Month: December 2020

Released: December 2020

Director: Patty Jenkins

Rated PG-13

Run Time: 151 Minutes

Distributor: Warner Bros.

Genre: Action/Adventure

Cast:
Gal Gadot: Diana Prince/Wonder Woman
Chris Pine: Steve Trevor
Kristen Wiig: Barbara Minerva
Pedro Pascal: Maxwell Lord
Robin Wright: Antiope
Connie Nielson: Hippolyta

Over the past 20 years, we’ve seen a massive explosion of superhero movies.  We can thank the original X-Men movie for that.  Sure, superhero movies existed before that with films like Superman and Batman, but towards the end of the 20th century, the quality of superhero movies was going downhill, and Batman and Robin almost killed the genre.  But when X-Men hit theaters back in 2000, it proved to the moviegoers the world over that you could have a good superhero movie that can be taken seriously.  While X-Men had its hits and misses over the years, the MCU(Marvel Cinematic Universe)got kickstarted by Iron Man, back in 2008, and ushered in a new era of comic book movies.  DC Comics and Warner Bros. tried to catch up with films like Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight trilogy, that would be followed up by the Superman reboot, Man of Steel, which would be the first official film in the DCEU(DC Expanded Universe).  Unfortunately, Warner tried to put the cart before the horse when they announced Batman V. Superman: Dawn of Justice, which would feature Superman, Batman, AND Wonder Woman.  It was clear that DC was trying to catch up to Marvel, because they had TWO Avengers films done and out the door.  Well, the response to Batman V. Superman wasn’t that great, so there was a bit of a seismic shift over at DC Entertainment.  That shift gave us Aquaman and Wonder Woman.  Two outstanding films that were designed to get DC movies back on track.  Yeah, Justice League was a bit of a mess, but there were some tragic circumstances with that film.  But what I’m talking about today, is the Patty Jenkin’s follow-up to Wonder Woman, Wonder Woman 1984.  I’ve got some things to say.

Nearly 70 years had passed since Diana Prince, the princess of Themyscera had battled and defeated Ares, the God of War towards the end of World War I.  The battle came at a high price with the death of her friend and lover, Steve Trevor.  In the year of 1984, Diana spends her time helping people while trying to stay out of the spotlight.  One day, she runs into a scientist, Barbara Minerva, who had come into possession of an unusual stone.  This stone appears to grant people’s wishes, and therefor attracts the attention of Maxwell Lord, an oil tycoon whose business is collapsing.  While studying the stone, both Diana and Barbara make their wishes, not knowing that they would come true.  But those wishes come at a price, as Diana finds out.  The first Wonder Woman film was incredible, and it had a really good story from beginning to end, despite a predictable third act.  It really focused on Diana and her attempt to navigate the world of men during the first World War.  But she had a guide in Steve Trevor who had inadvertently crash-landed on Diana’s home island of Themyscera.  It was a bit of a “fish-out-of-water” story that was given room and time to breathe and flesh out the characters.  Wonder Woman 1984, on the other hand, is a narrative train-wreck.  The base story and plot is fairly easy to follow, but it’s completely hamstrung by questionable decisions when it comes to character motivations and actions.  A lot of these things don’t necessarily make sense.  The entire plot surrounding the stone comes across as a contrived and overly pointless MacGuffin.  The overall theme about wishes is not awful, but it’s presented in a way that’s incredibly cheesy.  Superhero movies are inherently cheesy in certain aspects anyway, but WW84 takes it a whole different level.  The tone is all over the place.

Let’s start with what worked.  First off, the acting is top-notch.  Gal Gadot has really settled into her role as Diana Prince/Wonder Woman.  She’s clearly enjoying the role and it really does suit her.  There had been people who were not entirely convinced that Ms. Gadot was going to be able to pull it off, but she did.  She had the look and she could physically handle it.  Chris Pine returns as Steve Trevor and the chemistry between him and Gal Gadot is one of the best parts of the movie and it leads to some pretty emotional moments.  I fully admit I got a little choked up at certain points.  I was not entirely convinced that Kristen Wiig was going to be the right person to play Barbara Minerva, because the character would eventually become the supervillain, Cheetah.  I was wrong.  She was incredibly convincing as the initially timid scientist, but as the character got more confident, the more of a threat she became.  But she’s not the main villain.  Nope, that goes to Pedro Pascal’s Maxwell Lord, or Wonder Woman’s villainous equivalent of Lex Luthor.  Pedro Pascal has made a huge name for himself with roles in Game of Thrones and most recently, The Mandalorian.  He is an amazing actor and he really pulls out the stops here.  He doesn’t go into full mustache-twirling mode, as he does have some legitimate motivation for what he’s doing.  The acting is what’s keeping this movie together.

Unfortunately, there’s a lot of problems with this movie.  First of all, the pacing is way off.  It’s boring at times, and the action here really isn’t that good.  It’s incredibly CGI-heavy at times, and some of the physics are highly questionable(physics in a superhero movie, WTF?).  You can obviously tell that characters at times are CG, and sometimes it’s not good CGI.  There’s an encounter between Wonder Woman and Cheetah that happens towards the end of the movie, and you can absolutely tell that this was not what Patty Jenkins was really going for.  If you’re confident about your effects, then you wouldn’t set a fight like that at night.  In the dark.  There’s a lot of great visuals here with some stunning cinematography, but none of it really matters when you don’t care what happens on the screen.  On top of that, the music isn’t that great.  There’s nothing here that I’m going to remember in a day or two, and that sucks, because Hans Zimmer is one of the greatest film composers alive today.  The soundtrack for the previous film was infinitely better.  The costume designs are pretty good, especially for Diana Prince.  I absolutely loved the golden armor that she wears at the end of the movie, and the story behind that armor is interesting.  This film being set during the 80s has some visual flair and sound design that are specific to the decade, but again, it’s not something that I’ll remember next week.

