WW84 (sad)
canon, but it still looks gay.
Oh dear, what happened here?
After Wonder Woman I was stoked that a female superhero had been brought to the silver screen so emphatically. Even better, it'd been helmed by a female director…double-down: Patty Jenkins clearly got it. Or so I thought.
With that, I was eagerly anticipating Wonder Woman 1984. The one trailer that I saw looked promising, and the idea of Cheetah as one of the antagonists piqued my interest. Not that I know anything of Cheetah or Maxwell Lord from the comics, never having read them.
So the early reviews and critique came as a disappointment. Some of it was overdone IMO, nitpicking almost: the nonconsensual use of a vessel for Steve Trevor; the logistics over the Tornado flight; a WWI aviator piloting a modern jet. All that never really occurred to me, and I'm not going to knock the film for a few, relatively minor inconsistencies. No, there's a whole other number of reasons why I detest this film.
In no particular order of demerit, just in terms of when they appear chronologically—although the last is the most egregious, and therefore my #1 problem with this pile of shite—they are:
- The mall scene: This whole scene's played too ham-fistedly for laughs; the humour isn't subtle and it isn't funny IMO. At one point, WW smacks one of the thieves through a drum, and he emerges the other side holding himself inside a spinning ring. It's like something from a 1910s Mack Sennett silent comedy! I don't appreciate slapstick, and certainly not in an ostensibly dramatic film.
- The MacGuffin: A dreamstone that grants wishes. As threats go, I thought it was pretty gay, as was the global relinquishment at the sappy end. And, since the film's set in 1984 and the actor playing POTUS is made up to look a lot like Ronald Reagan, he would have wished for either better anti-nuclear defences or the disarmament of the USSR; not more nuclear weapons.
- The antagonists: The CGI for Cheetah looked like something out of Cats, and Maxwell Lord was a non-threat. While Lord's antics were built up as culminating in nuclear Armageddon, the denouement didn't seem particularly superheroic.
- The boss battle scene: One of the hallmarks, if not clichés, of superhero films is the final boss battle scene, when good vanquishes evil and gives it a hefty smack on the bottom to send it scuttling on its way. But it has since transpired that Patty Jenkins doesn't like boss battle scenes—which makes me wonder why she chose this genre in the first place. Instead, she opted for a pretty lame smackdown, with Lord then returning home to his family, as if nothing had happened. There was no threat, no tension, and no consequences. FFS, even though Cheetah
died
, Barbara lived. WT-actual-F? (mad) (SMH)
Still, like Birds of Prey, I watched it on Netflix. So at least I didn't waste any money over-and-above the monthly subscription.
3/10: bumped up from 2 for Jenkins spelling her name correctly at the top of the exam paper.