Well, it’s certainly been a while since a big blockbuster released and Wonder Woman 1984 is undoubtedly one of the biggest of the year, sadly, this is largely to its detriment.
This film is enormous at 2 ½ hours, and unfortunately the content and pacing seriously struggle to make it feel worth that time investment. There is far too much of this film, particularly in the first half that feels superfluous. Patty Jenkins is on record as being proud of not having and deleted scenes for the first film. That philosophy seems to have carried over to the sequel. The film suffers enormously from scene bloat there is an entire opening flashback sequence that adds little to the films plot or themes, even while being one of the more fun sequences in the film. There is just so much bloat here that the film crumbles under its own weight and ultimately fails to deliver the emotionally uplifting story it clearly wants to tell.
That’s not to say it’s all bad though, Chris Pine’s return as Steve Trevor brings back the excellent chemistry he shares with Gal Gadot’s Diana. Certainly, the most effective part of this film deals with Diana coming to terms with her feelings about that relationship and how the relationship is portrayed certainly feels like the most authentic and affecting part of the film. While theme and tone are muddled by the scene bloat and a seeming uncertainty about whether this film wants to be a romantic comedy or an action drama, it clearly wants to the deliver the timeless holiday message about being grateful for what you do have and letting that be enough. A simple, classic message that gets bogged down by so many of the film's unnecessary complications.
For one thing, there are two villains, one of them is Max Lord convincingly portrayed by Pedro Pascal as an obvious stand in for Trump. The other feels like an afterthought both to the film and to the characters. Kristen Wiig's Cheetah feels completely out of place here and Wig's comedic talents serve largely to confuse the tone early and then her dramatic chops are wasted later on thanks to her character being underdeveloped and ultimately uninteresting.
The action sequences here are few and far between and they lack the visceral quality of the first films excellent fights, particularly the heroic charge across no man's land. Here a weightless looking Wonder Woman flits around disarming folks with her whip with a repertoire of moves that feel more fitting for Spiderman than the badass Amazonian Princess we expect. There also a weird Batman rip-off for some reason and it's all just serves to make her feel muted and indistinct as a superhero presence and I don't just mean when she's supposed to feel that way in the plot.
The film's approach to diversity is also kind of odd, it definitely has that Christmas film quality of trying to shove as much diversity into the cast as possible, and while this is not really a problem itself it does result in some kind of silly casting choices and perhaps unintentionally creates more stereotypes than it flouts.
An East-Asian man named Frank Patel is somehow a descendent of the Mayans, a black man, the only black man with real screen time is homeless, Kristen Wiig is a clumsy socially awkward woman that takes off her glasses and suddenly everyone is wolf whistling as she walks by, (also she's jealous of the other strong sexy woman in film), the Hispanic character grows up in an abusive household. Also, there's uh, some scenes in the Middle East.... The film's approach to representation seems to be similar to its approach to everything else, throw everything at the wall and seem what sticks. In this case though, what sticks makes the film feel distinctly eighties but for all the wrong reasons.
Overall, I was pretty disappointed with this, especially after the first film effectively resurrected DC's superhero film reputation with the only truly good film they’ve put out in this era, and sadly I think that still remains true. Wonder Woman 1984 feels messy, bloated, and confused even as it manages to break through it all to elicit an occasional smile. I think there’s a much better 90-minute film here that wouldn’t wear out its welcome by the time things get interesting. As it is, I doubt I'll ever watch this again.
6/10 Ponder Woman