That's right. There's a new Wonder Woman film out. And if there is anything that's going to get me back on this unfrequently updated blog, it's gonna be Wonder Woman!
I'm gonna handle this like most review podcasts I've encountered, by saying as much as I can without spoilers first, and then dive into Spoiler territory. There will be appropriate warnings.
So first off: I enjoyed WW84. It's a stand up superhero film, and I genuinely enjoyed watching it. I was able to watch it at home, on HBO, with my sister and mother. We had a good time. But this film, unlike the previous Gal Gadot-Patty Jenkins Wonder Woman (2017), was not life-altering. It was good, it was not phenomenal. And even as a film, it had flaws.
I think WW84 fell to the same problem that most superhero sequels do - it got over ambitious. With the Origin Story out of the way, it's now time to flex, and complicate the world. Weirdly, though, WW84 also suffered in a way that not many superhero films do - instead of over-preparing for the follow-up third film, WW84 shoved WAY too much into it's third act, instead of exercising the freedom that an expected sequal can bring. So yes. A lot of the problems with WW84 are structural, and plot-pacing problems. My sister really pointed this out to me well when she said (paraphrase), "I was with it for act 1 and 2, but then the 3rd act started... and then the 3rd act started... and then the 3rd act started again. There were like. 3 different times where you're sure it's the 3rd act now. 3 different emotional climaxes."
Unfortunately, the plot structure (which might have been fixed with some editing, and some willingness to cut content) aren't WW84's only flaw. And I do have trouble with the writing. Some of this has been well pointed out by recent articles from Vox (here) and Polygon (here), and one more I read and can't find... Anyway, in my mind it boils down to this: The Diana of WW2017 had one thing in spades: Conviction. She knew that she would save the world, and that the world needed saving. Even when no one believed her. She was genuine and earnest, and she was not undercut by humor or ever belittled. The Diana of WW84 is more... messy. She second guesses herself, she hesitates, etc, and not in ways that are healthy. Ways that just seem... unlike her. And unfortunately, this attitude of hesitation has an effect on the rest of the film, compiling it's already unfocused, scattered storytelling.
Alright, I tried not doing spoilers but I don't think I can hold this up. Here comes the Spoiler Warning for WW84 for all the following:
Ok, so. The plot of WW84 in a nutshell: There is a magic object made by a trickster god that will grant your greatest wish (or whatever wish you express while holding it) but at a price - one of the stone's choosing. Diana and Dr Barbra Ann Minerva both wish upon the stone. Diana wishes for her man (Steve Trevor) back, and Dr Minerva asks to be Cool Like Diana. (This happens after they go on a date). Then our resident bad guy Pedro Pascal (Max Lord) has a balls-to-the-walls idea of wishing to himself become the stone! And gains the ability to grant wishes and take what he wants in return - honestly did this man ever watch Aladdin? He clearly didn't see the ending with genie jafar. Anyway. So Steve comes back by magic-possessing a man which is a totally fine and normal thing to do. Diana is confused but HAPPY! But also concerned because that means the stone is real and holy shit Max Lord has the stone that's bad. Then Lord uses the store to wreck havoc in Egypt. Diana saves the day but is injured and realises she is losing her powers! Steve realises it's because of her wish. They go to investigate. Turns out, the only way to destroy the stone and undo it's effects is for everyone to renounce their wishes - which would mean Steve "dies" again. Diana refuses and says there must be another way. Dr Minerva, on the other hand, freaks out that they are even trying to destroy and undo the stone - which has made her badass, and popular. Also, Max Lord is now causing HAVOC as he grants people wishes willy-nilly and everyone is on the verge of nuclear war. So that's a thing. (Oh I forgot there's this whole side-plot where Steve steals a plane that Diana turns into an invisible jet because she has that magic now, and they talk about flying. Spoilers, Diana learns to fly later. It's legit.) Ok so Diana, Steve, Lord, and Lord's new defender, Dr Minerva, have a big show down at the white house, and Diana loses big time. Turns out wishing to "be like Diana" gave Barbra super powers. In the ensuing chaos, Steve finally convinces Diana to let him go. It's super sad, because as Diana says "can't I just have this one thing?" like for real. Anyway, Diana finally grows up and makes her hard choice and leaves Steve behind for good. She gets her powers back, and faces off against Lord, who is in the middle of a planet-wide wish-granting frenzy. He uses the "price" of each of these wishes to make himself and also Dr Minerva more powerful - fully transforming her into the Cheetah. Diana shows up. She has cool armor. She and Cheetah have a weirdly areal battle that ends with Diana electrocuting (but not killing!) Cheetah after Cheetah refuses to renounce her wish. Then she goes to confront Lord but can't physically attack him because Plot - I mean because Chaos Wind?? He refuses to renounce his wish, so Diana uses her lasso of truth to speak not only to him but to the whole world, telling them that only they can save themselves by renouncing their selfish wishes and embracing the truth of the world before them - something Steve told her to do. They all do, including Max Lord, after he is confronted by the true reality of how he is endangering his son - a son he has convinced himself that he has been helping in his struggle for power, but is actually harming. The world is saved. Tada!
