Wonder Woman 1984 (WW84) Seen it [Spoilers]

Cafe Society
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We just have things out of order. The olympics scene happens first, and what we see in the original Wonder Woman is the punishment for cheating. Young Diana is grounded and can’t participate or watch anything to do with the training. Of course she keeps sneaking out, just extending the punishment until she’s a teen.

“I wish it wasn’t so cold.”
“I wish it didn’t rain as much.”

Congratulations, you’ve wished yourself into a desert. Sorry about your thriving agrarian society.

“I wish there was an easy energy source, that was just sitting around in the ground waiting to be collected.”

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If I see a movie with a time displaced Cicero or Thomas Moore happily using an online version of Lexis or Westlaw without any training, I would make similar complaints.

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Tornado has a tandem (front and back) cockpit. A F111 has a side by side cockpit. Which is what’s shown in the movie. The back of the plane and the initial silhouette is of an F111 and so is the back, before turning into a more generic jet, but the interior remains that of an F111.
The only other plane with a large twin engines and side by side cockpit at least of that era is a Tu-22M.
Which seems even more unlikely.

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The cockpit shown is not an F-111 but of some Hollywood mock-up of what a side by side cockpit might look like. When the jet is rolling down the runway, it’s more Tornado-ish than anything else. You can see cockpit and runway images both in this clip.

And dammit, now I’ve had to rewatch that scene just to make sure I wasn’t imagining things. The HBO app won’t let me screenshot, so I took a picture of the TV. When they first walk up to the jet, it’s clearly a Tornado.

[Album] WW 1984 Tornado
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Logically there’s nothing wrong with this fanwank. (Well, there is, but I’ll overlook it for now.) Cinematically, though, it’s just bad moviemaking. It’s the chronological equivalent of the 180 Rule; you are confusing the viewer, and confusing the viewer is unforgivably stupid unless there’s a specific reason the viewer must be deceived, which in this case there is not.

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Slate gives it a good review:

The chemistry between Pine and Gadot is the secret sauce of the Wonder Woman franchise. It’s not just sexual chemistry; though they’re clearly attracted to each other (which, can you blame them?), Diana and Steve are also convincing as soulmates. Their trans-historical passion never feels like a screenwriter’s contrivance—in part due to the sparks the actors generate and in part to the emotionally intelligent script by Jenkins, Geoff Johns, and David Callaham.

I don’t think I need even a good superhero movie to be 2½ hours long, but it’s worth noting that what makes for this movie’s long running time is not collapsing buildings or exploding spaceships but conversations between people. When Diana and Barbara go to dinner early in the film and get to know each other, there’s a 10-minute scene that’s essentially just them sharing their relationship woes over a glass of wine—not an amenity that generally comes with comic book blockbusters. And some fish-out-of-water comedy moments involving the struggles of a WWI-era pilot to comprehend mid-’80s culture and fashion could have been stretched out longer as far as I’m concerned. As a late-entering character, Steve Trevor doesn’t get quite enough time on-screen, at least for the Pine-piners among us, but that’s better than overstaying his welcome, I guess.

. . .

Jenkins and Gadot have gone and done it: They’ve gotten me invested in the emotional well-being of a franchise superhero.

I agree with her about the emotional truth of the movie. The characters’ decisions and feelings never feel false–Diana and Steve’s love, Barbara’s envy, Maxwell Lord’s emotional need for “success,” whatever that might be. And that’s the majority of what carried me through the movie, the bouyancy and exhilaration of the emotional truths.

Gal Gadot as Diana, Chris Pine as Steve, Pedro Pascal as Max Lord–none of them feel like they are just saying lines because they’re in the script. Their words seem to come from their hearts.

And as someone pointed out above, the battle was won when Diana persuaded Maxwell Lord to stop what he was doing. She didn’t overpower him with light beams or whatever. That was so refreshing.

I’m thinking back to how boring I found the interminable final battle of Endgame, and how fresh and light and uplifting I foudn this ending. Yep, this is the kind of superhero movie I want. It’s not the best one ever made. It’s not the best one I’ve seen, but it’s a good one in my book.

And then Slate follows up wondering about the negative response:

I hopped offline for the holiday and got back on the day after Christmas to see that the pop-culture trifle I’d congratulated myself for unironically enjoying was the subject of equally unironic loathing from large swaths of the critical and popular audience. WW84 wasn’t just the disappointing second chapter in a big-budget franchise helmed by a promising female director; it was the repudiation of everything the first movie had stood for, an insult to its viewers’ intelligence, and an abomination unto the Lord. (I’m condensing a lot of tweets here. People seemed very upset about Wonder Woman 1984 , is my point.)

…

I’ve seen plenty of comic book movies worse than Wonder Woman 1984 open in theaters, get a mixed response from reviewers and a predictably rapturous reception from superfans, and still persist at or near the top of the box office for weeks while the rest of us figured out what we thought.

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I don’t think there’s much mystery. A movie can be poorly received but still have enough people who liked it that it’s not really a rare opinion. A movie that 40% of people liked means that “liked it” will be the minority opinion but not make its advocates into some wondrous rare species.

It’s been gone over well enough in this thread why many people thought it wasn’t a very good movie. I’m not going to worry about the Slate author’s hyperbolic tweets or bother trying to defend anyone who thought it was a repudiation of everything good in the world but “Man, that movie basically sucked” is a normal enough conclusion to have. Sort of weirder that the author jumps to the conclusion that this is some new reaction to seeing blockbusters at home or some other social trend and not just “Maybe most people sincerely thought it was a pretty lame movie”.

