this and thought it was passable. They use Wonder Woman’s whip ALOT in the film and absolutely none of it passes the eye test. About twenty minutes in after a brief intro Wonder Woman stops a robbery and, in the process, punches a guy into what I can only remember as a large silver hoolahoop and begins spinning around the room in a very slapstick, looney-tunes type way. Oh no. I said to myself. There was still over two hours left. It’s not boring, which is the last positive thing I’m gonna say in this review. There are two sequences towards the end that are kind of burned into my brain. They are the emotional climaxes of the film and they have all the subtly of a 90’s music video. The soundtrack here booms, points a gun at your head and say’s FEEL SOMETHING. I wish I could, but my eyes are still rolling.
Wonder Woman deserved better. Gal Gadot deserved better. Chris Pine deserved better. Pedro Pascal deserved better. This movie sucks and I sincerely hope they go in a very different direction with future films. Wonder Woman 1984 is a waste of time and I won’t be recommending it to anyone.
