For Wonder Woman 1984, the sequel to the 2017 phenomenon, director and co-writer Patty Jenkins really leans in to the date of the title. After a flashback prologue showing a feisty young Diana Prince (a returning Lilly Aspell) competing as a kid in her island home’s version of American Ninja Warrior, Jenkins splashes the screen with a colorful, bubbly, all-American look at our nation’s capital in ways it never really was in the Reagan era, which is to say looking not dissimilar to Back to the Future Part II’s living-cartoon idea of 2015.
All the rainbow neon and big hair aside, this Washington, D.C.-set intro works well and with a winking vibe, no doubt influenced by Richard Donner’s vision of Metropolis in Superman as a veritable domino line of pratfalls. The Mack Sennett-style chaos snakes indoors to a mall jewelry store robbery foiled by the arrival of — yep, you guessed it — Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot). One of the swiped pieces is a mysterious chunk of, well, no one knows, so the FBI enlists the Smithsonian to help ID it. That’s where the plainclothes Diana works, as does the socially awkward Barbara Minerva (Bridesmaids’ Kristen Wiig).
The artifact of unknown origin is revealed to be a wishing rock, in that when someone holds it and speaks their desire aloud, a wisp of wind blows their bangs askew and the wish is immediately granted. Such a powerful object attracts the greedy hands of failing oilman Max Lord (an über-hammy Pedro Pascal, Kingsman: The Golden Circle), who seduces Barbara to gain access; she herself uses it to undergo one for those overnight movie makeovers from meek nerd to foxy mama.
Diana unknowingly leverages its powers, too, allowing Jenkins and her fellow scripters Geoff Johns (Aquaman) and Dave Callaham (2014’s Godzilla) to bring back love interest Steve Trevor (Chris Pine, Hell or High Water). Having perished in the first film’s end, Steve is resurrected in perhaps the laziest way possible: via the silly science of comic-book plotting. However, the arrival of Trevor, a World War I pilot, into a baffling, parachute-panted future livens WW84 tremendously, thanks to Pine’s unwavering commitment to not minding looking goofy. His comic performance is the MVP of the sequel, bar none.
What takes the air out of WW84 is the common archenemy of superhero cinema: third-act bloat. Given its 2.5-hour running time, one could make the case for fourth-act bloat as well. By then, Max Lord’s quest for world domination has been run into the ground with nowhere else to go but run further into the ground, to the point of subterranean. Barbara’s own transformation from human hottie to a CGI cheetah woman is needless, especially as the character resembles an The Island of Dr. Moreau abomination filtered through the costume department of Cats.
Still, a lot remains to like about Wonder Woman 1984. Even when saddled with hokey dialogue in the de rigueur showdown, Gadot believably embodies goodwill and decency. She shines as a straight-and-serious heroine, too, never better than in Jenkins’ big action set piece in the middle — and in the Middle East — which recalls one that put Indiana Jones through the peak-Spielberg paces of Raiders of the Lost Ark. The movie benefits from more humor and less world-building than its predecessor, before giving in to the subgenre’s worst tendencies of epically reaching to out-epic the most recent fantasy epic, to less-than-epic effect. —Rod Lott
