Wonder Woman 1984: Discussion, Set Leaks & Spoilers #WW84

[Flash Gordon]

I think for Wonder Woman fans it gave us a lot of things we wanted to see her do. So for us it's a more rewarding movie. It's those elements that gave me shivers of goodness. So for us it's a better movie than it might be for others that don't care about that stuff. Also for little kids--especially the early part--I thought a lot of kids, especially little girls, would feel empowered by those bits. Wonder Woman is always relating to kids and supporting them.

I agree, there's a lot of empowering moments and just pure WONDER WOMAN moments.

[Last Son of Krypton]

I watched the movie with low expectations due to the mixed reviews, thinking I was going to be disappointed but I actually end up enjoy it a lot. Few things I didn't like (like the campiness of some scenes) but I don't get all the hate.

[rayray1127]

I've been revisiting a lot of movies and music from the 80s, so I've been SWIMMING in nostalgia. I feel like this movie seems like an "80s movie" in a lot of ways. The ONE THING that was missing for me was the really awesome music that was around at the time. Welcome To The Pleasuredome by Frankie Goes To Hollywood was AWESOME to hear while Diana was at that party. In case any of you were wondering, that song is about a place where "all your darkest fantasies and wishes come true". How on the nose, am I right?

Anyhoo, even though it was released in 87, it would have been nice to hear Mind Over Matter by E. G. Daily (aka Tommy from Rugrats!!!) Look it up, it's got a GREAT beat and the lyrics are pretty on the nose for Wonder Woman in general!

[Psy-lock]

I just realized that "An American Werewolf in London" was an 80's movie, which makes it all the more baffling that they didn't show Barbara's transformation on screen.

[Frontier]

I think that this movie is so full of awkward and forced moments that such a choice wouldn't make the movie make more sense.
I have a got a feeling that for a series of reasons - including the generally lukewarm reception, but also because of the specific circumstances the movie was released - we won't hear much of WW1984 in the next years and it will fade into relative obscurity. Whenever people talk about Wonder Woman they will refer to the first movie, which has a lot of flaws but is way less disappointing than this one.

This doesn't seem to be Diana's Spider-Man 2 in comparison to the first film but unless there end up being a bunch of other WW films or WWIII blows it out of the water I'm not sure I see people completely forgetting about it.

[Surf]

This doesn't seem to be Diana's Spider-Man 2 in comparison to the first film but unless there end up being a bunch of other WW films or WWIII blows it out of the water I'm not sure I see people completely forgetting about it.

Ahh, the superhero sequel gold standard (along with Superman II). Ha, such the high bar, the MCU's only pulled that off once with The Winter Soldier.

True, yea if people still bring up Superman IV, if only in jest and/or sadness, then WW84 won't ever become obscure in those terms.

[Myskin]

My oh my. Where to start. SPOILER, of course.


I'd say that the best thing anyone could say about WW 84 is that it is in no way as bad as Superman IV, even if there are a couple of plot points which may belong to that movie. The problem is that it is no good, either, even it is not the same kind of bad of Thor: Dark World or Zack Snyder's... Well, every single Snyder movie in the DCEU. I'll try to summarize some of my points.

1- The time period. OK; I get it, Reaganism and consumerism and hedonism. But the way they depict the era - especially in the opening scene in the mall - actually doesn't have anything to do with a vaguely realistic depiction of the 1980s. It looks like... Well, a dream about the 1980s made up by someone who actually thought that everyone in the 80s was an a**hole dressed in an extravagant way. If they wanted to talk about egomaniacs and consumerism, there is no actual reason for the story not to take place in our days. Actually, in the era of Facebook and influencers and postCapitalism and President Trump it would have worked even better. Maybe they wanted to talk about Middle Eastern crisis, but this is the type of movie for which it would have been better if they had avoided any reference to real-life events, especially when they involve walls, cutting water and an Israeli actress with a military background who has already expressed some debatable opinions regarding some related themes (and Gadot surely couldn't ignore what some references may imply). I am not necessarily saying that they actually made it on purpose, but I actually find it unfortunate and possibly indelicate. The "rape" accusations regarding the "handsome man" IMHO are completely forced, because there is literally NOTHING in the real world which resembles what happens in the movie. But there are a lot of real-life situations which actually resemble what the Egypt incident shows in the movie. Anyway, these are actually minor troubles - nothing which could make me downright hate WW84.

