Review of Wonder Woman 1984
Wonder Woman 1984 is finally released! Surprisingly, it is simultaneously released on theaters and on the streaming service HBO Max. One of the first movies to be released to a theater and a specific streaming service (not just released on home video to all providers) in the this pandemic year of 2020.
The Credible Nerds, Marc and Justin, have jumped at the chance to watch this movie after waiting and talking about it for over a year now. Originally intended to be released in November 2019, it was pushed back to July 2020, until eventually landing on a Christmas Day 2020 release in the US (the film was released internationally a week earlier).
I saw it in theaters on Dec 26th, while Marc watched it on HBO Max; so it will be interesting to see in further discussions if that had an effect on how we initially perceived this movie. So without further preamble, here are The Credible Nerds’ SPOILER FILLED review of Wonder Woman 1984, first Marc’s review and then mine.
Wonder Woman Unleashed!
How to grade this successful tragedy… I have found it hard to know what to expect from the 2nd wave of DC movies. On the one hand you had the darker movies leaning towards the older fans and giving an air of helplessness. The kind of helplessness that can only be solved through divine intervention, miracles…. or a hero. And even the heroes have been beaten down; Robin’s suit hanging in the batcave, helpless and cold. Wonder Woman still suffering from the tragedy of watching the one she loved die so she could save the world, he being the one she could not save. And we all witnessed the man in the cape giving up his roots, to save Earth, by turning his back on where he came from. Then to give his life with a punch through his chest…
On the other hand you have these newer Marvelized travesties that give subtle reminders of the George Clooney nipple failure. You know, the ones that had $$ in mind and not quality. We heard the same jokes used over and over, the same action scenes regurgitated for our mindless viewing pleasure, and the same known outcome before even understanding the main plot. Compared to DC films where, besides the DC fans, nobody can say they knew Superman was going to die in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice).
These two sides of DC were at war with each other in this film and left us with neither a nostalgic reminder of Tony Stark or a feeling that we need a Hero to save us. Instead we got both, but not enough of either and we are now looking at this scrapheap thinking…Zack Snyder version please.
Now that you have my elongated analogies let us get down to it. Was this movie good? Was it crap? Or something in between? On the face, I truly think everyone wanted more, more of what would depend on where you stand. Marvelized or Old DC. For me, I like old DC. The dark, fearing, storytelling movie. But let's break it down into pros/cons in categories.
The Story: Nothing new here. We have seen this story play out a million times in a million different movies. It is 100% obvious what we will get out of it, as well as how it will end. (Think every birthday wish movie ever, or Liar Liar, etc…) What makes the movie good is how the writers give it its own special twist. The only amazing part about this is when we saw Maxwell Lord (Pascal) realize that he loves his son, renounce his wish and realize truth and love are what matter. I did enjoy it. Other than this I found nothing original from the story. CON
The CGI: I have enjoyed the CGI from all the films (Marvel and DC). This is the first one I just couldn't get into. Look, we get that super heroes aren’t real, that their feats aren’t possible for us normies. But physics and movements still need to make sense (Damn you Captain America). How did they go from Original WW to this?? It seemed so lazy, so rushed, so silly, that I had a hard time watching nine out of ten action sequences. CGI usually enhances a movie, instead DC used it and let it become the enemy. CON
The Music: The music?? Why does that matter? BECAUSE IT MATTERS! Think every awesome film, ever. Music… music music music. It enhances the scenes. Builds us up to the action, manipulates my feelings to feel fear, hope, sadness. The perfect music and composer (thank you John Williams), and the perfect director (Zack Snyder cut please), come together and make this happen. Rupert Gregson-Williams made the perfect score for the first Wonder Woman film (with Hans Zimmer’s perfect theme for Wonder Woman introduced to us in Dawn of Justice), and not only was it under-used in this movie, it was just used at the wrong times. Think of the mall scene when WW flies in. Where was this cool music? It was drowned out by some out of place music that left me wondering why this fight is going down and the music isn’t matching. Help me feel the intensity, not highlight its failures. CON
Steve Trevor: I wanted him back. I missed him when he was gone. I love him more than Wonder Woman. Christmas wish granted. Santa is real. PRO
Steve Trevor is back! But how?
Humanizing the Heroes: What does this even mean? I get that they are heroes, but they are people too. They have loves, hates, wants.. Dreams. “... its not easy to be me” - Superman - Five for Fighting. Superman grew up with parents, Batman watched his parents get killed, WW fell in love with Steve then has lived here since WW1, and Hal Jordan…well, Nevermind. But the point is that they need to connect to the real world and I need to see that connection. None of the Martha mom business but real connections. I feel like we saw that here. Diana was ready to give up everything for Steve. She loved him with a passion that many of us in our own relationships and marriages have felt. I don’t know of many people that could give up their loved one and spouse to save the world. That is something so deep and so hard that I'm not sure we could actually visualize that. I felt that. And felt her pain as she ran away to a greater calling. Her calling. That spoke to me. PRO
There are plenty more we could go through but these are the most glaring of them that reached me as a part-time, newbie, critic. (I’ll never admit it.. I’m pro). Overall, as a stand alone, I give this a solid C. Average at best. 7/10. As a part of the greater DC universe that I have come to expect I have to give it a D. 6/10. You let me down Wonder Woman. But let's get real…I’d let you save me!