Wow! That was a lot. Ok time for some analysis.
So there are several major problems I have with the plot of this film. I'm going to try and list each of them I see, along with how I would have fixed them.
The first is, as I said before, structural. What is the emotional climax of this film? Is it Diana leaving Steve? is it her having to harm Cheetah? Is it her impassioned plea for the citizens of the world to save themselves? If the first, why does it happen so early? But if not that one, why... just why? This film also has WAY too much going on in it, especially with both Max Lord and also the Cheetah.
How would I have fixed this? I would have changed the pacing of Cheetah's character arc, and also the setting of Diana's leaving Steve. I actually would have treated this as a Cheetah origin story which I would NOT have resolved for the end. It would have been a perfect set up for a 3rd film. Maybe Cheetah is the only person who refuses to renounce her wish - and goes off into hiding, for Diana to track down later. I also would have brought Steve TO the confrontation with Lord, and also would have actually nixed the entire second Diana v Barbra fight (or changed it significantly - more on that).
So the next, problem, wrapped up in the solution to this one, is a problem in writing. While WW84 has a message throughout - that we should not allow our wish for a better world cause harm to the one we live in, or blind us to the truth and beauty we already possess - it does seem to forget it's themes - the themes of all good Wonder Woman stories; truth, and compassion, and sacrifice. In specific terms, what this leads to is a real under-use of resources. I've seen this in DC films a LOT. There is a solution sitting right there, but that would mean we don't get a big huge fight scene, so we're not going to do it, not matter how well it would work thematically.
How I would have fixed this is allllll to do with the Golden Prefect. That's Diana's Lasso of Truth. So in the film Diana "loosing her powers" is rather nebulous. She just gets... sloppy. Still super strong but not as strong as she was. She gets hit with a bullet and is actually hurt. And stays hurt. She looses her grip on her lasso at an important moment. She's still super fast but not as fast as she needs to be, etc. Now, if this was a whole plot point about Diana learning more of what it's like to be human, than bring it on. But it's not played that way at all. What I would have done instead is to slowly and then all at once at a critical moment taken away one specific power - her lasso. Could Wonder Woman still save the world without her lasso? Yes, of course. Would she still be Wonder Woman? Maybe not. Not only would this deprive her of an extremely useful physical tool, it would bring rounf the theme very powerfully: Diana has lost her grip on, and lost the aid of, Truth with a capital T. The Lasso, for lack of a better word, denies her. This would have been a stark, devestating moment of realization, and a much better kick in the pants to get her on the right path again than the vauge "little bit weaker" that we got. It also would have made the third act much more powerful for my second part of this fix-it fic:
Step two: USE the lasso! My god the entire time Diana and Cheetah were fighting their stupid flying electric fight I was yelling at the screen, "Your lasso is RIGHT THERE" Diana never once uses this lasso to actually bind anyone or confront them to Truth. She never even tries. In my version of this story, Diana and Cheetah's finaly engagement would be an attempt by Diana to use the Golden Prefect on Barbra, to remind her in an emotional moment of the Truth that she was a good, worthwhile person BEFORE she became a magical badass or a cat monster. Diana would have bound herself to proclaim this, and bound Cheetah as well. Then, to continue the plot outlines above, this would, heartbreakingly, not have worked, and Cheetah would run away.
I also read an opinion in a piece I can no longer find about how the message of WW84 seemed confused in that it punished Dr Minerva for wanting to be like Diana - when the whole point of Wonder Woman is to inspire women to be more like Diana. I agree with this, and would have liked to have seen it addressed by the woman herself - it is not bad that Barbra wanted to be more like Diana. Her end was good. It was the means she got wrong. She also blinded herself to the good parts of the person she already was. She can still deny this, but addressing it would clear the air for the viewer and the message of the film. Diana needs to be affirming, not just pleading in this moment. Diana needs to show that she loves Barbra - and while it could be, this doesn't need to be romantic. Diana loves everyone.
One of my favorite uses of the Golden Prefect in the comics is from "The Lies", in which Diana binds herself to speak truth to herself. This, too, could have been a really powerful moment - I would have actually had Steve do it. Have Steve bind Diana with her own lasso to speak the Truth - that she knew what she needed to do, which was sacrifice Steve to save the day. (I know I said she lost power of the lasso earlier. Maybe it'll work for Steve for this moment, idk).
