Having come from Wonder Woman 2017, I’d say 1984 ended up being somewhat of a letdown. I felt the movie to be deliberately putting on a face. It is trying to portray Wonder Woman in a very different light it had started its original sojourn on.

The 1984 version kind of gives her an image makeover. You are forced to wonder how Wonder Woman went from the badass woman that you had once seen fighting in the No Man’s land (and to some extent what Zack had portrayed in an original photo of her standing with some hanging heads) to a smiling and protecting angel who has suddenly started caring for everybody around her.

Imagine if James Bond suddenly stops to see if he has hurt someone, or suddenly starts worrying about where the bullet has hit, or deliberately aims for the legs, so as to not do major damage, now wouldn’t that be fun? Or if Lethal Weapon was ‘Somewhat Less Lethal Weapon’. Would you still be as stoked?

The point is, while there is a section of moviegoers who are really hyper about what the main character is doing and want the character to make no mistakes, there is a major section of the movie-buffs who really want the character to remain as badass as they were initially portrayed.

Wonder Woman is reflective more of the current culture than of the year 1984. Yes, the backdrop was clearly showcasing the 84 times, but with all the feminism motto that it intentionally grates into it, by keeping Wonder Woman all ‘sugar and spice and everything nice’, at a point becomes too much.

The CGI on Cheetah

I have been waiting for Cheetah’s appearance for a really long time. It was supposed to be great, to be memorable. Something we could reuse like The Justice League Animated Series did on countless occasions. But Cheetah ended up to be somewhat of a disappointment. Kristen Wiig was alright but they messed up on the CGI part.

Cheetah had a really bad CGI. Kind of reminds you of Cats and what a debacle it was, somewhat to do with the way these characters looked. Top that off with, how there were quite inconsequential moments. If she were to be resurrected in the long run, you’d only remember her owing to the person who played it, that is Kristen Wiig. That’s all! The character at its core fails to become a badass villain that we normally expect from every comic villain.

Cheetah doesn’t bring as much chaos as you expect her to bring. She ends up being a minor inconvenience even though her character arc was built in a very positive manner. She finds her origins written in a way so as to do justification on why Barbara becomes Cheetah. I think that remains her only strength as a comic-book character.

Revival of Steve Trevor

Wonder Woman 1984 tries to revive a forgotten hero in a way people don’t go all – “What the hell?”

You gotta admit you didn’t like the way things ended for poor Diana. She needed her closure. In comes Wonder Woman 1984 to sort of let her and you all bid a proper adieu to him.

1984 tries to play clever when they introduce Trevor yet again. But he is not present physically. We are seeing things from Diana’s eyes. It is what Diana perceives a man to be Trevor because of the magic she has accidentally conjured.

That magic allows Diana to have her magical time where she gets to be with her true love once again.

The real testing time however ends up coiled in her choices. Torn between a decision to keep him with her forever, or be bigger and save humanity, is where the movie tries to find Trevor’s resuscitation ground.

Her big stand is the climactic internal fight she faces where she has to give up Trevor all over again for the sake of humanity, and to bring sanity to what is outright chaos.

The Monkey Paw Logic

Max Lord (Pedro Pascal) is the one who has consumed the Dreamstone which acts like a monkey paw here. The inanimate object gives you everything you desire. The magic is real for it brings back people – Trevor for Diana, in a way.

The villainy gets self-written by the pen of greed. The movie self-dictates therefrom as if taken from a fairy tale with a moral in the end. Instead of letting Wonder Woman have a go at Max Lord to beat the living crap of him, Patty Jenkins chooses to keep Wonder Woman in good light yet again, where she tries to wrong the right by talking sense into the affected. It becomes more like a kid’s movie.

The existence of the dream stone takes you on a ride of nostalgia and you remember how many times have you read or seen something similar growing up. Almost every story has a logic derived from the event. Even though it is very easy to see a deeper meaning behind the story, in Wonder Woman you are naturally inclined to find something more. But the cliched part topped with its many subplots takes all the seriousness away.

The movie doesn’t even leverage its action properly and makes you wonder whatever happened to that ass-whooping lady you had seen in the prequel.

You can order Wonder Woman 1984 movie here:

The Final Verdict

You would feel this with Wonder Woman 1984, that the movie kind of berates of what Wonder Woman could possibly do. You would find her to be a lot less powerful on a highway trying to battle people in trucks when in reality she could tackle the unimaginable within seconds. She stops bullets using her bracelets for crying out loud. She can literally do stuff in bullet time. That action sequence ended up being really difficult for a demi-god like her.

The movie somewhat tries to meddle with the real Wonder Woman’s image. It plays in contrast with Snyder’s version of her, in fact contrasts what we had seen in the first part as well. It is almost like someone wants her to be every little girl’s ideal first and is interested more in all of that instead of focusing on the challenges she embarks on.

Check out the trailer of Wonder Woman 1984 movie here: