Wonder Woman 1984 Is Not Time Well Spent
Director: Patty Jenkins
Writers: Patty Jenkins (story by), Geoff Johns (story by) |
Stars: Gal Gadot, Chris Pine, Kristen Wiig. Pedro Pascal
Running Time: 2Hr 31 Minutes
Rated: PG-13
Have you’ve been noticing the title of films lately? Titles tend to set the tone of what you are about to watch. Sometimes the titles are very important in that it tells you everything that you need to know going forward. Sometimes the titles are just so convoluted that you sometimes leave scratching your head about what you just saw. And I point this to you, Harley Quinn, with your block long title of Birds of Prey: And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn’ Now cones the title of Wonder Woman 1984.
One of the first questions that you ask is. Why 1984? One would think of all the significant things that happened in 1984: HIV, the assassination of Indira Gandhi, Apple’s “1984” commercial, the Soviet Union boycotts the Summer Olympics, crack cocaine shows up on the streets of LA. Purple Rain hits theaters, Michael Jackson’s hair catches on fire during the making of a Pepsi commercial, Marvin Gaye is shot and killed by his father, or any other notable moments during 1984 could have been revisited but in fact, none were even addressed. So why the significance of 1984 I ask again?
Two and a half hours is a significant time to sit through a movie to find answers to your questions. A great proportion to the film could have been reduced and not suffer any loss of storytelling. The thing is though, you only wind up asking more questions as it went on. The first question you ask is why are we back in Themyscira? Hadn’t that been established fully in the first Wonder Woman film? There is no need to look back on a young Diana participating in some competition. That whole sequence should have been cut out. It added nothing to what was to come, not even a callback except for the telling of the tale of Asteria. That could have been done in a simple flashback of three minutes. We didn’t need to be subjected to a long drawn out process of establishing that story for context when it wasn’t necessary.
Another question is why a shopping mall? Wonder Woman, in this story, is your friendly neighborhood Wonder Woman. She’s only local and takes care of things in the city rounding up small-time criminals and saving people from accidents. Not really the major home-runs that 1984 had put forth. There was a mass shooting at McDonald’s that year that left 21 people dead which was the start of mass killings in a pattern of behavior. But Wonder Woman only stays local. She keeps a low profile, she doesn’t want any sort of recognition, she’s a beautiful recluse without the Howard Hughes psychosis, narcissism, or agoraphobia. She treats her heroism like a hobby.
Kristen Wiig enters the picture as Barbara Minerva aka Cheetah. From the start, we’ve seen Kristen Wiig’s character before. It’s one of many characters she has played on Saturday Night Live. She’s the bumbling, insecure, nebbish, wants to be everyone’s friend, nerdy, go along, get along, person. It’s annoying and shows no growth to Kristen Wiig’s stable of characters that she has used in so many film roles. You exhale a breath of air and say to yourself, this is sad. This is what $200 million is getting you, a rehash of SNL castoff characters. She’s a professional second fiddle character. She’s more envious of Diana’s looks, confidence, and fashion sense. She’s a trope, one of many in this film. She wants to be one of the cool kids for once as she wishes to be like Diana. Her becoming Cheetah is a by-product of that wish and not a part of the canon. Her Diana like transformation fails on all levels as the filmmaker tries to convince the audience that Barbara has embodied the essence of Diana but the only thing you see is Kristen Wiig trying to look sexy. Wearing high-heel shoes and a dress doesn’t make you alluring or having men fall all over you with that “I want to fuck you” look. Try as the filmmaker wanted to make us believe that all the men depicted at the event were drooling over Barbara was not convincing in the slightest. Has DC forgotten how to do this? They needed to cast someone who is alluring and sexy from the start. Michelle Pfeiffer from Batman is a perfect example. She was cast as the eyeglass wearing, nerdy secretary who dressed like a second-grade school madam from the 60s. After she survived a fall from a window and was bitten by cats to revive her did she transform into a confident and alluring character and was very convincing. You can’t make me believe that Kristen Wiig has that same quality.
Speaking of men, the depiction of men in these types of films has turned into another trope. All the men are idiots and sexual degenerates if you go by what is depicted. The drunk guy who harasses Barbara on the street was a trope character. We engage with him twice and that’s unusual because he gets his ass handed to him in the first encounter. You’d think he learned from that incident but he’s back and still drunk and obnoxious. Once again, we have to suspend any sort of logic and watch this man repeat the same mistake. His encounter is nearly fatal as Barbara almost kills the guy. Another trope pops up and that’s the homeless black guy who Barbara sometimes gives him food. I guess trying to uplift him from his station on life is too problematic. All of this is because we have to believe that Barbara is now as hot as Diana.
