It’s the only question that haunts all Americans when they turn the page in a terrible year: why is “Wonder Woman 1984” so bad?
Why this long-awaited follow-up to the delicious “Wonder Woman” of 1917, starring the same stunning Gal Gadot and directed by Patty Jenkins herself and released for our home viewing on HBO Max as a Christmas Day gift to your subscribers, should you stink things out like there hasn’t been any comic book film since “Howard the Duck” in 1986?
You know things go wrong at first, when we meet Diana Prince, the alter ego of Wonder Woman, who worked at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington in 1984.
In comics and television, Diana worked for the Department of Defense, which made sense, because she is supposed to be the greatest warrior in the world.
But in 2020 in Hollywood, with President Trump in the White House, no film with the heart on the right, with what I mean the left, could install our heroine close to American militarism . Because, of course, the Pentagon is bad! Bad guns! (“I hate guns,” Wonder Woman says as she snatches one, which is generous to her because she has magic bracelets that deflect bullets.) Oh, and since it’s 1984, every third scene features someone who walk with a “No”. Nukes sign ”.
Ronald Reagan bad!
Yes, Gipper is in this movie, even if it’s weird; the actor who plays the 40th president doesn’t really look like him, but he does have hair and costumes. And since this is the Reagan of the fantastic Hollywood fantasies, he wants more nuclear weapons.
It doesn’t matter that, in fact, Reagan hated nuclear weapons and proposed its complete abolition in his first face-to-face meeting with Mikhail Gorbachev. The Reagan of “Wonder Woman 1984” wants hundreds of new nuclear weapons in the presence of an overexcavated reality TV entrepreneur – guess who’s supposed to remember you – who has become an evil goblin.
No, I’m not kidding.
There is a stone that bestows desires. He ends up in the back room of a jewelry store in a mall, who the hell knows why. The boy Trumpy wants to become the stone and all of a sudden it’s Barbara Eden giving nuclear missiles to Reagan that Reagan didn’t want.
Look, I know it was 36 years ago in 1984, and I know Hollywood is full of silly, illiterate people who know nothing and who fall in love with themselves and can happily spend $ 250 million on such a horrible movie that makes the movie “Cats” look like “Figaro’s Wedding”, but maybe do a Google search, Patty Jenkins?
Would it have been so hard to do it on one of your breaks to swim in Scrooge McDuck’s pool, full of $ 10 million they paid you to co-write and direct this atrocity?
Can I tell you more puzzling things? Wonder Woman wants her dead boyfriend back to life and does so, in the person of Chris Pine, who is the best in the film. She has been missing since World War I and therefore the world of 1984 fills her with fear, especially when she takes him to the subway and he marvels at the passage of the train.
Hey, Patty Jenkins? Your first “Wonder Woman” film took place in Europe in 1917. At that time there was a subway on the continent. In fact, the London Underground made its debut in 1863. It’s probably fair to say that if a man from 1917 woke up suddenly in 1984, the only thing that wouldn’t break his mind would be. . . one meter.
And how about the amazing and brazen plagiarism here? Kristen Wiig makes a twist as a baffling and annoying lonely person who transforms into a feline supervillain named Cheetah. If this sounds familiar to you, it’s because you saw it, rhythm by rhythm, in 1991’s “Batman Returns,” in which Michelle Pfeiffer took a spin as a baffling, annoying loner who transforms into a feline supervillain named Catwoman.
In short, “Wonder Woman 1984” is horrible. And yet . . . I loved it.