Marc -Professional Nerd
Wonder Woman in 1984
I have a lot of similar criticism and praise that Marc has already elaborated on, so I won’t go into too much detail on things he has already addressed.
First of all, Steve Trevor is back! Chris Pine is great as Steve Trevor and he and Gal Gadot have such great chemistry together (just watch the press interviews of those two during the first WW and you know what I’m talking about), It’s a shame that Steve was killed off in the first film. I’m glad that they found a way to bring him back momentarily, even though it was kind of weird. I hope they are able to resurrect him for later films. Diana Prince without Steve Trevor isn’t as interesting.
One thing DC has always done great with, better than other superhero franchises, is having great villains. Marc talked about humanizing the heroes so that we can relate, DC is able to do that with their villains (ever since Batman Begins) in a way that makes the film so much better. In this film, Cheetah/Barbara Minerva and Maxwell Lord are definitely highlights and are a great addition to already established DC villains. I hope we are able to get a Legion of Doom type show with Cheetah, Joker, Black Manta, and the rest very soon. Maxwell Lord is played perfectly by Pedro Pascal and his motivations made sense to the story and to me as the viewer. Kristen Wiig did the same for Cheetah. I empathized with Barbara and could see how one would go down that path that she did.
The past few DC films of Birds of Prey, Joker, Shazam!, and Aquaman have had exceptional character development and great acting of their villains with Black Mask being my favorite up to this point.
The opening sequence in Themyscira with the Amazonian Games was really fun to watch and it was great to see the same actor back as little Diana (who heroically did almost all of her own stunts!), as well as seeing the characters and actors of Queen Hippolyta and General Antiope (as this scene takes place pre-Justice League and before the first Wonder Woman) back in action in the story. These sequences were a great prelude to the overall story that was the rest of the movie.
Young Diana competes in the Amazonian Olympics
Diana living in DC in 1984 was a great setting for the film in some ways, not so good in other ways. The 1980’s setting is great for the premise of living in excess, misogyny, wasteful living, and the other vices that were prevalent in the 80’s. This was a great setting for the villains to evolve and emerge with purpose. You can get away with a lot of things in the 80’s that you couldn’t do in current day because of technology and social media. On the down side, the 80’s tend to be too nostalgic for some and they leaned heavy on the nostalgia to rope viewers in and get them overlook some poor CGI enhanced scenes. The opening fight at the mall, while a great idea and had potential, was poorly executed and looked “off” in many sequences. Diana using her lasso to swing around and grab the bad guys didn’t fully capture me to make it believable (I know it’s a comic book movie, but there has to be some sense of belief).
Now, how awesome was it to see the inception of the Invisible Jet?! To be honest, I teared up a little in the theater seeing this sequence play out. Then to see it also be a literal vehicle to have Steve and Diana share an intimate moment together, the calm before the storm, was such good storytelling. This setting is also plants the seeds of Diana learning to fly herself, as she later remembers the words of Steve Trevor and how he learned to fly. And yes, Wonder Woman has been flying for sometime now as DC Comic readers can well attest. I was glad to see this power finally developed for her.
I do disagree a little with Marc on the film’s score, Hans Zimmer took over scoring duties for this film. I thought the themes were great and it was well done, BUT I do agree that there wasn’t a moment with a swelling score in the background to boost the heroic action moment. However, the addition of Beautiful Lie from the Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice score was genius and that moment did draw me in due to Gal Gadot’s acting and dialogue with that part of the score playing. It was more of a quiet emotional moment than a heroic moment.
I mentioned the CGI visual effect moments from the mall fight, and I want to address it for the film overall. I think there were moments that it was seamless and moments that it glaringly stood out. Mostly, it stood out while Diana was running at super speed. There was the time when she was running on the road after the tanks and Maxwell Lord; and there was the time when she was in DC right after she said her final good bye to Steve Trevor, and she took off running down the street. Both of these sequences looked fake and as if they were filmed with a TV budget instead of a blockbuster budget. This movie has been ready to be released since November 2019 and this was the best they could do even after the film was finished and sat around for months? It boggles my mind that this is what we got in a finished film. The only way this would make sense to me was if since the film was set in 1984, the filmmakers wanted it to appear as if these scenes were first shot in 1984 with the cheesy visual effects of the 1980’s because that’s what it kind of felt like.
Now, I don’t want it to seem that I didn’t like this film because I did. But like Marc, I expect better out of DC films and it has been better in the past. The first Wonder Woman was great and deserved all of the accolades it got. This film is slightly better than average in my book, I give it a B and it does have that re-watchability factor that I look for in movies.
Justin - Professional Nerd
Stay tuned for our podcast review coming soon! We will go into more depth and detail with our likes and dislikes of the film, plus it’s always good to do reviews a couple of days after the initial watch to let things sink in and to think about the film.