We revisit the Amazon princess, as she faces a new threat in 1980s American in Wonder Woman 1984. 66 years after her adventures during the First World War, Diana Prince (Gal Gadot) has taken residence in Washington D.C., where she works at the Smithsonian Institution, while secretly fighting crime as Wonder Woman. At the Smithsonian, Diana meets insecure geologist and gemologist Barbara Minerva (Kristen Wiig), who is assigned by the FBI to identify a number of stolen artifacts, including a strange stone. It is soon discovered that the stone has wish-granting abilities, as Diana unknowingly uses a wish to bring her love Steve Trevor (Chris Pine) back from the dead. It turns out that the stone is desired by charismatic businessman Maxwell Lord (Pedro Pascal), who desires to use it to become the most powerful man on the planet.
Patty Jenkins returns to the director's chair for this follow-up to 2017's Wonder Woman. Wonder Woman 1984, also known as WW84, moves the action away from the 1918 setting of the original and into 1980s America. As we catch up with Diana Prince, she has eked out a life for herself with a job at the Smithsonian, all while pining for her lost love Steve Trevor. Diana ends up getting her wish, with the discovery of the “Dreamstone,” which has the power to grant one wish. The stone also grants a wish to Barbara to be more like Diana, which unknowingly grants her similar superpowers. However, it is soon discovered that the wishes come with a painful price and when the power of the stone is exploited by Maxwell Lord, it risks causing the total end of civilization as we know it.
I'm going to get straight to the point and say that Wonder Woman 1984 is a bit of a sophomore slump for Patty Jenkins, who was quite successful at bringing Wonder Woman to the big screen in 2017, with the film arguably being the most well received of the films in the DCEU. I should emphasize that Wonder Woman 1984 is still a perfectly fine film, though it was quite obvious that Patty Jenkins was trying to avoid the cliched superhero tropes, which resulted in this film having relatively few action set-pieces, despite having a 2h31m running time.
Even though Wonder Woman 1984 sets up Maxwell Lord to be the main antagonist of the film, arguably the more interesting plot trajectory comes from the steady villification of Barbara Minerva, who slowly loses her humanity as a side-effect of her Dreamstone wish and turns into Wonder Woman's archenemy Cheetah. While Wonder Woman 1984 could have shown Barbara's turn to the dark side in a better fashion, Kristen Wiig's performance still ends up being one of the standout elements of the film. While Pedro Pascall still does a fine enough job as Maxwell Lord, the character is not as memorable in comparison.
Overall, Wonder Woman 1984 is a film that it not as good as the original and perhaps a bit too long, but it is ultimately still a film worth checking out.
Wonder Woman 1984 is now playing in select theatres and available on Premium VOD
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