“Wonder Woman 1984” lets everyone down
“Wonder Woman 1984” was a highly anticipated movie, being a sequel to one of the best movies of 2017. Released on Christmas Day of 2020 on HBO Max, the film stars Gal Gadot as Diana, an Amazon warrior, known as “Wonder Woman” to the few who have seen her in action.
The movie starts on Themyscira, the paradise island that all the Amazon warriors are trained on. Diana is just a little girl on the island, fighting and training with the other Amazon women. This part of the movie is very exciting and really gets your attention because it starts off high paced with lots of action. Unfortunately, the rest of the movie isn’t filled with the same edge of the seat intensity as the beginning.
Diana is an adult in the rest of the movie, with a job at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History in D.C., but on the side, she fights crime as well. Mourning the loss of the man she loved who died in the first movie during WWI, Diana tries to move on with her life and makes a friend, Barbara, at her workplace. Barbara is envious of Diana’s poise, elegance, and power and simply wants to be like Diana. Meanwhile, Maxwell Lord, a new business man, tries to publicize his business by airing popular ads on television. This part of the movie seemed very promising but from then on, everything got very confusing.
Lord comes into possession of the “Dreamstone,” a stone with the power to grant you your deepest desire, but takes away your most valued possession. Lord uses this to become successful in his oil ventures, but the film doesn’t account for some of the consequences. More and more people use the stone for their own good, still oblivious to the consequences, and chaos erupts. It seemed as though the main antagonist would be Lord, but the introduction of a second antagonist, Cheetah, made it hard to understand who was the main villain. Lord’s motives were somewhat sentimental and the entire villain act just didn’t work. The plot was unclear on what exactly Diana tried to do to stop Lord as well as the consequences she was facing from using the Dreamstone.
“Wonder Woman 1984” had lots of potential; however, while still somewhat entertaining, much of it was very unclear. Viewers could understand the beginning at most, but the whole plot collapsed into confusion as the movie progressed. In comparison to the first movie, “Wonder Woman 1984” had much to live up to and didn’t exactly follow through with its messy storyline and weak plot.
