Yes, there was a plot, about Ares, the god of war, conquering the world during the First World War and Wonder Woman needing to put a stop to that. The details have faded, as they probably did five minutes after I left the theater, because the superhero’s star quality is always more important than whatever fantastic and logic-defying plot for world domination he or she has to foil.
But when I think back on Wonder Woman 1984, the sequel, which I just saw this week, almost all I remember is the creaky plot which the writers have imbued with a preachy message about being careful what you wish for.
Wonder Woman 1984 came out on December 25 in US theaters and on HBO Max and was just released in Israel with the reopening of the theaters on May 27. It was undoubtedly the most anticipated movie of the post-pandemic cinema season in Gadot’s homeland – and unfortunately is likely to be the biggest disappointment of the batch of new releases.
The movie opens with a fairly long sequence showing Wonder Woman as a child, taking part in a competition on Paradise Island against adult warriors, which brings back Robin Wright and Connie Nielsen as her aunt and mother, respectively, who use the occasion to teach her a lesson about honesty. Little does the audience realize that this will be the high point of the entire movie.
The scene then switches to Washington, DC, in 1984, where Diana Prince, Wonder Woman’s human alter ego, lives a lonely life, working as an archaeologist at the Smithsonian by day, eating alone at sidewalk cafés at night and staring pensively at framed photos that remind her of Steve Trevor (Chris Pine), her lover who died during World War I in the first film. She barely notices dorky fellow researcher Barbara Minerva (Kristen Wiig), who is overlooked by her peers and who dreams of living the life that Diana leads.
Meanwhile, Maxwell Lord (Pedro Pascal), an oil entrepreneur with orange hair who pretends to be a billionaire but is actually bankrupt – who could have been the inspiration for this character? – makes infomercials and schemes about taking over the world.
When an ancient stone that grants all who are near it the power to have one wish granted turns up at the Smithsonian, Minerva and Lord use it for nefarious purposes, and Diana suits up as Wonder Woman to stop them.
That’s really just about all there is to it, and the truth is that the most enjoyment to be had following the opening is a scene where Wonder Woman foils a robbery in a shopping mall. And the movie runs 151 minutes. There is a sequence lampooning ’80s men’s fashions, and there are a couple of ’80s songs, but it’s as though director/writer Patty Jenkins was worried that if we had too much fun, it would distract us from the important message about not wishing for things.
One nice moment at the end comes when Lynda Carter, who played Wonder Woman on the ’70s television show, turns up. Her appearance may remind you how enjoyable it was, back when that series aired, for girls to see a heroine rescuing guys.
This raises the question of why the new film seems to have abandoned the girl-power motif that gave the character her raison d’etre, as Jill Lepore pointed out in The New Yorker. The first movie came out, with fortuitous timing, just before the #MeToo movement became a hashtag. But in this film, Minerva turns herself into a monstrous super villain out of jealousy for Diana’s prettiness and popularity, and the two face off in the climactic battle. So much for sisterhood.
Gadot looks great but does not get to trounce the villains nearly as much as she should. When she is portraying Diana Prince, she seems a bit wan. She smiles her biggest smile when, still all alone, she watches happy people frolicking in the snow, including – in cameos – her real-life husband, Jaron Varsano, and their two daughters.
PEOPLE WHO make big-budget movies like this have to be ambitious and competitive. No one gets to the top of this multibillion-dollar industry without great determination, and they reap huge financial rewards from their work. So it is more than a little disingenuous for them to try to sell us a message that wishing for things – like success – is bad.
And why shouldn’t Wonder Woman wish for her long-dead lover to come back to life – who wouldn’t?
But most of those whose wishes are dramatized have dreams of acquiring huge amounts of money or something else that shows greed or other negative traits. For example, the president, clearly patterned on Ronald Reagan, doesn’t wish for world peace, but, rather, for more nuclear weapons than the Russians.
I think the film’s point – and I had lots of time to ponder it – is that we should all be grateful for what we have, no matter what that is, which could have been delivered in at least 40 fewer minutes.
However, the film did inspire me to think about what my one wish would be, and here it is: I wish mainstream movies had better scripts.