Was Wonder Woman 84 Really As Bad As Twitter Makes It Seem?
By: Laurie Carver
Tags: Soul, Wonder Woman 1984, Movie Review, Ww84, Twitter

Sometimes the purpose of Twitter is just to rage — WW84 spoilers ahead

Photo by JESHOOTS.COM on Unsplash

Since the quarantine has limited our movie theater experience this year, streaming services have taken advantage of this by releasing movies meant for the theaters. HBO Max and Disney+ both released exclusive movies on Christmas Day. HBO Max released Wonder Woman 84 (WW84), and Disney+ released the new Pixar Soul. These two movies could not be more different, but their Christmas Day release has many on Twitter comparing the two.

I, and I’m sure many others, had high expectations for WW84. The first Wonder Woman movie was one of the most successful D.C. features. Gal Gadot mesmerized us with her performance against the naysayers with the initial announcement of her playing the role. WW84 has a star-studded cast, with trailers that enticed us by it’s hokey 1980’s setting and the surprise return of Steve (Chris Pine).

The trailers for WW84 set a scene that ended up being a lot more complicated than expected. Two antagonists developed with Cheetah(Kristen Wiig) and Maxwell Lord(Pedro Pascal); both actors played their roles to perfection, but it would have been nice to see them on their own as the main nemesis. The movie was marketed as focusing on Wiig as Cheetah, but the character was more of a side-kick to Pascal’s Lord.

Besides the lack of focus on the anticipated Cheetah character, Pascal’s Lord was an interesting and well-performed addition. The character is able to stand alone in his own right as the focal antagonist. This may be where most people who complained on Twitter got most of their inspiration for rage tweeting. It seems as though the center of the rage involves the various plot points and absence of Cheetah’s more developed arc.

The Cheetah character develops and arcs just as it should, but we get pulled away to focus on the Lord character as well. Multiple characters with multiple developments created more of a chaos. It was difficult to commit to understanding them on the deeper level. Their roles did serve a purpose to each other in a way, but not enough to keep both in the same movie.

In a sense, it was a missed opportunity for Cheetah to be her own villain and for Lord, as well. The multiple ideas could have easily been split into two different movies. Possibly creating a different origin for Cheetah so we could see more focus on her. Even though the movie is marketed as if she is the main villain, her presence in the storyline feels like an afterthought.

There is definitely something to be said about the actors and talent in this movie. All the characters were well-played, but their stories lacked the depth most people wanted; Wiig and Pascal deserved more. Gadot was as perfect in the role as she has been, and her storyline was quintessential Wonder Woman. It seems as though the main problem was the storylines haphazardly trying to intersect around her. Let’s not forget, this movie is 2.5 hours long. That’s a lot of time to leave stuff up in the air or untouched all together.

The problem that is apparent with D.C. movies today are that they must compete with the prior success of Marvel, but they seem to fall into the trap of not committing to the patience it takes to do so. The Marvel movies introduced us to many different storylines, protagonists, and antagonists while maintaining one major theme throughout. Marvel Studios has proved time and time again we don’t mind being strung along for multiple movies to get us immersed in their universe. With that in mind, WW84 could have been easily developed to be a continuation in the likes of what Marvel did for years.

For me, the obvious comparison is to Marvel because of the comic book origins and feature films, but Twitter has taken to compare WW84 to Soul. Soul is the newest Disney/Pixar movie that just so happened to be released in the same way on the same day. Unfortunate, because these movies are so very different, and it’s unfair to do so. Soul is a beautiful movie, family friendly, with a strong message, but it cannot be compared to a super hero movie. Soul has a more simple outline using humor to build up to a powerful message.

Twitter seems to be unforgiving for minimal mistakes, but I feel like I can agree to an extent. WW84 wasn’t a terrible movie, but the two villains’ stories were rushed and smashed together to make one long movie. It felt like you were starting to connect to one and then the attention was drawn to the other, and Cheetah got the biggest neglect of all. However, the storyline for Diana, Wonder Woman, worked well. Though, the addition of Steve felt like another setup for us all to get hurt again.