‘Wonder Woman 84’ or — Nekromantic 3?
By: Colin Edwards
Tags: Movies, Film Reviews, Film, Movie Review

(Spoilers for opening 30 mins or so of ‘WW84’)

I was not looking forward to ‘WW84’ (2020) simply because I’m already sick to death of Hollywood’s compulsive obsession with the 1980’s, the system still molesting the corpse of that decade for all it is worth. Fortunately excessive 80’s shtick isn’t a big problem in ‘WW84’; what is a massive problem though is the rest of the movie which might just be the most dramatically inert film ever made and with stakes more insubstantial and flimsy than those found in a vampire hunter’s joke shop.

The story is utterly infantile revolving around a magical wishing stone with ill-define powers who grant the holder’s deepest wish… but at a price. This stone just turns up at Diana’s work one day with all the ceremony and impact of a takeaway coffee. Diana wishes for her dead boyfriend, Steve Trevor, to come back from the dead (although we don’t get to hear her say this out loud as it would sound creepy as fuck) whilst her klutzy co-worker (we know she is klutzy because she wears glasses) Barbara wishes to be an apex predator with ill-defined powers (Barbara’s character arc from ditz to full-on MEOW is worse than Halle Berry’s in ‘Catwoman’).

A spanner is thrown into the works when bogus business man Maxwell Lord wishes to BE the wishing stone itself, in a sort of twist on asking a genie for a million extra wishes as your wish (as I said — this film has the internal logic of a toddler). Now endowed with the power to grant other people’s wishes, something that effectively turns Maxwell Lord into nothing more than a malevolent birthday cake, he sets out to make the world a better place or be controller of the world or have power or something incredibly ill-defined.

And that’s it! Diana and Steve try to stop Maxwell using Diana’s ill-defined powers whilst Barbara doesn’t want them too so tries to stop them by using her ill-defined powers stopping Maxwell granting everyone’s wishes. This is a massive problem, mainly because the idea, the very concept, of granting wishes and wish giving is so vague, so nebulous, that it is totally childish and as soon as something becomes totally childish then any tension, drama or reason to care evaporates. Set all this in an unconvincing 80’s setting where no historical ramifications occur and it is impossible to relate to any of this.

This wouldn’t be so bad if ‘WW84’ was a breezy, short, in-and-out ride but it’s far from that, clocking in at two and a half hours. This length doesn’t make ‘WW84’ a drag or a trudge as such (although this film is intrinsically boring) but what it does do is make it simultaneously frothy and light plus extraordinarily swollen and distended; it’s like a fifty foot, three-tonne soufflé! It’s a film containing more empty air-pockets than actual substance and the result is totally tasteless.

‘WW84’ still exhibits Hollywood’s odd fascination/repulsion with mortality and death, which I’ve always found a deeply obnoxious stance in that these films can never fully acknowledge that death is the end. This leads to some seriously creepy, weird shit especially when you think about Diana and un-dead Steve having sex in Diana’s bed after he’s been brought back to life, something he takes in his stride without batting an eye-lid. Then again, I guess this is only appropriate because this movie is an empty experience, much like fucking a corpse (I imagine!), with no soul behind those glistening eyes.

Patty Jenkins stated that ‘WW84’ was taking its inspiration from Richard Donner’s original ‘Superman’ (1978), tapping back into that sense of wonder and fun of that movie. Yet with all the jokes, sprawling plot and odd quirks she seems to have remade one of the Richard Lester movies instead… or so I thought, because towards the end when the big final climax takes place, I realized what Jenkins had done was remake ‘Superman IV: The Quest For Peace’ (1987) with our hero “solving” a “real world” problem that is meant to send a message of hope to the audience rather doing what these heroes should be doing which is taking down clearly defined baddies. That lack of drama or tension apparent in ‘Superman IV’ is exactly the same issue ‘WW84’ has, the only problem is ‘WW84’ is also over an hour longer and that’s when it becomes a slog.

This is a movie I ended up seriously attempting to renounce my wish to see in the first place.