Last time, it was German and British military leaders under the sway of Ares, the god of war. This time, it’s a struggling entrepreneur/TV personality who, in stealing an ancient gem — the “dream stone” — from the Smithsonian in Washington, DC (where Gadot’s Diana now works), gains the power to grant wishes.
Max Lord (Pedro Pascal) goes from deadbeat dad to despot, turning into a conman of mythical dimensions. He’s a diabolical genie without a bottle, or to paraphrase Robin Williams’ Aladdin, he’s got phenomenal cosmic powers sans the itty, bitty living space.
A snake oil salesman who placates cravings while stealing everything else is, you might say, a touch timely. Wonder Woman 1984 plays up its Trump critique about as much as it does its 80s style.
In one scene, Steve Trevor (Chris Pine), summoned from the grave by Diana’s own wish while holding the gem, giddily tries on all the period-appropriate clothing like Ken’s fashion show in Toy Story 3.
Best in the first Wonder Woman were the screwball fish-out-of-water scenes of Diana experiencing London with Trevor; this time the roles are reversed, and the charm a little less.
What does Max’s rise have to do with Wonder Woman? A huckster is a kind of perfect foil to Diana, conceived from the start as a force for truth. (Her lasso of truth was modelled after the polygraph, an invention of Wonder Woman creator William Moulton Marston.)
Jenkins opens the film with an Amazonian flashback to an obstacle course race on the island of Themyscira where a young Diana learns the value of truth. “No true hero is born from lies,” says Antiope (Robin Wright).
The dream stone transforms another, too: Barbara Minerva, a meek archeologist played by Kristen Wiig. Awkward in heels and most everything else, she mutters that she’d like to be more like Diana when holding the stone, setting off a metamorphosis that playfully remakes Wiig’s typical screen presence, and creates another foe for Wonder Woman.
Just as in Wonder Woman, Jenkins has left some opportunities on the table. The first film, despite being set in 1918 during WW1, omitted any real interaction with the era’s then-flourishing women’s rights movement — a vital source of inspiration to Marston. Likewise, Wonder Woman 1984 — more focused on the “greed is good” decade and its contemporary resonances — doesn’t pause to interrogate the 1980s gender imbalances.
Like the last movie, Wonder Woman 1984 becomes consumed by its (admittedly quite good) antagonist. It drags in the third act in a messy White House battle and a prolonged finale.
Even so, the films are more enjoyable than some other superhero films. They feel campier and more real than Marvel movies — more like the page-turning thrill of a comic book. The ambitions of Wonder Woman 1984 may be just outside its grasp, but it seldom feels predestined or predictable — a preciously rare commodity in the genre.
As its characters awaken to their powers, turning from recognisable people to monsters, the film keeps changing shape, enlarging as it goes. Jenkins’ pop cinema craft is limber and lucid. Pascal’s performance, more sweet than sinister, is scintillatingly over the top.
Wonder Woman 1984 will close out a year largely absent of superheroes in a release plan that has upended the film industry. It’s a very big film heading primarily to small screens around the world, at a time when the pandemic has made the escapist, popcorn-eating moviegoing that superhero movies are made for impossible, or nearly so. That makes Wonder Woman 1984 a nostalgia act in more ways than one.