One curious fact: even if the movie takes place in the 1980s they never play the Stranger Things card. That is, they don't ever try to replicate the tone and the atmosphere of fantasy movies of the 1980s. However, what's even more curious is that the movie actually has a lot of debts with movies from the 1990s and early 2000s. With one exception - Superman II, which sounds like a source of inspiration for Jenkins - there seem to be a lot of plot points taken from Jerry Zucker's Ghost, 2000s action movies and those mainstream fantasy comedies such as the Freaky Friday remake, Bruce Almighty and Liar Liar. It actually looks more Captain Marvel-ish than Captain Marvel itself. It's as if - purposefully or not - they had recreated some kitsch, so-bad-that-it's-good moments from movies such as Stargate (Barbara Minerva is actually surprised that an archaeologist/anthropologist knows Latin even if she works at the friggin' Smithsonian; renowned anthropologist - and secretly centuries-old amazon - Diana Prince can't recognize the Dreamstone even if - as Barbara Minerva says at one point - its image is literally everywhere; a Latin inscription is on the millennia-old Dreamstone even if apparently it was around way before Rome was founded and so on). In that regard, I'd say that the one superhero movie which is REALLY similar to WW84 is Batman Forever. Both Lord's and Minerva's arcs resemble the Riddler's arc in that movie, and in particular Minerva seems to be a revival of the "nerdish character who becomes a villain" cliché from Batman Forever (and Batman Returns, and Batman and Robin, and Amazing Spider-Man 2...). Just to be sure, I re-read some of Greg Rucka's issues and there are literally ZERO similarities between the strong, confident character he re-created for the comic books and what Kristen Wiig attempted to do here.

(to be continued in the next post...)

[Myskin]

(continuing from the previous post)

2- Ok, let's go with the serious stuff. One of the two main problems I have with the movie is that it is actually two completely different movies which progress in parallel and rarely meet each other. Movie A is about Lord and Minerva, and it is basically a bizarre fantasy black comedy about a couple of con artists - or a con artist and a woman who gets involved in his plans - who accidentally get Aladin's genie lamp. Movie B is a fantasy rom-com about a woman obsessed with her long-lost-love and magically revives him. These two movies have literally zero to do with each other on every possible level, and the points when they meet - basically every moment when Wonder Woman interacts with Minerva or Lord - are probably among the worst moments in the entire flick. Also: movie A is way more interesting than movie B.
I don't know why - maybe it depends on the fact that Wiig and Pascal are way, way better actors than Gadot; or maybe it is because in the "interaction moments" they try to give some "moral" meaning to the scene (how sanctimonious is sexy, immortal, superstrong, overconfident Diana Prince talking to poor, insecure, vulnerable and at-risk-of-being-raped Minerva and telling her that she has had problems, too??? I literally hated WW in that scene). Anyway, the longer I watched WW84, the more I wanted to watch Pascal and Wiig and the less I was interested in Gadot and Pine. I actually think that Max Lord pre-Dreamstone, when he actually resembles his JLI counterpart, is the best part in the movie (after the Dreamstone, he becomes a not-particularly-interesting hybrid of average power-hungry megalomaniac and the villainous Max Lord from the "Sacrifice" storyline, mostly because of visual elements, in particular the nosebleed). Wiig as Minerva post-Dreamstone has some funny moments too, mostly because - even if they make her a bit prettier - you never really get the impression that she is a super-hot bombshell, so some of the people's exaggerated reactions to her actually sound funny.

Anyway, movie A's resolution doesn't really need Wonder Woman. Max Lord could have had his "enlightenment moment" even without the lasso. In fact, I think that the entire movie would have been better with NO Wonder Woman at all. The romance adds nothing to what they had given us in chapter 1, poor Chris Pine (who - for some reason - looks a decade older than in the previous movie - what happened to him??!) doesn't have much to do and Gadot talking about truth and beauty and loyalty sounds even more fake than Superman talking about hope. Plus: every fan-appeasing moment in which she gets a new gadget or there is a nerdish reference (the invisible plane, the flight, the armor, even Lynda Carter) is downright TERRIBLE. Forced, distracting and completely useless.

(to be concluded in the next post...)

[Myskin]

(continuing from the previous post...)

