‘Wonder Woman 1984’ is wondrously disappointing

I was stoked for WW84 from the moment I saw the poster at my local movie theater. The colors, the costume and “Stranger Things” had previously made all things 1980s cool again. It was slated to come out right around my wife’s birthday; what a treat!

Then the pandemic hit.

Once Warner Bros decided to release it on HBO Max, I got excited again. Even though we wouldn’t get the full theatrical experience, at least we’d get to see it when it came out. We made popcorn, turned out the lights and settled in to enjoy Gal Gadot’s return to the role.

Boy, were we disappointed.

First off, the film is two and a half hours. WAY too long. Why do they keep making these comic book movies so long? The beginning of the film dragged. And dragged. And dragged. Then we got to the “modern day” 1980s. We meet Kristin Wiig’s character Barbara Minerva. She’s quirky, she’s cute — I see where this is going. Then we meet Pedro Pascal’s character Maxwell Lord. I’ve read some DC comics so I have an idea where this is going. But it just kept going. The pacing is awful; I would love to recut this movie into a tight 90 minutes. Gadot has nothing to do as Diana Prince and spends almost as much of the film in street clothes as she does her iconic costume. Chris Pine’s Steve Trevor returns (no spoilers, it’s in the trailer), and she spends most of the film being giddy that her boyfriend is back.

The writing isn’t great. We spend more time with the “villains” of the film than we do Wonder Woman, which can work well if they are compelling, but being driven by greed and jealousy isn’t interesting. Wiig and Pascal are fantastic but too much of this movie is about them. Thanos was a monster, but his plan made sense in a super-messed-up dystopian way. The Joker wanted to disrupt society so he could rise to the top as the new leader of chaos. These two are just greedy.

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