When 2020 is barren in a thirst for blockbusters, Wonder Woman 1984 (WW84) launched at Christmas is expected to be a source of water to soothe mass audiences. However, the movie is no different than a bottle of soft drink: industrially sweet and only makes viewers… more thirsty.
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- Wonder Woman 1984: What is its story?
Released in 2017, Wonder Woman, though not a great movie, is a win-win move for Warner Bros. and DC. After the previous failure of Batman vs. Superman, Wonder Woman are like a spectacular rise when the character Diana Prince played by Gal Gadot has received great reception from the media and the audience. Gadot's charisma and the way of building a superheroine that is both soft and sturdy have made the audience feel fresh, bringing them away from the masculinity that has been a feature of this series. In addition, Wonder Woman is also an iconic film when it is both the first female superhero film in more than a decade and the first superhero film held by a female director. Because of that success, all expectations are on WW84 both to watch a blockbuster, and to see a very interesting character's journey and the above expectations are doubled in the context of 2020. a gray stretch on a world cinema background.
Unfortunately, WW84, the Wonder Woman sequel is a step back. Previously released media products, with multiple delays because COVID-19 really had a little or no impact on the audience's attitude to watch movies, it is difficult to say WW84 is a movie that brings satisfaction. complacent. The film is not only going backwards in character development but also in the way of building villains and cheesy in the sub-plot. After all, act 3, often the act to atone for the action genre with climaxes or effects, puts a dot on the movie's turmoil among the audience due to its old and disturbing moral lesson.
The uninteresting villains
A villain, an interesting villain that makes a memorable superhero. A great superhero movie is one that makes audiences remember and always discuss in a multidimensional way about those who dare to stand up against human ideals, exploit the fears of the collective unconscious, and open up. "People" of superheroes. WW84 does not have such characters.
The film introduces a bad guy is Maxwell Lord (Pedro Pascal) and a villain is Barbara Minerva. First of all, talking about Lord, this character is a form from 0 to become the final boss. Lord does not have any special abilities. He is just a "fake businessman" knows the existence of a magic stone that can grant people their wishes. From a frivolous, squishy man, Lord became a powerful being when he wished to become ... that very stone. It seems that it is a fascinating premise, throughout nearly 3 hours of the film, we do not see the development of a sick bad guy but only a poor person demonstrating an old moral lesson. : don't be greedy because everything comes at a cost.
Unfortunately, until Lord unleashes his power to manipulate the world on a large scale, he still does not exude the qualities of a bad guy, because everything he does does not really carry psychological weight or weight. of wickedness can do great harm to the hero. As if not enough to describe the "triviality" of this character, the screenwriter decided to add a father-son dialogue at the end of the movie between Lord and his son with a familiar motif: reimbursement, kindness and Sorry for what caused. Chemistry (the connection) between father and son was not sown enough before to touch the audience with this paternity theme of the two characters.
If Lord disappoints one, Barbara Minerva (Kristen Wiig) also disappoints ten because Cheetah was inherently an enemy with Diana in the original comic book. The character Barbara this time is a reluctant villain. Originally a cheerful, gentle girl, she wished she "could be like Diana" without knowing that Diana not only had good looks. Barbara did not want the wish to be broken, but tried to protect Lord, become his arm, and only in the third episode of the movie, the Cheetah that the audience was waiting for appeared, in the most forced way possible.
Before transforming into Cheetah, Barbara was a somewhat eccentric woman, with no looks or style of dress. She is clumsy in communication and behavior and is always cold to her colleagues. Next to Barbara, the film silently gives the audience an affirmation: you know who is more beautiful. It is at this point that WW84 develops the character of Barbara in a direction that goes against the waves of feminism in film. Barbara's wish come true means that she was "sexized" to look more like Diana.
In the previous section, many scholars and critics said that director Patty Jenkins was somewhat against the "objectification" (objectification) of women on film. In this part, Jenkins lets a female character achieve self-satisfaction by giving her a slim waist, height, charisma, sexy coordination, 10/10 eyesight and especially a boy. The office surrounds 24/24. From the stereotype "nerd girl", Barbara turned into a "sex bomb". This can be completely resolved if Barbara does not wish to become a "high level predator", a very unreasonable wish, a desperate direction to turn Barbara into Cheetah. When the movie closes, the battle between good and evil is over, Barbara still has no way out for herself. Everything about her was left open and the audience really couldn't connect with this character, a potential villain filled with regret.
The plot is too deeply attached to the emotional element
One of WW84's cross-cutting themes is "facing the truth". In the opening scene, young Diana learns about getting what she wants with the truth, not with the lie. Only when she is ready will she hold the warrior spirit of Asteria, Themyscira's strongest. This lesson is incorporated into the plot of the film when Diana wished Steve Trevor (Chris Pine), the former lover who died in season 1, return to her. Bringing Steve back at the same price to pay for that wish was an interesting test for Diana, but the movie got too caught up in this love story and forgot one thing: audiences weren't ready to watch. a superhero movie that emphasizes sentimentality. Diana and Chris's love moments, although very real, very human, are not the factors that make Wonder Woman stand out, but very bad-ass fight scenes of a warrior goddess, bad-ass. Like the way you spread your hair to the battlefield "no man's land" or Veld village in part 1.
It would be okay if the action was good enough for the audience to forgive those emotional segments, but unfortunately, with her power cut in half (the price of the wish), WW84's Diana looked real. less attractive. More than half of the fighting scenes were in her condition while she was not in good condition, so that the audience had to watch the "brother" for a long time and wait nervously for the 3rd act to release all the suppression. When Diana had let go of Chris's ghost, her strength returned along with her new ability when the audience cheered because she finally put on the armor of the warrior goddess Asteria, signaling for a while. really blood and fire.
The movie's climax in act 3 was a series of disappointments
Disappointment 1: Wonder Woman's new armor is really a decorative item. Those wings were very bulky and functional. They were torn apart after 3 minutes of "debut", and Diana had to remove them to make them less cumbersome. It seems that their main purpose is to add extra flair and anticipation to the poster.
Disappointment 2: a brief fight with Cheetah. Cheetah's appearance was only less than 10 minutes. When Cheetah is defeated, Barbara Minerva has no way out, unknown future direction that DC and Warner Bros. wanted for the character. This failure led to the next expectation: the confrontation with Lord, now almost immense power.
Disappointment 3: the way to fix all problems with the "Hestia truth rope" is quite unexpected. This presents a new problem-solving approach, without effort, but in ideal use. Perhaps this is the direction the studio wants for the character Wonder Woman. Unfortunately, with a movie with too much dialogue and not giving the audience the feeling of "having" for 2 and a half hours, this bold solution to "civic education" is a drop of water to the electric experience. photos and expectations that audiences have for the 2020 superhero movie closing.
After everything was settled, the audience watched a very Christmas scene that made many wonder if it was an additional shot for the movie to be released on the streaming platform on the right occasion. That scene is no different than a light, warm and romantic Christmas movie, completely free from the shell of the superhero. At this point we wonder, whether Wonder Woman 1984 was disappointing because we had so high expectations of it that we could not accept this constructive direction for the story, or did the film actually misconstruct and lead. A step backward for the Wonder Woman brand? While there's no denying that Gal Gadot is always beautiful, how far can that beauty save this brand and these stories? All that remains at WW84 is the lengthy, out of rhythm genre and the moral lessons old characters and characters that are hard to sympathize with.
