Wonder Woman 1984 is the lead of HBO Max’s same day home/theatrical release series. There are going to be a number of releases in 2021, and I’m going to try to cover all of them. So, does Wonder Woman 1984 make HBO Max worth it’s monthly price?
It’s now the 1980s and Diana Price/Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot) is living in DC and working as a museum expert at the Smithsonian. She’s also still being a superhero as Wonder Woman, and not exactly hiding the fact that Wonder Woman exists. The story starts with Barbara Minerva (Kristen Wiig), a mousy nerd type, joining the Smithsonian staff and instantly becoming drawn to and jealous of Diana. They strike up a quick friendship, and Diana helps Barbara with identifying a new artifact; which is a sort of ancient wish stone. You make a wish on it and your wish is granted but it takes away what you treasure most. We are also introduced to Maxwell Lord (Pedro Pascal), a conman whose Ponzi scheme is about to catch up with him. He wants to acquire the wish stone to help him out of the hole he dug himself into and become rich and powerful.
I think we can all see where this is going. Diana wishes for her boyfriend from the first movie Steve Trevor (Chris Pine) to come back. He does by inhabiting someone else’s body, but she starts to lose her powers. Barbara wishes she was like Diana and ends up getting her powers, but losing her empathy for others (or something?). And when Maxwell is able to make a wish, he asks to become the wish stone. Then he uses other people’s wishes to make himself richer and more powerful.
I don’t want to spoil it, but it obviously ends with a showdown involving Diana, Maxwell, and Barbara. With some assists from Steve along the way.
The acting and characters are better than the plot suggests. Kristen Wiig is very believable as someone who starts off as an unattractive loser and ends up being an ass kicker who all the men want. Pedro Pascal is really enjoying hamming it as the bad guy, though the more serious aspects of his character aren’t always that believable. And Chris Pine is just amazed enough by the 1980s to be a funny side character.
The action scenes in it are good. Unlike other DCU films they have clarity to them where you can tell what’s going on. But there really aren’t any fight sequences that really stand-out. There’s nothing like the Diana in No Man’s Land scene from the first movie.
This is a fun superhero movie that doesn’t take itself too seriously. It just doesn’t quite hit on anything the way the first one did, other than being a little more humorous.
The real downfall of it is the film’s logic. It’s fine for superhero movies to play by their own set of rules, but Wonder Woman 1984 never really fully explains what those are. Wonder Woman and Barbara’s powers are never fully defined. How Maxwell Lord is getting what he wants by granting other peoples wishes is never adequately explained. What exactly Barbara treasured and then lost is explained poorly as well. Audiences are willing to go along with silly comic book rules, but they have to be consistent and obvious to the viewers.
Out of HBO Go, HBO Now, or HBO Max I give this film an HBO Now. It’s not a necessary film, but I enjoyed it. It’s a fun movie, but it’s not in the same conversation as the original Wonder Woman.