My mini-review of WONDER WOMAN 1984.

Short version: it’s like a live-action, pre-Legion of Doom, pre-Wonder Twins SUPER FRIENDS, only it doesn’t suck, is good, and was interesting.

Okay, that’s more than the usual Short Version for me. The general point that I’m trying to drill down here on is that WONDER WOMAN 1984 is deliberately exploring an aesthetic where people are not inherently bad. They’re often dumb, sure, but they’re not evil. I’m as much a fan of WATCHMEN and THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS as the next person – but they have a particular aesthetic, which is one that WW84 does not share. And I wouldn’t have liked this movie if it did.

Put another way: WW84 is far more SHAZAM or AQUAMAN than it is JUSTICE LEAGUE. I’m good with that. It works well that way.

5 thoughts on “My mini-review of WONDER WOMAN 1984.”

  1. I’ve been seeing a lot of negative reviews on this one. Interesting to see a positive one. May check it out, eventually.

    1. All four of us in this household agreed it was terrible. From the American-ninja-warrior ripoff with no explained rules that opened the film, to the cartoon mall where noone owns clothes or has a personal style more than three months old, to the frankly moronic sequence where Chris Pine reads a boarding pass ( a timed and dated document) confidently declares he understands it and it means out villain is traveling to Cairo “today” and in the VERY NEXT SCENE claims not to know the date, acting surprised that it’s the 4th of July. This and dozens of other instances of blatant stupidity should not be promoted or rewarded.

      * and let us not ignore the Lasso of Truth – a specific unittask magical item – that is now infinitely long on demand AND. A wondrous combination of whip and Spider-Man web shooter.
      ** And of course WW can make things invisible just by wanting it.
      *** And she can fly just because.
      **** and the wish mechanics were ret[*]rded and unwieldy. How is a dead person supposed to reverse a wish? And if those wishes can be ignored, murdering stubborn fools refusing to reverse is then a sound and viable option.

  2. The Action Comics/Detective Comics dichotomy in action.
    Clark and Diana are blanking scary in a noir setting.
    Arthur without an edge is a meme. And Bruce is all edge.

  3. Wonder Woman, being rooted in Greek mythology, needs to embrace fantasy tropes a bit more than science-fiction ones .. Diana can be dressed in sci-fi, but she’s more comfortably fantasy. (and yes, for males and lesbians of a certain age, she’s also *that kind* of fantasy)
    .
    Fantasy almost always has a lighter / more optimistic undertone to it .. gods and goddesses tend toward comedy more than drama .. even fantasy wrapped in noir tropes, to echo Luke’s point.
    .
    Like D.C. icon “Superman” .. who is, if you squint a bit, a tale about what a Jesus who had decided to save the world all by himself would be like .. there’s an inherent optimism to Wonder Woman ..
    .
    *All that* to say one of the problems D.C. may be having, getting their properties to translate to film, is the Millennial and Gen-Z types are too cynical to accept any optimism.
    .
    If so, then .. we have failed ’em.
    .
    Mew

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