Steve Trevor returns in the most unusual away. It’s not through some lighting storm or some Grecian God-like declaration. It’s more of a subdued way, a low-key Make-A-Wish proclamation. Yes, Steve comes back without any fanfare, without any exploration, without any logic as he invades and body-snatch a stranger’s torso and commandeers it to do as he pleases. Steve and the body somehow make it to the social gathering of Diana a drop clues as to who he is. Diana accepts the explanations at face value and with very little protest. They make a hasty retreat to his apartment and Diana waste very little tie and has sex with Steve’s host body. Do we have an ethical problem here for Diana? Is this why the movie has 1984 in its name to give us the license to “Asia Argento” the guy? Steve has control over the host's body and yet the host is oblivious to what has happened to his body. It’s not addressed at all. Because it’s a man, we’re supposed to ignore the massive elephant in the room about consent and permission. Maybe Patty Jerkins don’t see him as a victim and more as a conduit for Diana to fulfill her needs with Steve as the parasite? Maybe.
The big bad, Maxwell Lord, isn’t some super-villain with powers but more of an 80s TV evangelist type of personality with a troubled past which is about 50% of the population. The standard of what it means to be a villain is anyone who has had a rough and troubled childhood. Some say that it is a caricature of Donald Trump but I didn’t see that. He was more of a tragic figure that life had kicked in the gut in the early stages of his life as he fought to escape that trauma by concocting some ill-conceived get rich quick scam. I saw this guy basically as some multi-level marketing Amway salesman type of bargain-basement bad guy. He craved power and you have to agree to the wish unknowingly as he reaped the rewards. He gets all the benefits because he’s at the top of the pyramid scheme.
Oddly enough, there was a film that came out in1984 called Night Of The Comet, starring Robert Beltran and Catherine Mary Stewart. It did a wonderful send-up of the shopping malls by describing it as a character when they have scenes that made you believe the shopping mall, as a character described it, the halls of consumerism. No such luck in WW1984. This shopping mall interaction had no logic in the trope depiction of the bumbling robbers, the girl being held captive by the robbers, and the second girl being saved by Diana by pushing her into a plushy bear. Why was she placed in harm’s way in the first place and where were her parents? Because the filmmaker needed another kid in danger moment. Diana subdues the robbers, even saving one from hitting the floor deck but in a strange twist, she drops them on the top of a police car caving in the roof. Somebody surely would have received some serious injuries by the way the police vehicle roof was flattened by the dropping on the men.
There are other questions that made cut against the grain. When did Diana have the power to make things invisible? Is Diana using her lasso to aid in her flying by roping clouds? When did Steve learn to fly a jet? Jets are more complicated than World War I prop planes. He would have to be certified in order to fly the jet. What type of engineer was the man who Steve body-snatched? Wouldn’t he have a passport? In the scene where they were driving in the desert, shouldn’t they have done a better job with the SFX and green screen looks because it was really bad seeing Diana fly through the air flipping a truck and you could see a bad quality? It looked like it actually was rendered back in 1984.
For a film that was two and a half hours long, there was no edge of your seat action. The current standard-bearer in high action is John Wick. WW84 focused on feelings. There was a lot of it hovering around in the undercurrents. The power that Maxwell Lord was accruing was remedied by renouncing your wish. Talking about being anticlimactic. Film critic Grace Randolph said she cried when Diana sent Steve away. Steve died 60 years ago. Let the past stay in the past. She needs to move on and explore new relationships and not be a recluse. Even demigoddess need a life and companionship. No tears were shed for his second departure to the after-life.
Wonder Woman 1984 is not your father’s Wonder Woman from the first film. She still exudes confidence but there is a weakness that dwells inside. Batman alluded to it in Justice League when he tried to get Wonder Woman to step up and take a leadership role. She even admitted it as such about her reluctance. This film seems to highlight her weakness more than anything. She fought a god in the first Wonder Woman. She had a hard time stopping a TV Amway salesman, not with her physical power but with — — words! That was the payoff, words. In the end, there were no consequences to anyone’s actions. The Amway salesman goes off with his son, Cheetah disappears into the woodwork. Diana meets on the street, the guy whose body Steve snatched, and their intimate encounter is looked upon as if he was nothing more than a pawn to Diana’s desires. And so the curtain falls down on two out of five Wonder Woman 1984.