I think this would have made a better film. Now let me be clear: I like the film we got! It's good. I just thing it could have been better - in pacing, writing, and thematic elements. I would have put the use of the Golden Prefect at the heart of Diana's struggle, and would have let the Cheetah's plot go unresolved. It would still function as the odd rom-com it is, and all of the plot beats with Max Lord would be the exact same. (He still gets off way better than he did in the comics!)
Unless....
Unless you come with me on an even wilder ride. Are you ready for a true AU? OK so basically my only critique of Wonder Woman 2017 was it's over-reliance on Diana's focused love for Steve Trevor. Now don't get be wrong. I love Steve. I ship it. But I find Diana at her most powerful when she is driven by her Love for humanity writ large, and think that the climax of that film could have just as well ended with a king of flashback of all of the normal human people she helped that would be crushed by Ares' continued war. Instead of focusing only on her loss of Steve.
Let's continue that on to WW84. So Diana starts this film several decades after Steve's death, still actively mourning him. And this is something I want to feel sympathy for but just... can't. In the light of how much more Diana has to mourne, the loss of one man - even a man she loved - seems a bit pale. This is even more emphasized but he start of the movie, which is a scene from Diana's childhood in Themyscira.
Sure, Diana lost Steve. But Diana also lost, in the following years, every single other one of her friends (or most of them). But do you know what else Diana lost in the first film? Literally everything. Her mother. Her sisters. He home. He way of life. Her world. Everything. Diana gave up everything to come and help Steve, and help the world. And then she lost him too. So while I get Diana's whole "Can't I just have this one thing?" And I get why the studio chose for that one thing to be Steve, if *I* were writing this film, the One Thing I would have Diana wish for? The thing that could cause utter chaos in the world?
I would have Diana wish to be back in Themyscira.
Great goddesses, can you imagine a movie like this??? Diana, caught up in a lie version of her homeland - maybe even one where Robin Wright (I mean Antiope) is still alive. The Amazons would be overjoyed and terrified to see her - they would all take a side on whether she should stay or she needed to go. She would have to make a terrible choice. But she would see the world burning, and have to choose humanity again - choose to leave her mother again - choose to leave it all.
You could also go a route where instead of Diana just being whisked off away from the further clutches of the Big Bads, she accidentally wishes Themyscira into Man's World, revealing their secret and endangering everyone. Or worse - make it all an illusion, not the real Themyscira at all, and let Diana discover this too late.
Is all of this inspired by the plot of "The Truth" comic? Yes, it absolutely is. But mostly because I think Diana's choice to be banished from Themyscira is by far the most powerful in her story. Everything after that is just follow-up. Diana binds herself to the world of men - a damaged, ugly, powerful, wonderful, beautiful, terrible world.
Let's be real tho what I really want is more interaction between Diana, Antiope, and Hippolyta. Please.
So yes, how I would have written this movie? Have Diana still be morning the loss of her world, and not the loss of her lover. Have her still be having to remind herself - even after all this time, old habits die hard - of how to act in the human world. Have her be a shining beacon of Amazon light (That Dr Minerva would be jealous of and EXTREMELY interested in). But have her also lose the benefit of the Prefect. Challenge her right to claim Truth. And have her submit to binding herself to bring that truth back. Steve could still be involved in this plot, actually. Perhaps he's still the one to wake her up to do what is needful.
In ANY case. WW84 is good. But it also feels like a lot of wasted potential. The plot is convoluted, the pacing is off, the theme comes and goes, and Diana just seems... off. She lacks the conviction that made me fall in love with her. The film feels unfocused, kind of like Diana herself seems unsure.
If you haven't yet.... I highly recommend the first 4 volumes of the WW Rebirth comic series; "The Lies", "Day One", "The Truth", and "Godwatch". Really I cannot recommend them enough. If you want good Diana and Cheetah content, if you want good Diana and Themyscira content, if you want good Diana and Steve content, if you want good Wonder Woman content! Please read these four volumes. You can borrow my copies! Please.
I hope this post didn't come off as too negative. (Some things I liked: watching Barbra go through the stages of becoming Cheetah, even if I have some qualms about it, Max Lord's humanization and the whole plot with his son (would have been cool if the kid had met Diana, bring those two plots together), the 80s aesthetic (tho lacking in 80s music!), Steve being Steve (tho why did he have to possess a guy? just have him be here by magic. And also the after credits scene, and the accompanying story in film.
Thanks for reading, friends! I hope that you enjoyed WW84, and that you enjoyed reading my critique. I certainly enjoyed watching and writing it.
Peace!
R
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