It’s the one question that haunts all Americans when they turn the page in a horrible year: why is “Wonder Woman 1984” so bad?
Why does this highly anticipated sequel to the luscious 1917 ‘Wonder Woman’ – starring the same stunning Gal Gadot and directed by the same Patty Jenkins and released for our homebound rendition on HBO Max as a Christmas Day gift to his subscribers – the joint stink like has not done a single comic since “Howard the Duck” in 1986?
You know it goes wrong from the start when we see Diana Prince, Wonder Woman’s alter ego, working at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington in 1984.
In the comics and on TV, Diana worked for the Department of Defense, which made sense considering she is believed to be the world’s greatest warrior.
But in Hollywood in 2020, with President Trump in the White House, no movie with the heart in the right – and by that I mean the left – would potentially install our heroine close to American militarism. Because the Pentagon is bad of course! Guns bad! (“I hate guns,” Wonder Woman says as she folds one up, which is generous of her, since she has magic bracelets that repel bullets.) Oh, and since this is 1984, every third scene has someone walking around with a “No Nukes” sign.
Ronald Reagan bad!
Yes, the Gipper is in this movie, although weird; the actor playing the 40th president doesn’t really look like him, but has his hairline and suits. And because this is the Reagan of Hollywood’s crazy fantasies, he wants more nukes.
Regardless, Reagan hated nuclear weapons and suggested abolishing them completely during his first face-to-face meeting with Mikhail Gorbachev. The Reagan from “Wonder Woman 1984” wishes hundreds of new nuclear weapons in the presence of an overloaded reality TV businessman – guess who he should remind you of – turned into an evil spirit.
No, I’m not kidding.
There is a stone that fulfills wishes. It ends up in the back room of a jewelry store in a shopping center – who knows why. The Trumpy guy wants to be the rock, and suddenly he’s Barbara Eden giving Reagan nuclear missiles that Reagan actually didn’t want.
See, I know 1984 was 36 years ago, and I know Hollywood is full of illiterate, ignorant, self-loving idiots who can happily spend $ 250 million on a movie so awful that the movie ‘Cats’ looks like’ The Marriage from Figaro, ‘but, um, maybe a Google search, Patty Jenkins?
Would that have been so difficult during one of your post-swim breaks in your Scrooge McDuck pool full of the $ 10 million you were paid for co-writing and directing this atrocity?
Can I tell you more amazing things? Wonder Woman wishes her deceased friend to come back to life, and he does, in the person of Chris Pine, who is the best in the movie. He’s been gone since World War I, and so the world of 1984 fills him with awe – especially when she takes him on the subway and he is amazed at the train that passes through it.
Hey, Patty Jenkins? Your first “Wonder Woman” movie took place in Europe in 1917. Then there were subways on the mainland. In fact, the London Underground made its debut in 1863. It is probably fair to say that if a 1917 man suddenly woke up in 1984, it would be the only thing that wouldn’t surprise him. . . a metro.
And what about the amazing and brutal plagiarism here? Kristen Wiig takes a turn as a mouse-like and clumsy lonely person who undergoes a transformation into a feline supervillain named Cheetah. If this sounds familiar, it’s because you saw it, beat for beat, in 1991’s “ Batman Returns ” – in which Michelle Pfeiffer took a spin as a mouse-like and clumsy lonely person who undergoes a transformation into a feline supervillain named Catwoman.
To sum up, “Wonder Woman 1984” is just awful. And yet . . . I loved it.