First Review of 2021: Wonder Woman 84

It is said that every movie is made three times, first when it is written as a script, second when it is photographed, and third when it is edited. In principle the stages allow for revisions the bring the final film closed to the ideal that had propelled the project but often diverging voices, power struggles, and a lack of focus allows the stages to muddy the waters and create chaos instead of coherence. This appears the be the case with Wonder Woman 84.

Except for a prolog set in the indeterminate time when Diana was a child, and really this sequence would have been better and easier to suspend disbelief for had they portrayed her as a young teen instead, the film takes place 66 years after the close of the previous entry in the franchise. Diana Prince (Gal Gadot) lives as a historical expert at the Smithsonian in Washington D.C. still mourning the loss of her love Steve Trevor in 1918. Kristen Wiig plays Barbara Minerva a cliche version of a woman overlooked and ignored by the world while Pedro Pascal plays Max Lord the central villain of the piece conman and television personality the propels what passes as the central plot of the movie.

Drowning itself in the period’s clothing and style, Wonder Woman 84 is a mess. Elaborate and expensive sequences take place that have no function in furthering the plot or developing the characters. No thought is present for the actual consequences of the choices the writers made when they crafted the script. The special effects suffer from the issue that the digital characters seem to lack weight and float when they should not and perhaps worse of all the plot suffers from that most horrid comic book trope Powers ex machina, with Wonder Woman developing sudden abilities that exist solely to resolve an immediate plot complication and are then discarded.

I found it impossible to surrender myself to the story and was constantly reminded the artifice with repeated errors of the type. Wonder Woman I found to be charming and fun though far from perfect and its sequel, though far from the dour, depressing, Objectivist works of the Snyder Batman and Superman films, I cannot recommend at all.