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Exactly right. If I experienced that movie as full of great dialogue, characters whose relationships felt real and who I cared about, any emotional truth at all, I would be able to ignore many other flaws. I simply did not. Those who did are entitled to their experience as real but I have a hard time accepting that they saw the same movie I did. Some though clearly did. Many clearly did not.

And (here’s the key part) many of us watched it so the n is large. Some of many is not nothing. Lots of us were anxiously awaiting it because the first did do all those things. It was on a Christmas Day that had many at home with time to kill. My family tradition is Dim Sum and a movie. We picked up the Dim Sum, watched Soul together, and then as others did their things I had time enough to waste to watch WW too. Not something I would have gone to a theater to see. Not something I got HBOMax to see. The kids begged off as they had already heard it was bad. My wife got tired before Soul was done.

That expectation based on the first one likely contributed to the negative strong reaction. It was bad and it was even worse held up to expectations. Worse yet as it was not just bad, it was a long bad movie. Ten minutes of Wiig and Gadot drinking wine, neither able to give any sense of real people, not giving any sense of the characters connecting, or why they would. Ten minutes not just of cardboard but soggy cardboard.

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I enjoyed the movie despite agreeing with most of the complaints above. I guess it was because I went in with no expectations and didn’t form one until the wish granting magic lamp was introduced. It was then that I knew what kind of movie I was watching and was able to brush aside the flaws in logic. Preposterous plot but the movie pushed all the right buttons is what I mean.

You could tell that Pedro Pascal was having a blast playing his part.

I did think it was wrong of Diana to renounce her wish in the middle of a full blown street riot. Dude is gonna wake up to chaos and be in immediate danger.

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That scene with him in the end was to say, ‘See, everyone? He’s fine,’ without actually having to earn it.

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“I felt like I lost a day or two during those riots. When I came to, all my Pop Tarts were gone and my clean clothes were in a heap on my floor. On the plus side, my pillows smelled great.”

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I’ve also since come to learn (according to Patty) that the guy was meant to be a Lyle Waggoner lookalike.

So the reason for that plot point was entirely ‘because fan service’.

That so few people even noticed it is a double fail.

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Actually, I’d noted it, and commented on that to my wife shortly after the movie. He did look similar to me, as the guy who showed up in the old series. Couldn’t recall his name until I came home to look it up.
I imagine so few noted because the show was on a very long time ago, and his character hasn’t been referenced back to nearly as many times as Lynda Carter’s.

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Gadot is still a really, really bad actor, and it keeps distracting me. I do think she was better than she was in WW1, and her tearful final scene with Steve was actually quite well done on her part, but her lack of acting skills showed up in a lot of other scenes.

Interestingly, Gadot served in the IDF, so she knows how to use firearms - it helped her get her role in “Fast and Furious” movies - and here she is playing a superhero who despises guns.

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The sad part is that I generally enjoy Pedro Pascal, Kristen Wiig, Gal Gadot, and most things 80s. But the sum of the parts didn’t do it for me.

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Just watched it last night and gotta say that your various posts have summed it up perfectly for me. I couldn’t agree more.

The one that struck me was the fact that Diane/WW didn’t blink an eye when Steve reappeared in another guy’s body who (for all she knows) has been essentially murdered by her (silent) wish.

I struggle with the idea that if, 24 hours earlier, you’d have said to WW that you can have Steve back, but you have to wish someone dead for it, she would have ever gone along with that. That’s not remotely consistent with her heroic and morally righteous character.

As soon as it happened I expected that she’d be shocked and horrified by her unintentional act of murder and immediately work to reverse it. I can’t tell you how disappointed I was her response was to essentially say “This is wonderful, let’s get into bed and screw.”

The icing on the cake was when you pointed out that had this been reversed and a male superhero screws a female in another females body that would have (rightfully) called out as rape. The idea of a dead Lois Lane reappearing in some innocent woman’s body and Superman banging her without a second thought is repugnant on so many levels.

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So… nobody else saw the wishstone and thought “crystal dildo”?

Actually I thought was going okay until the super cheezy Frozen-style “love is the answer!” climax.

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My wife declared it so almost immediately. Well, her actually words were “That looks like a crystal geoduck. You know, those clams with the big dick part? I guess I’m saying that looks like a giant crystal dick.”

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We watched this on New Years, and I quite enjoyed it even though I agree with most of the criticisms people have made. The weird thing is that some of the problems seem both obvious and easily fixable. Like why does Steve have to take over that guy’s body? Just have him magically appear instead. It wouldn’t change anything with the plot - you could still have the bit with him trying on outfits and everything.

The other thing is that there were pretty important bits of the plot that were easy to miss. Max does give the extra Cheetah powers to Barbara during that bit with the satellite, but it’s a single shouted line in a long rant with a bunch of effects going on, and easy to miss. And right before he tries the satellite thing, Max gets a guy to wish that it will work. If that’s intended to be the explanation for why it works, then it needed more emphasis.

Probably there are more examples, but I missed them. :slight_smile:

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I wanted to like this movie. I really did. I loved the first one (except for the lame ending) and had high hopes for this one. But IMO The Dumb was so strong in it (for many of the reasons others posters have mentioned above) that I was rolling my eyes about a quarter of the way in and never really stopped. Big disappointment.

One other thing I didn’t see anyone mention (could have missed it, though) was, what was going on with the golden armor? This stuff is supposed to be strong enough to hold off armies, but Cheetah was pulling pieces off it like was made of aluminum foil. If the armor was supposed to be fit for an Amazon (and so, presumably, able to function as armor against things Amazons consider threats) then why was it so easy for one (admittedly superpowered) woman to nearly trash it?