Wonder Woman 1984 (Movie Review)

 ***This review will contain spoilers***

Summary:

In 1984, Diana Prince struggles against two powerful enemies- Maxwell Lord and The Cheeta whose ruthless ambitions threaten to destroy the world that she has sworn to protect. 

If you aren't well versed in DC comics and in the many characters that surround Diana then this movie would be considered really good and probably one of the better superhero movies if not the best female superhero movie. Alas, that's not the case for me and I absolutely hate it when movie studios will take vital characters and switch up their origin to either make them palatable to the general public or to make them fit a story. 

First and foremost, Cheetah has such an amazing backstory. Her origin story would have been a million times better than Barbara simply wishing to be an apex predator. In the comics, she is an archeologist who is obsessed with Greek mythology (hence being close to Diana) she goes on a trip to Africa and encounters the plant god; Urzkartaga who curses her and she becomes a human/cheetah hybrid. The movie imagery was pretty damn amazing, and especially, the fight scenes with Wonder Woman. So, my guess is that all the CGI budget went to Diana and Cheetah was left last minute because she looked absolutely atrocious. I don't know who looked at the final product and thought she looked good. 

Maxwell Lord in the comics has such a complex story from being a friend to turning into a foe. From being a business man to then discovering his metahuman abilities...clearly not the same from the movie. 

I will say that the cast was superbly chosen because it almost covered up the fact that Gal can’t act to save her life. “Maxwell Lord YOU ARE IN GRAVE DANGER” like what the fuck was that?! I felt like a bunch of actors took up most of the movie and the scenes we did get with Gal were fighting ones so luckily she knew what to do with those but actual lines? Forget about it. I am happy that we did have some firsts on the big screen. We got Wonder Woman's invisible plane which is really cool! The fact that in a lot of Universes there is no definitive answer as to how or why the plane is invisible but in the movie it was Diana using magic. Diana mentioned her father Zeus many times so I wonder if they would have included him in the third movie before James Gunn took over DC and nuked all the current actors/projects. We finally got to see Wonder Woman fly! I live for scenes like that! No need to go crazy with trying to be creative when you have so much amazing source material to choose from. But in the case of including Lynda Carter? I'll give it to them for creating an amazing character for her to portray. I love when new projects honour OG actors. 

Rating:

I'm giving this Wonder Woman 1984 3.5 stars on 5. I actually did enjoy the movie up until the point where my brain caught up with the fact that a lot of the characters back stories were completely changed. I personally would have preferred the story to focus on Diana and Barbara and how she becomes Cheetah. But alas, let's just make shit up for fun. Yet again, Gal can't act but everyone else did a phenomenal job.