3- The other main problem is the Dreamstone itself. They NEVER really explains how it works and it's as if they make the rules while the film progresses. They keep referencing The Monkey's Paw, but it is if they had missed the main point of the original tale, that is fate's cruel irony. In Jacobs' original story the main character wish for 200 pounds and he gets it when his son horribly dies in an accident, and he gets a goodwill payment of 200 pounds as a refund. So there is a direct correlation between the wish and the bad consequence. But in WW84 this happens only in some moments. If you really wants to put some faith in it, you could argue that there actually is a correlation between Barbara's wish and her becoming a jerk: she finally has some power and she decides to use it in the worst possible way (actually in the movie they suggest that the Dreamstone has some direct psychological effect on Minerva, but I chose to ignore that part). But there is literally no correlation between Diana losing her power, resurrected Steve and Steve inhabiting another man's body (why???). This makes the entire part about Diana incredibly weak, because it's really hard to get invested in what is happening to her. Also, the problem with the Dreamstone becomes more serious while the film progresses. Some of the wishes becoming real actually sound "realistic" (Lord's assistant wishes to have some help and a group of employees enter the room for an interview - it's not as if they had magically appeared in the room and had blue skin like Mr Meseeks from Rick and Morty). In other moments - Barbara becoming a human cheetah after having being granted a SECOND wish (weren't they limited to only one? Is it just because Lord "feels generous"? Does he feel generous later during the climax? What a mess) - the connection between the wish and its granting are something out of a fantasy movie. Some points are downright confusing - the emir wishing for a wall causes "just" a political crisis rather than an utter shock among every single head state because a frickin' WALL has appeared out of nowhere? Did I miss something?

The way they deal with the wishes is so arbitrary that it makes the climax incredibly weaker. In order to accept what happens at the end you have also to accept that A- EVERY single person's wish on the planet is a relatively mundane thing (wishing to have a lot of money, wishing someone else to be dead, wishing to be a king), B- everyone's wish is something egotistical and C- everyone renounces his/her wish. This is incredibly hard to accept. I mean, hasn't anyone asked for world peace? Hasn't anyone desired to swap places with Maxwell Lord? Hasn't any borderline bipolar person desired EVERYONE on the planet to be dead? It is actually a missed opportunity, too, because they way they deal with "global wishes" is terribly boring and unimaginative. I mean, wouldn't it have been funnier if - taking a page from Rudy Rucker's novel Master of Space and Time - someone had desired to have six arms, or to become tiny and live between a woman's boobs? Why didn't kids wish for unicorns? I mean, it would have been visually interesting at least - it's not that there is anything remarkable from a visual point of view in WW84 (yes, the CGI is awful).

On a final note, I think that the resolution is flawed as hell. I guess that they were trying to make Lord sympathetic by making him realize the error of his ways, but the problem is that Lord actually stops only when he understands that he is putting his son in danger. HIS SON. Not a completely unknown, unrelated child. So the final lesson isn't really "be careful what you wish for because you could put other people in danger", but "be careful what you wish for because you could hurt your family and therefore your own, personal interest".

[FutureWonder]

I have watched the film three times and the more I watch it, the more I love it.
Bring on WW3 and (hopefully) Circe!!!!

[brettc1]

I think this is a middle of the road film, an average entertaining movie with a few bright spots. It deserves a rating in the higher 60s-70s range.

But accumulating so many reviews from a lot of no-name reviewers to come to that conclusion seems excessive. As does the amount of reviews we had for the first movie to give it a rating in the 90s. Like who cares what this many people have to say? it might be better for RT to just collect top critics and get a percentage from that.

While I disagree with the rule of the mob, I don’t believe critics always represent the popular opinion either.

[Amazon Swordsman]

Side note, but did Barbara end up....spoilers:

sleeping with Max for the stone because he showed her attention? I could be wrong, but it was heavily implied lol

end of spoilers

Also, spoilers:

I really enjoyed the reference to Duke of Deception. Interesting that Ares wasn’t mentioned, or ties to him. The main Olympians all staying dead definitely leaves room for demigods to run rampant. Did Diana also say something about Zeus being her father, and using his power to cloak Themyscira when she cloaked the Jet?

end of spoilers

Also again, spoilers:

The addition of Lynda Carter as the Amazon Asteria, was a very nice touch. It would be nice if Diana could meet her, and maybe she can help her find her way to Themyscira again in the next film.

end of spoilers

[brettc1]

(continuing from the previous post...)