Is Wonder Woman 1984 a terrible movie?  I personally don’t think it is, but it’s not a particularly good movie either.  After Justice League came out, it looked like that DC and Warner Bros. had turned a corner and started producing really good movies with the first Wonder Woman film as well as Aquaman and Shazam!.  These were good movies.  Cheesy at times, for sure, but there was real passion for the stories and the characters.  WW84 feels like a huge step backwards.  To me, WW84 feels like the Wonder Woman equivalent of Superman III.  There’s good stuff here, but it’s held back by some really questionable decision-making in terms of tone and design.  It’s too cheesy for it’s own good and it won’t be taken seriously.  But I get the distinct impression that the studio interfered with this film, which doesn’t surprise me as Patty Jenkins said she was forced by Warner Bros. to do the CGI-heavy third act of the film.  It’s just been announced that a third Wonder Woman is on the way, with Patty Jenkins attached as the director.  I hope lessons are learned from this mess and they deliver a knock-out third film.  Wonder Woman deserves a hell of a lot better than this.

My Final Recommendation: 6/10.  If you decide to skip this one in theaters, I don’t think anybody would blame you.

For decades, the relationship between movie theaters and movie studios has always been symbiotic.  Movie studios make the movies while movie theaters play them for a cut of the profits.  When home video technology became available for audiences in the 80s, things started changing for movie theaters and studios.  During the early 80s, a “theatrical window” was developed with the advent of home video technology.  A theatrical window is when a movie is when a movie is in theaters for a specific period of time before it is released to home video.  The theatrical, in essence, is an agreement between theaters and studios allowing for the maximization of profits.  The initial window for movies was 6 months.  But as of 2019, that window had shrunk to just 90 days, or three months before a film hit home video.  In order to maximize profits, movie studios have been trying to continue to shrink that theatrical window, but they’ve been getting serious pushback from movie theaters that require that particular window in order to survive, despite their main profits coming from the concession stands.  This year, however, things have gotten really bad with a global pandemic.  Movie theaters shuttered with big blockbuster movies being pushed back months if not years until this thing ends.  Some movie studios have opted to release some of their new releases on VOD like Disney’s remake of Mulan.  While this particular experiment didn’t work for Disney, the possibility of cutting out the middle-man was there.  So why am I bringing this up?

Just recently, The Hollywood Reporter and Variety both reported that Warner Bros. had announced that their entire 2021 slate of movies would be released simultaneously to both theaters and their proprietary streaming service, HBO Max.  A couple of months back, Universal Studios had approached AMC Theaters about shortening the release window to 17 days before releasing their movies on home video/streaming services.  The middle-man still existed, but the chances of the movie theaters making profits had dwindled.  At that point, the deal didn’t go through, because big chains like Regal and Cinemark were against it, and if they weren’t on board with it, the deal wouldn’t have worked.  But now that Warner Bros. made their announcement, the middle-man(movie theaters)is being cut out.  Let’s be honest here:  This was going to happen eventually anyway.  No matter how hard movie theaters have fought this, the way the audience consume their entertainment has evolved over the past 20 years.  With streaming services like Netflix, Amazon, and Hulu producing their own original content, movie theaters getting left in the dust was always going to happen.  It was just a matter of time.  Unfortunately, the pandemic has forced some movie studios to accelerate their plans.  Some studios had complained that the timing of this was bad with the advent of a viable COVID-19 vaccine on the horizon.  The problem is, is that it probably won’t be until the end of next summer when most people would be vaccinated.

How do I feel about all this?  Warner Bros. had said that this was going to be a one-year deal, but anybody who has the slightest sense of business is going to know that this a lie.  If this is successful, and there’s no reason to expect that it won’t be, it could very well be a permanent thing.  The paradigm of the theater-going experience was always changing, but this situation is taking it in a different direction.  Look, I love going to the movies.  Watching Star Wars on the big screen is an experience that everybody should enjoy.  Most movies are meant to be seen on the big screen.  But we, as a society, are consuming our entertainment in different ways.  Now we can legally watch these films on our phones, tablets, computers and TVs via streaming services.  Me?  I’m a huge fan of physical media, as I’ve got a pretty good collection of DVDs and Blu-Rays.  But within the next 5 or 6 years, physical media will most likely be a thing of the past with everything going to streaming.  Now some YouTubers like Chris Stuckmann have said that this thing would actually give people more options and lower the price of tickets for people who want to see movies on the big screen.  I don’t think that movie theaters are going to die.  Not at all, there’s always going to be a demand for them.  But the convenience of watching these movies at home on the day of their release is going to be a tough challenge for theaters to overcome, and some of the smaller movie theaters will end up going out of business.  Again, this was inevitable, but it really shouldn’t have happened this quickly.  I would’ve expected at least another decade before this came to pass, but here we are.  The movie industry will survive.  The movie theater industry may also survive, but the winds are changing and it will never be the same.  The best thing that I think we can do is wait and see what happens.  This thing that Warner’s doing might end up not being successful.  There’s always that possibility, but we have to understand that as long as this pandemic persists, these businesses have to do what they can to survive.  That’s not always going please movie theaters and it may not please theater-goers.  But the choices that these companies have right now are limited.  On this sailboat of uncertainty, we have to wait and see where the winds take us.