Now Watching: Wonder Woman 1984

I’d heard Wonder Woman 1984 was bad, but not this bad. I’d say it’s almost as terrible as the theatrical release of The Justice League. What the hell happened? The first Wonder Woman movie was pretty decent. It lost its way towards the end which kind of spoiled everything a bit but, overall, I still liked the film. But this? This is a complete mess from start to finish.

The first hour is mostly dull and meandering, but the second is when the film really goes off the rails. Gal Gadot, who I still really like in the role, looks more and more confused as the film goes on, as if even she has no clue what the f**k is happening. And Chris Pine, returning as Steve Trevor in the most pointlessly weird and creepy way possible? He just looks permanently baffled. Pedro Pascal is clearly enjoying himself though, hamming it up as Max Lord. He’s having a great time. At least someone is, I suppose.

You can pinpoint exactly when the film completely loses its way and that’s when Diana and Steve travel to Egypt. It’s like, an hour or so in, someone suddenly realised there hadn’t been any action scenes since the opening of the film so we get what may be the laziest and most stupid set up to an action scene I’ve seen in a long time.

Diana and Steve travel to Egypt to find and stop Max Lord. Apparently there’s only a single road in all of Egypt and Diana and Steve just so happen to pass by Max as he’s travelling in the opposite direction with his newly acquired convoy of soldiers. Diana just looks out the window as the cars go by and is like ‘look, there he is!’

They quickly turn their car around to pursue Max who, despite not knowing who the f**k they are or what they could possibly want, orders his soldiers to murder them in what then becomes an absolutely awful and poorly executed action scene that leads to one of the most unintentionally hilarious moments when Diana has to rescue some dumb, seemingly blind children playing football in the middle of the road in the middle of the f**king desert.

Children that magically transform into dummies when the stunt double hits the ground, the poor child dummies slamming against the road and bouncing away. It’s not meant to be funny though. How did something that looked so terrible end up in the final film? Was Patty Jenkins drunk in the editing suite?

It’s just so totally confusing as to how this film got made. Did nobody read the script prior to shooting? When there’s so much money and talent invested in a project, did nobody stop and look at what was planned and say ‘hey, this is f**king terrible what the f**k are we thinking?’

Some of the scenes in this film are so bad that it boggles my mind. When you consider the entire process of setting up these scenes from the script to the actors, extras, location shooting, stunts and effects, it amazes me that some of these scenes exist. They feel like they were shot on a whim without any thought put into them. But that’s not the case at all. People did think about them a lot. A lot of work went into them. But did nobody notice how terrible they were?

It’s not as if it’s a single scene or two. Everything is wrong. And I haven’t even talked about Cheetah or how ridiculous that character is yet. In fact, I don’t think I’ll bother. This review is long enough as it is. And what about Steve? If he’s going to return, just have him return at the expense of Diana’s powers. That’s the ‘cost’ right? But for some reason he also has to possess an actual dude? Okay . . . but if you’re going to do that then maybe Diana and Steve should be a little conflicted about essentially stealing another person’s life?

But they’re kind of not and treat the whole thing as a joke? What? I kept waiting for the dude’s wife to walk in and accuse Steve (but not Steve) of cheating. It’s another bizarre choice that’s poorly handled in a film full of bizarre choices. The whole film has a Saturday morning cartoon vibe to it – but not a good Saturday morning cartoon. One of the really bad ones.

I could keep going and break down in excruciating detail just how bad this film is and how it gets nearly everything wrong. But I think I’ve ranted long enough. Wonder Woman deserves better than this crap.

4/10