I Truly Loved Wonder Woman 1984: An Honest Review

 

 Wonder Woman 1984 is the sequel to 2017's Wonder Woman with Gal Gadot, Chris Pine and Patty Jenkins all returning in their respective duties with the first two as actors and Patty as the director once again.

 

Wonder Woman 1984 has only been out for a few days and within that time has been destroyed critically with people (including a couple of my friends) downright calling it horrible and a strong contender for worst movie of the year. While I'm not one to be swayed by the popular opinion of most critic reviews, seeing a couple of people whose tastes I respect speak ill of the film honestly made me scared and so I avoided watching it until today when I decided that I had to be brave and face my fear!

  As seen by the trailers and  other promotional materials, Wonder Woman 1984 is set in the 80's, specifically, 1984, the film has the classic retro feel to it and unapologetically embraces it. Please note that while I will not be spoiling anything major, I may drop some light spoilers below. 

 

 Okay so, before I saw this film, I had so many worries about it from the moment it's title and base synopsis were released because, from 2016's Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Justice, it was noted that Diana Prince who is wonder woman, did not stand in the forefront of mankind's events. I feared that this film would retcon this piece of information but it was clear that Director Patty Jenkins was well aware of this information and made sure she applied it to this film for continuity purposes by showing Diana going out of her way to erase any evidence of her interfering with things like the crimes she stops and saving the lives of people. 

Wonder Woman 1984 starts off with a flashback to an Amazonian competition young Diana participated in and nearly won if not for her trying to find an easier way to do things. This opens up the main theme of this film which is sacrifice, and it comes full circle by the end of the film. After that scene is played, we resume properly in 1984 showing Wonder Woman saving people secretly with the inclusion of a very 80's centric mall robbery scene where she not only saves but inspires the people in danger. 

After that, we get to see how Diana has come to live among mankind and how she feels lonely without her boyfriend Steve Trevor who had sacrificed himself in the previous film. Diana now works as an archeologist of sorts and it is through that medium we're introduced to the secondary villain of this story, Barbara Minerva, a klutzy, brilliant and kind nobody who happens to now work where Diana does. Diana is the only person who seems to notice and show interest in her besides a street pauper we see earlier. Without going into much details, their relationship is set up really well and both actresses really do a good job of emoting through out this film as they go from friend to foe. 

 Okay, okay, like the title suggests, I love this film and I don't want to spoil anything critical so, I'll try my best to explain the reasons why I love this film which I carefully took note of on my little notepad while I watched;

SETTING

 While it is set in the 80's and pays homage to it in several scenes, nothing really feels super cheesy I think this can be attributed to the great performances by Gal, Kristen Wiig, Chris and Pedro Pascal! Pedro especially was bloody brilliant in this. My biggest fear for this film was it being too cheesy and lack real substance was completely thrown out the window because this film truly has heart, they're very beautiful scenes with one being inside a certain kind of jet (if you know what I'm talking about). The final act is one of my favorite superhero film climax because I feel like it really shows how beautiful humanity can be if we work together.....okay, I know that sounds cheesy but I promise if you watch this film with an open mind, it'll probably hit you. 

MUSIC

 The music in this film took me for quite a surprise, it stars off with a hopeful theme fused with this dark OG Terminator like punk bassline and then we progress to more ambitious themes, which in turn moves to the quiet emotional one we see between Diana and her love and then, one of my favorites music sections happened to be a call back to a previous film in the cinematic universe which worked so so well in this film, I heard about it being here but I was still shocked at how they used it and it resonated with me. 

PLOT

Like I stated earlier, this film has a lot of heart and it's story makes room for it. The story of Wonder Woman 1984 could have been done awfully but thanks to great direction by Patty Jenkins and the wonderful cast, the story pacing and plot points are engaging and fun to watch even though the film has a runtime of over two hours. The story is a deliberate one that is set up from the beginning to bring up the importance of sacrifices and trying to do the right thing instead of just what you want. While that might sound really generic, I think it was really entertaining, impactful and executed well.  Oh oh, I heard about how apparently these films has boring fight scenes, I honestly disagree and believe it has some of the most excitingly refreshing action scenes I have seen in the comic book genre in recent years. I also enjoyed the way they incorporated a certain character through the use of a short  and informative cameo during the film and a campy lighthearted one later on.

VILLAINS

  While I loved all the characters in general and thought Gal and Chris were both wonderful, I would like to praise last but not least, the villains of this film because they absolutely stand out. This film gave me Pedro Pascal as Maxwell Lord, a character who is now a personal favorite of mine, I think he was phenomenal and I loved how he didn't need to do the cliché prerequisites of the modern day super hero villain and was still able to be a menacing and captivating character. From his first scenes in the film, he is charismatic and charming, very ambitious and very very effective. He is a cunning businessman who has had to crawl to the top and has an ambition of continuing to get bigger and while this all sounds extremely maniacal, there's more to his character and something/someone else that tethers him to humanity. 

While Pedro was phenomenal, hats off to Kristen Wiig as Barbara as well, her portrayal of the character is acted out so well and her transition into the confident badass villain we see later on in the film would not be able to be achieved without her  great performance. At first, her introduction felt jarring but then I quickly realized she's meant to be like that before she can develop into something more menacing. 

Wonder Woman 1984 like a lot of films is not perfect but I do believe it was a very good film contrary to popular opinion, and while I have a few issues especially the cgi in some parts of the beginning and ending, plus certain moments where the dialogue sounds cheesy, overall, the good outweighs the bad and I think it's a solid film to watch especially during this Christmas season. I read there are two sequels  in the works and I am very excited to see what they do with them.

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