Movie: Wonder Woman 1984

I saw the new Wonder Woman movie. I liked the previous one. I haven't liked any DC movies since a Batman solo movie many years ago. They have been boring.

This one tried so hard. I'll give it that. It had a couple of ambitious goals.

The first ambitious goal: it gave us two villains and tried to make them sympathetic. One is a hustler dweeb selling an oil con. Not very sympathetic, but they gave him a son. He's swindling people to impress his kid (who he also ignores). Kind of sympathetic. They also show him long ago when he maybe dreamed that an oil company owned by lots of people was somehow altruistic? Dude doesn't understand that all the oil companies are owned by lots of people, I guess.

The other villain is a woman who feels frumpy next to Gal Gadot. Join the club. She's clearly one of those non-frumpy actors who will at some point take off her glasses, let down her hair and be transformed into a beauty. Yawn. But making her a villain just because she's jealous of Gal Gadot's looks? Pretty sharp. That makes most of the audience villains.

These villains do villainous shit because there's a magic God bracelet on a crystal that grants a wish. They quickly establish non-ironic monkey paw rules: get a wish, give up something that doesn't have to be an ironic consequence of the wish. The oil con guy has made himself into the monkey's paw with his wish, so he gets to decide what the wisher gives up. Frump wishes she was hot like Gal Gadot. Somehow she gets a second wish (I don't think I napped, so maybe just poorly explained) and her second wish is to be Cheetah Girl. "Cats" was HUGE in 1984, so that checks out.

The God bracelet seemed just the right size to go on someone's wrist. Maybe in a sequel?

The other ambitious goal is to be THE ONLY SUPER HERO MOVIE FOR FEMALES. I know Captain Marvel is a woman, but she doesn't have "woman" in her supername, and that was a big flop. This movie has to struggle under the weight of supertokenism, literally winking at little girls who don't have any other super hero movies with XX chromosome heroes. It does a good job, but it's a lot for any one movie to take on. I had similar thoughts about "Black Panther".

The money paw/magic crystal gimmick is goofy and the plot is full of holes. WW wishes for dead old boyfriend to come back to life. In the real "Monkey's Paw" story, the couple's son returns from the dead as a rotting corpse. Steve Trevor's shiny white bones dancing up to Diana Prince at a fancy dress ball would have been much more fun than what we get: boyfriend's soul inhabits some rando's living flesh. (They show the rando later to let us know he was cool with the whole thing.)

Steve Trevor, who was a pilot in WWII, is frightened of an escalator and unaware of radar. Both were in widespread use when he was alive, so perhaps this is some other Steve Trevor? Perhaps a balloonist from the Civil War, and WW wasn't specific enough with her wish.

Wonder Woman, like many other super heroes, is a hero because she was born with heroic blood. Literally royal blood. Also Amazon blood. (Why doesn't Jeff Bezos get in on this?) Her blood gives her super strength and whatnot. She inherits privilege and magical accessories. This shit always bugs me. America is supposed to be about merit over class. Let's get more super heroes who don't have wealthy, powerful parents. Less JFK and more Tricky Dick.

There was a lot of flying around and fighting. There was a CGI shot near the beginning that was awful. There was way too much time spent on the wonderfulness of flying. The movie would have been better if it was an hour shorter.

But it was all nonsensical fun. I saw it in a mostly empty theater with my family on a Monday afternoon. We had a good time watching it, and a good time lightly picking it apart on the ride home.