3- The other main problem is the Dreamstone itself. They NEVER really explains how it works and it's as if they make the rules while the film progresses. They keep referencing The Monkey's Paw, but it is if they had missed the main point of the original tale, that is fate's cruel irony. In Jacobs' original story the main character wish for 200 pounds and he gets it when his son horribly dies in an accident, and he gets a goodwill payment of 200 pounds as a refund. So there is a direct correlation between the wish and the bad consequence. But in WW84 this happens only in some moments. If you really wants to put some faith in it, you could argue that there actually is a correlation between Barbara's wish and her becoming a jerk: she finally has some power and she decides to use it in the worst possible way (actually in the movie they suggest that the Dreamstone has some direct psychological effect on Minerva, but I chose to ignore that part). But there is literally no correlation between Diana losing her power, resurrected Steve and Steve inhabiting another man's body (why???). This makes the entire part about Diana incredibly weak, because it's really hard to get invested in what is happening to her. Also, the problem with the Dreamstone becomes more serious while the film progresses. Some of the wishes becoming real actually sound "realistic" (Lord's assistant wishes to have some help and a group of employees enter the room for an interview - it's not as if they had magically appeared in the room and had blue skin like Mr Meseeks from Rick and Morty). In other moments - Barbara becoming a human cheetah after having being granted a SECOND wish (weren't they limited to only one? Is it just because Lord "feels generous"? Does he feel generous later during the climax? What a mess) - the connection between the wish and its granting are something out of a fantasy movie. Some points are downright confusing - the emir wishing for a wall causes "just" a political crisis rather than an utter shock among every single head state because a frickin' WALL has appeared out of nowhere? Did I miss something?

The way they deal with the wishes is so arbitrary that it makes the climax incredibly weaker. In order to accept what happens at the end you have also to accept that A- EVERY single person's wish on the planet is a relatively mundane thing (wishing to have a lot of money, wishing someone else to be dead, wishing to be a king), B- everyone's wish is something egotistical and C- everyone renounces his/her wish. This is incredibly hard to accept. I mean, hasn't anyone asked for world peace? Hasn't anyone desired to swap places with Maxwell Lord? Hasn't any borderline bipolar person desired EVERYONE on the planet to be dead? It is actually a missed opportunity, too, because they way they deal with "global wishes" is terribly boring and unimaginative. I mean, wouldn't it have been funnier if - taking a page from Rudy Rucker's novel Master of Space and Time - someone had desired to have six arms, or to become tiny and live between a woman's boobs? Why didn't kids wish for unicorns? I mean, it would have been visually interesting at least - it's not that there is anything remarkable from a visual point of view in WW84 (yes, the CGI is awful).

On a final note, I think that the resolution is flawed as hell. I guess that they were trying to make Lord sympathetic by making him realize the error of his ways, but the problem is that Lord actually stops only when he understands that he is putting his son in danger. HIS SON. Not a completely unknown, unrelated child. So the final lesson isn't really "be careful what you wish for because you could put other people in danger", but "be careful what you wish for because you could hurt your family and therefore your own, personal interest".

Wishes don’t make sense any time. They defy physical laws -that’s the point.

Take the people turning up to help, for example. We see later that POTUS didn’t even know how he ended up in his office. Reality is being rewritten on the fly. I wondered earlier whether these people would have turned up anyway but the POTUS scene implies no.

Whether the wishes are altruistic or not is irrelevant. The magic is itself corruptive. This is established as they trace the history of the artifact and its creator. “Duke of Deception”? There’s your warning signal right there. A kid wishing for a unicorn would likley have watched it gore his or her parents to death.

The Monkeys paw story is apt. There’s a LOT of ways to win 200 pounds. But the magic triggers a tragic outcome, rather than an innocuous one.

The short story involves Mr. and Mrs. White and their adult son, Herbert. Sergeant-Major Morris, a friend who served with the British Army in India, comes by for dinner and introduces them to a mummified monkey's paw. An old fakir placed a spell on the paw, so that it would grant three wishes but only with hellish consequences as punishment for tampering with fate. Morris, having had a horrible experience using the paw, throws it into the fire. Mr. White, not believing Morris, retrieves it. Before leaving, Morris warns Mr. White of what might happen should he use the paw.

This isn’t the genie from Aladdin. This is an evil force that only gives so it can take and cause chaos.

[Myskin]

Wishes don’t make sense any time. They defy physical laws -that’s the point.

Even fantasy should have rule, or it's just: hey, it's magic! We don't have to explain it. The Dreamstone actually have a TON of rules in the movie. It's just that they have no logic and the write them while the movie progresses.

A kid wishing for a unicorn would likley have watched it gore his or her parents to death.

This is you just thinking what COULD have happened. Why don't they actually show it, or something similar? At the end they just use the wishes in a very unimaginative way. They simply chose the safest outcome because they need to make people think that Diana is proving a point.

[SiegePerilous02]

Lol people are speculating that Bruce wished for his parents to come back and had to renounce his wish and watch them vanish all over again.

If so, no wonder he's more of a hot mess than normal in BvS.