Despite a promising opening, Wonder Woman 1984 doesn’t make your dreams come true.
In Wonder Woman 1984, the opening scene in Themyscira was well done and sets the tone for what seems to be a good DC movie. As the movie went on, however, it gradually became more and more apparent that the plot was a mess. Often throughout the movie, my husband and I asked each other why something was happening or how things worked because it felt like so many things were just shy of being explained fully. It reminded me of when a novel is adapted to a movie and then loses all the narrative details, only this wasn’t adapted from a novel. I don’t even think there’s a specific comic run it was adapted from, though admittedly I am not super knowledgeable about the DC comic world. I did hear, though, that Minerva—in cat form—is one of Diana’s main villains in the comics, yet she only stays a cat person for about five minutes.
Considering this was a superhero movie, there was a lot of downtime without superhero action. The screenwriters try to exchange the action element for more emotional drama, but for some reason I just could not get into the feelings of those scenes, which is very unfortunate since the ending relies on empathy. The 80’s imagery feels too heavy handed, especially the eye-roll inducing fashion montage. I’m not even sure why this had to be set in 1984, rather than just making it modern day.
Villains
There are two villains in this: Pedro Pascal’s power-hungry Max Lord and Kristen Wiig as the clumsy weirdo Barbara Minerva. Thanks to an ancient magical artifact that grants people a single wish, Barbara starts becoming like Diana—strong, cool, sexy, and special—while Max wishes to take the power of the artifact itself.
Barbara quickly gains confidence as she begins turning heads and realizing how unnaturally strong she is. Unwilling to return to her old life, she essentially becomes Max’s bodyguard, and he, in turn, grants her a modification of her wish that turns her into a… cheetah woman? I can only assume this was because she used the term apex predator when explaining to him what she wanted to become. Throughout the whole movie, I kept waiting for the explanation of how she would ultimately turn into a cheetah, thinking it would be maybe a punishment for her wish or a misinterpreted wish, and I still don’t totally get why he thought she wanted to be a literal cat person, but it was actually something she was fully on board about, which is the point I really want to talk about. Barbara’s entire concern at the start is that everyone thinks she’s weird, and it causes them to talk about her behind her back when they think she can’t hear them. In the end, though, she’s proud to be a mutated cat woman, literally the weirdest thing she could be. Having said all that, since she was apparently happy with the change, I don’t really understand why she did ultimately renounce her wish in the end (since she is shown as having reverted back to her human form) unless that is just a byproduct of Max renouncing his wish, which might have undone all wishes.
In any case, since she didn’t know when she originally made the wish that Diana was basically a goddess, what she intends is to look more attractive and fit in better. Wish or no, she starts gaining more attention at first because she starts dressing nicer and doing her hair differently. Nothing is stopping her from doing that without a wish from a magical stone in the first place. I get that she was clumsy in the heels, but that isn’t stopping her from wearing dresses or styling her hair. This doesn’t even go into the shallow nature of having a woman character’s deepest wish to be sexy, which was especially unexpected since this was a female director.
Max inexplicably knows about this “dream stone,” an artifact so obscure that even Barbara and Diana have never heard of it, in their respective professions as artifact curators. He thinks that if he can get his hands on it, he will gain access to unlimited wishes, which would save him from bankruptcy and grant him respect and power. When he does get a hold of it, he wishes to take its power. Having used up his only personal wish, he then manipulates others into either wishing things for his benefit or wishing their own desires but, in turn, takes whatever he wants from them as the cost. It’s not clear how he knew he could pick his own price for these wishes and have them work practically as if he is getting an extra wish himself. The more wishes he grants, the more physically haggard he becomes, but he magically gets around this pretty important side effect by explaining to Barbara that he’ll just take back his health as the price for wishes sometimes.
The wishes he gives away start turning the entire world into chaos as political powers use them to go to the brink of war. Still, Max is not satisfied because gaining power always leaves people wanting even more power. Max uses a broadcasting system to “touch” everyone in the world and grant their wishes all at once. First of all, how does this even work? The plot tries to offer some sort of explanation but before this, he always had to be physically touching the person. In the story, the system is some sort of proton ray (or something). I don’t see how that should count as Max physically touching them, especially when he is just behind the camera and not actually in the beam. Secondly, he’s using up all potential wishes in one go. If he ever wants anything else after this is done, he’ll be hard pressed to track down whoever is left who didn’t use up their wish here. Kind of shooting himself in the foot there. Anyway, Diana ends up convincing him to renounce his wish by making him remember how he got to this point and convincing him that the only way to save his son is by letting go of his obsession with power. It just wasn’t clear to me why he changed his mind. I’m guessing the flashbacks were supposed to make him think of how he was becoming like his own father who wasn’t a good father to him, but that isn’t really the emphasis of the memories. Or maybe he finally puts two and two together and realized that nuclear war means he and his son will probably die? He didn’t seem concerned about that when he willingly gave all these people a bunch of new nuclear missiles, and they didn’t really make it clear that this is the conclusion he is coming to either. I’m also not sure how he heard his son calling mentally to him when the son has already used his wish.
