(Image- WarnerBros.com)
Wonder Woman 1984 was just released last December, and it is in my opinion one of the weaker entries in the franchise.
The film runs at a total of two hours and thirty-five minutes, so when you pair that with all the problems it has, the experience is excruciatingly long.
The first jarring issue that I have with this movie is, in fact, the runtime. A significant portion of the movie is not really necessary to the plot. This becomes apparent even in the opening scene where it shows Diana as a young girl competing against her fellow Amazons in a race.
The sequence, although well shot and choreographed, is only ever mentioned one time in the rest of the movie, and as a consequence, causes the viewer to feel a sense of wasted time.
The movie then goes on to show us adult Wonder Woman stopping a jewelry store robbery. This brings me to my second reason why I don’t like the film.
There is nothing wrong with the robbery scene in itself, but the way it’s shot and the choreography are done in such a way that makes it seem more like a cartoon. My issue with this is that it doesn’t really match the theme of the first scene or the next scene.
This mismatch of themes is prevalent in the entire movie. One second Diana is in her workspace calmly doing her job, and in the next, she’s throwing some guy around in the streets.
It stinks because this movie has a lot of really good scenes, but half the time it doesn’t make sense for them to be there.
Most good movies can have this issue once or twice and get away with it, but here it happens too much for me to look past it.
Another issue that a lot of critics have pointed out are the visual effects. It seems like the main issue that people are having is the effects surrounding Cheetah who is one of the villains in the movie. For the most part, I agree.
I think the lighting on Cheetah could have been done much better and the final scene with her feels like it was rushed and only exists so Diana has someone to fight at the end.
The issue here is that a lot more of the scenes have really good visual effects but because of the fight with Cheetah, they are overshadowed.
Speaking of Cheetah, let’s get into the characters. The casting of Gal Gadot (Wonder Woman), Kristen Wiig (Cheetah), and Pedro Pascal (Maxwell Lord), is what arguably makes this movie not a complete waste of time.
Pascal specifically as the devilishly charismatic Maxwell Lord, makes for an amazing antagonist even if he isn’t the standard, all-powerful supervillain.
Some critics don’t really like the plot of the movie but I disagree. It has to do with Maxwell getting the power to grant people wishes in exchange for their greatest trait or possession.
Wishes are something that are often mishandled in writing, but here, I really like how it is utilized as the driving force of the plot.
It is clear a lot of hard work went into developing the set and locations for the movie. The world is lively and colorful, which is exactly what I would expect 1984 America to be like. Overall, as a superhero film, I think it’s lacking in quality and I wouldn’t really recommend it to anyone. Wonder Woman 1984 is passable at best and is rather difficult for it to shine after Wonder Woman. My final rating for the movie would be a thumbs down.
