As a point of reference, I very much liked the first Wonder Woman movie. That said, WONDER WOMAN 1984 was a complete and utter mess. As this endless stink burger unfolded, making no sense, and boring the shit out of me even with all the CGI and special effects — I just kept saying to myself: Gal Gadot is very hot. I get to watch Gal Gadot for two and a half hours.
That carried me for the first half hour. The idiocy and excess of this bloated piece of shit overtook even Gal Gadot.
So this is what studio movie making is these days? Costumed superheroes facing end-of-the-world doomsday power-mad cliche villains through a series of cartoon action sequences that destroy national landmarks, entire cities, and a thousand cars. Schmaltzy moments that are laughable. Scripts that are convoluted and make no sense. Probably on purpose. That way the writers don’t have to explain things. The audience might think they were explained but they just missed it. Like why is Wonder Woman in 1984 and not the ‘40s? Is she immortal? Does she never age? Has she been here all along? No. That can’t be because when she appears as Wonder Woman at the beginning of the film (after the twenty minute completely superfluous Amazon prologue with a ponderous CGI action sequence and not even Gal Gadot), the media is baffled as to who this masturbatory vision with a golden lasso is.
And why 1984? Why not 1979? Or 2074? There was nothing specific to 1984 in the film. My only guess is there’s a scene where someone uses a vintage ‘80s phone booth. Maybe they got a deal on the prop and built the picture around that.
Like most superhero movies, the writers solve story problems by merely tacking on more superpowers. Wonder Woman and Chris Pine (who delivers every line the exact same way) want to take a super fighter jet to Cairo. (No one questions why Wonder Woman steals a plane?) But how do they do that undetected? I take you to the story conference:
Hmmm? How about this? Wonder Woman can make the plane invisible! Yeah! Awesome! Wait, how does she do that? Do you want to discuss this or go to lunch? Invisible plane it is! Do you think we’ll get an Oscar nomination?
The movie was directed by Patty Jenkins. She was heralded as such a genius for WONDER WOMAN. Same director and she has story credit so don’t drop the dead body at the feet of the writers. What happened to her genius?
I caught it on HBO Max. Thank God I didn’t waste money seeing it in a theater. My guess is this review is not a shock to you. It was released three days ago and you probably already heard the word-of-mouth. Other than the 30 year old males who still live in their mother’s basement and have Gal Gadot action figures, which they do God knows with — I can’t imagine anyone loving this movie.
It was just announced there's going to be yet another sequel. But fear not, I have the solution that will save the franchise. Do WONDER WOMAN 2019 and have her fling Donald Trump into the ionosphere where he can burn and disintegrate. She’d save over 300,000 lives. Hey, I’d even pay IMAX prices to see that.
from By Ken Levine
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