Dream Stone
The dream stone, as Max and Barbara call it, is the product of the god of lies. It tricks the user by granting them a wish, but in return it takes something equally important to them. I really thought the effect of the stone, however, seemed more in line with greed than lies. The main theme throughout the whole movie is, as stated above, someone who gets power always wants even more. This was true in the case of both Max and Barbara, and is practically stated by the President of the United States. When it is revealed late in the movie that the dream stone is using lie magic rather than greed magic, it feels kind of out of the blue. Yes, Diana is losing her powers because of her wish, so there is technically deception there, but that doesn’t seem to be the main point of the stone. My guess is that the screenwriters wanted the contrast to her truth lasso, but while the lasso did help save the day, I don’t think the two need to be in direct opposition for the rest of the story to play out the same way.
Diana and Steve
It is totally understandable that Diana wishes for Steve back. What is not understandable is how neither she nor Steve ever care that he has taken a body from someone else. Sure, they mention that it happened, but they aren’t the least bit worried about where the body’s consciousness went or whether the man would like his life and body back at some point. The only reason Diana renounces her wish is because she needs her powers back, not because it isn’t fair to expect Steve to stay forever in a body that belongs to someone else. I feel really bad for that guy as he snaps back into his body after a few days absent, finding himself randomly standing outside in the middle of the day, while riots are going on around him and everyone is talking about nuclear war. I also understand why Diana would want to sleep with her boyfriend who she has missed for decades, but it’s downright creepy that this dude’s body is used for sex without his knowledge or consent. If the screenwriters are never going to address any of the problems that come with having Steve in someone else’s body, why not just have him physically manifest? The dream stone can make things materialize out of thin air, but it can’t materialize a body for Steve? I’d understand the gravity of having Steve’s consciousness in someone else’s body if it was actually acknowledged that this was a bad thing, but the plot never bothers to concern Diana and Steve with the deeper implications, which leads to underlying morally-icky aspects.
At one point, Diana and Steve steal a plane from the Smithsonian to fly to Cairo. Apparently a museum plane, for some reason, is in perfect working condition and fully fueled (with enough to get them to Cairo), Steve knows exactly how to fly it (even though the planes he learned to fly were early on in plane history and probably don’t handle exactly the same), and there is absolutely no cause for concern to take the plane directly through fireworks as they are exploding (which I would think runs the risk of causing damage to the plane). Not to mention that they are in a hurry, but take the time to enjoy the fireworks. What should have been a visual spectacle of a scene ends up just being frustrating.
After giving up Steve and regaining her powers, Diana dons this incredible armor set that was able to hold off an entire Spartan army, but it breaks within moments of fighting Barbara in cheetah form. I understand that Barbara is magically enhanced, but she’s just one (cat)person compared to a legion of trained warriors. Also, since the armor has wings (for all of ten seconds), I thought it would have been interesting if she first learns to fly by wearing this suit, but then has to learn to fly on her own once the wings break.
Now, for lasso logic – sometimes I just don’t know. Does she use a cloud to propel her forward once? Does it split into two when she is lassoing robbers early on? At one point, to showcase her powers waning, her hand slips from the lasso while in mid swing (saving two children who definitely should have noticed several huge tanks barreling down the road toward them and gotten out of the road long before the tanks reached them), but somehow she magically has the lasso at her hip in the very next scene. Had they climbed up a building to retrieve it? Does it return to her because it’s magic?
Cliches
All movies have clichés, and the fact that they appear doesn’t necessarily make a movie bad per se. But this movie doesn’t do them very well. Something grants wishes but there’s a hidden price? Overdone. Clumsy nerd literally takes her hair down and automatically looks more sexy? Shallow and overdone. Superhero loses their powers? So many superhero sequels have that as a major plot point. Even the out of place (or, time I guess) vibe from Steve doesn’t work as well as it has in other movies with the same concept.
Closing thoughts
Overall, I was very disappointed; I was intrigued by the concept of a “genie” in person-form who uses wishes to manipulate people. I just wish they had done a better job executing both this initial concept and how this element of the plotline ends. There are so many things they could have done better: most of the emotional beats feel forced, the first half really shoves the 80’s vibe in your face, and the villains’ motivations don’t follow through well (among other poorly explained or unclear plot threads).
Logan’s Score: 3 out of 10