Wonder Woman 1984 (Dec 30)

My ultimate impression of this past week of reviews from friends intimate and Internet is that love of a franchise is always conditional. Even the most breathless, moon-eyed fans of Wonder Woman seem to have misgivings about lending their full weight behind this addition to the powerhouse that is the Wonder Woman. I should mention that I saw the first Wonder Woman installment twice with Wife in theaters, I’ve written about Wonder Woman a few times before in other parts of the internet, but I wasn’t very much a fan of the first movie, which I know is contradicted by nearly a billion dollars at the box office and affirmed by the scummiest parts of the Internet.

I liked Steve Trevor. I liked the humor of her adjusting to the early 20th century outside of Themiscyra. I liked Lucy Davis, the bumbling secretary, who actively questioned the fiction of Diana Prince’s ability to blend in, who found small ways to poke fun at how glamorous the super hero was. I didn’t much care for Ares as played by the eminent Prof. Lupin, the final boss battle, or really the whole concept that there was a Big Bad behind the Great War. It would’ve been a lot cooler if Wonder Woman had been mistaken about who was behind the war: it’s us!

I think there are some similar issues with the second film in terms of its high concept: the futility of wishes. Don’t get me wrong, 1984 has a zany premise, and its cartoonishness is something that I can get behind. I actually like the departure from the serious, high-mindedness of world-ending external threats. I like the way that ambitious people overcommit to a plan and end up becoming villains. That being said, there were some expectations that had been built up by setting the movie in 1984 that didn’t seem to be fulfilled. For instance, whence is Diana’s scrunchie? Why bother setting things in the ’80s, if Diana is going to studiously ignore the time period’s fashion, opting rather for glamor and classic Hollywood looks? Kristen Wiig does a little–most–of the work for Gal Gadot on the fashion front–at least part of the magic of this movie is how Wiig is able to dress down as a frump and hit all the looks on the spectrum of style all the way to her final look at the dinner party.

I thought this movie was going to be a lot more racist, based on the reaction from online. Wife says that the most offensive thing about Egypt was how inessential it was to the plot. Once we hit Egypt, actually, I was a little excited, because I thought that we were about to be immersed in a whole world of Arabic culture from the 80s and I’d be able to learn from cultural historians later what little nuances the film had messed up. Instead, it was kind of just a rush job and a slow car chase scene.

The film shows the traces of poor aging already, the way that the firework scene just doesn’t sit right while you’re in your car the week after Christmas in a drive-in movie theater, and the way that the Christmas scene just makes you wonder whether the awkward time shift was constructed as an afterthought to fit the new release date–and then you’re wondering, how did they find all those extras for a reshoot during quarantine and then you’re deeply in the weeds.

Sarah El-Mahmoud asked the question, Does Wonder Woman have a Steve Trevor problem? It’s a question I couldn’t stop thinking about while watching this movie. It’s time to retire Trevor for the same reason that we can’t have a third season of Baby Yoda–the romantic relationship is taking too much oxygen out of the room. Diana needs her own space to grow. In the first movie, the comedy and joy of their relationship came from Diana as a fish out of water in American culture, the nuances of language and propriety that she wasn’t able to grasp, and the surprising ways that her misunderstandings advanced their relationship. Partially, this movie tried to reverse that relationship, so that Trevor is now the one that needs some guidance, but as one Friend concludes, “He knows what trains and garbage cans look like.” I like a dumb boy toy as much as the next gal, but he shouldn’t be that dumb, right? I have this issue a lot with the coverage of Wonder Woman on outlets like CBR, where a lot of the writing is consumed by musing about her romantic entanglements, the way that she is misled or weakened by her love of Bruce Wayne, Clark Kent, or some other ephemeral romantic connection.

Wife had a good idea for a better scene in the movie. Instead of having Steve fly an invisible plane, why not cut to them flying commercial? Suddenly his romantic notions of flight are popped by fitting in a too small seat–Diana accidentally breaks her fold out tray, the drink cart bumps into Steve’s body-double’s shoulders every time it goes by. There were moments for comedy and the banality of the 80s that were lost by going for less relatable, more visually glamorous shots.

My last real question is one that I think a lot of people are asking right now, what is the point of wishes? Why is it so bad? As a Friend said earlier this morning, the chaos that ensues from the wishes assumes that everyone wishes for bad things, not for the cure for their mother’s cancer, homes for the homeless, an end to crime. The renunciation of wishes too seems to lack cost. The takeaway is that this movie’s take on wishes is a deeply conservative view of the world, one which takes for granted that we must accept the world as it is, not give in to radical changes, for fear that they might upset the natural order. I can’t help but think that this is a bit of a metaphor for risk-taking in the super hero genre at large. Those hoping for something fresh and fun like Birds of Prey will have to wait til next year when DC ramps up its production.