Reviews of ‘Wonder Woman 1984’: What Critics Say

“‘ Wonder Woman 1984 ’is neither fantastic nor terrible,” writes Stephanie Zacharek of Time Magazine.

This seems to be the general consensus of the critics, as the sequel hits international cinemas this weekend.

The long-awaited sequel to 2017’s “Wonder Woman” was due to premiere in June, but the ongoing global pandemic shifted the film to Christmas Day in the U.S. The outbreak also led to Warner Bros. the parent company AT&T to deliver the film to theaters and its HBO Max broadcast service on the same day.

“Wonder Woman 1984” takes place seven decades after the events of the first film. Diana Prince, the eponymous Wonder Woman played by Gal Gadot, lives in Washington, DC and works at the Smithsonian. In her spare time, Diana throws off her Amazonian armor and plays the role of a superhero, saving people from the city.

Diana’s life is interrupted when the oil tycoon aspiring Maxwell Lord (Pedro Pascal) obtains a magic rock called the stone of dreams. The artifact grants wishes, but there is a cost.

For Diana, the stone recovers Steve Trevor (Chris Pine), her love interest from the first film she died sacrificing her life to save others. Unfortunately, to keep Steve alive, Diana will eventually lose her powers.

Diana’s friend and co-worker, Barbara Minerva (Kristen Wiig), a wall who envies Diana for her confidence and beauty, is given these traits and, as seen in the trailer, transforms into the evil Cheetah. Lord absorbs the magic of the stone and is given the opportunity to grant the wishes of other people, which he uses to gain power and prestige.

When Barbara and the Lord team up, Diana must face the two villains to save the world.

“Woman Woman 1984” currently has 88% of “Rotten Tomatoes” out of 92 reviews. As more reviews are published, this score may change.

Critics widely praised Gadot in the paper. Once again, Gadot portrays Diana with effortless grace and fresh confidence, while bringing depth to an displaced and drifting immortal woman in a deadly world.

However, critics called the plot “messy” and “tangled” and were disappointed with Cheetah’s CGI creature form that appears during the third act of the film.

Here is a summary of what critics said about “Wonder Woman 1984” before her Christmas debut:

“For almost two hours of her 151-minute run time,‘ Wonder Woman 1984 ’does what we want to do in Hollywood’s tentacles: it takes us away from our worries, erasing them with pure escapism,” said Peter Debruge , Variety writer in his film review. “For the older ones to remember the 80’s, it’s like going home for Christmas and discovering a box full of children’s toys in your parents’ attic.”

When the film falls short it’s in its special effects, he said.

“Many of the effects are negative,” Debruge wrote. “Some are downright embarrassing (like when Wonder Woman interrupts a well-choreographed desert chase to rescue two children in a harmful way).”

Debruge was one of many critics who mentioned Cheetah’s disappointing computer-generated representation in its final form. The creature’s design is a “lame” calculation error at the cat level, ”he said.

Read the full Variety review.

For Vulture writer Angelica Jade Bastien, Diana Prince’s attraction is her femininity and maternal instincts. His strength is not only shown in fight scenes, but in subtle emotional moments.

Bastien considered Diana’s character to be “poorly developed in this total plot mess.”

She said she called the dream stone “maneuver” and found flaws in Diana’s grief over her dead lover Steve decades after her death.

“Sure, Gadot and Pine have lovely chemistry again, but the return of their character from the dead, in which he basically takes on the body of some poor boy, raises more questions about the gaps in logic.” he wrote in his review. “And besides, there’s her absolute sexuality, a particularly damning reminder of how this gender doesn’t take into account one of the most beautiful aspects of being human.”

Bastien wondered why this longing for Steve has become the main core of Diana’s identity almost 70 years later.

“Why? Don’t you miss your Amazon sisters more, whom you’ll never see again?” she asked. “It’s been about 70 years and it hasn’t happened to Steve yet? Is there something deeply sad and predictable about a female superhero so attached to a single man who is willing to lose his powers for him.”

Bastien called the romance “claustrophobic” with an ending “ripped from a Hallmark film.”

Read the full Vulture review.

For Zacharek, Gadot shines when she is Diana Prince, a woman with human weaknesses and complexities.

“But being a woman is never enough for anyone,” she wrote. “In addition to saving the world, Wonder Woman often has the task of saving little girls from danger; she wraps them in safety with a wink, and they look at them appreciatively, so grateful that in the end they have a superhero of themselves. “

“Why should he always remind us of the purpose of Wonder Woman? Why can’t he be?” Zacharek asked.

He noted that when “Wonder Woman” arrived in 2017, it was promised that Hollywood would see a new breed of superhero movies, directed and starring women, that could be less formulaic than men-centered ones.

“As fun designed to get the mind out of the world of trouble for a few hours,‘ Wonder Woman 1984 ’is perfectly appropriate,” she wrote. “But it’s also good to want less noise and more wonders, especially in a world full of the former and in dire need of the latter.”

Read the full review of Time.

“Wonder Woman 1984” is “a fun but messy follow-up to the 2017 Amazon superhero reintroduction,” Esther Zuckerman wrote in her review of the film for Thrillist. “There’s a lot to love about ‘WW84’: bold performances from a charming cast, fantastic costumes, [Patty] Jenkins’s hectic direction. But it’s in the service of a plot that loses sight of what makes the character so fantastic in the first place. “

Zuckerman noted that the filmmakers were in a difficult position to repeat the success of the first film. After all, much of it focused on Diana’s naivete and her wonder at discovering a whole new world.

Decades later, Diana is tired and isolated, her spirit fading, Zuckerman wrote.

“What makes up for this in the first act is Barbara Minerva,” he said. “Wiig is hilarious, but at the same time grounded, as much as the ignored nerd as he starts, and like the butterfly who can suddenly walk on heels and take off a miniskirt.”

Read the full Thrillist review.

Disclosure: Comcast, CNBC’s parent company, owns Rotten Tomatoes.