Wonder Woman 1984

Even the title is awesome. The previous film was a big success and this long-awaited sequel promised something with that date hanging there… What can become of Diana Prince in this most Eighties of years in the eighties? Before we find out, though, there’s a cold open featuring Diana as a little girl competing in some sort of ancient tournament of physical prowess. She cheats and is heartbroken to lose in spite of taking a short-cut. 

Cut to 1984, and things get immediately joyous: the evocation of the time is centred on South Fields Mall. Everyone is shopping and on TV screens there’s a man telling them that they can have everything they want and they don’t have to work for it. Proving the point, a bunch of goons rob a jewellers’ shop, taking amongst other things a weird looking stone. They threaten to kill a little girl but are thwarted when Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot!) shows up, saves the girl and beats the heck out of the goons.

The stone is passed by the FBI to the Smithsonian, and ends up on the desk of Barbara Minerva (Kristen Wiig), a desk bound and quiet gems expert. Diana meets Barbara and is interested in the stone, as is the oil baron Maxwell Lord (Pedro Pascal). The friendship struck up between Barbara and Diana is crucial because Barbara soon envies Diana. Diana has the male gaze going on wherever she goes, but as the first film shows she has loved and loved very deeply. She kind of wishes that she could be like Barbara, who is only prayed upon by a corpulent 80s guy who assails her at night (Diana kicks his ass). Max Lord shows up and latches on to Barbara, who goes through a “Plain Jane Superbrain” style make-over which mostly involves losing the full-length dress and the spectacles, and using loads of hairspray - and instantly men pay her attention. She loans the stone to Max Lord (Diana Prince points out that they can’t loan the item, even to a benefactor, because the museum doesn’t own it! This film may not be suitable for Museum Registrars).

Max Lord is supposedly based on Gordon Gecko from archetypal 80s film Wall Street. However he is a friendless businessman who seeks ultimate and unlimited power. Diana on the other hand knows all about power and responsibility and in the course of discovering what Lord is up to, Diana gets what she truly wants which is the love he had with Steve Trevor (Chris Pine) who is brought back to life. Steve is fascinated by the 1980s (except for futons) and especially by the National Air and Space Museum. He and Diana end up having to go to the Middle East to go after Lord, and so begins the film’s final conflict. 

This is a hugely enjoyable film, with a stylistic nod at the 1980s but it’s also so much like a film from that era. The only difference is that it’s hard to imagine a woman co-writing and directing a big film back then, and even now if a man had directed this would it have delved so deeply into the sexism which WW84 depicts. The depiction of a businessman who turns easily to power and despotism was ironically out of this world in 1984 and is only recently a thing of the past for the moment. And there are some fun moments like the Shaman that Diana and Steve needs to find, who works from a place next to “Galaxy Records”. The tone and the look of the film, and everything up to a surprisingly low-key Ronald Reagan. 

The film presents the consequences of unrestrained free will by using the supposedly low-rent cliche of the Aladdin story: wanting everything, being promised everything—presented in the clever guise of 1980s consumerism and excess—and it adds a theme very much based on the unhappiness of the world in the last four or five years. Being absolutely powerful can be dangerous but at the same time standing up to complete evil really takes it out of a righteous and good person whose only concern is the care for the beauty of the world and the contentment and wellbeing of everyone. Gal Gadot, a woman who is ethereally beautiful, is perfectly cast because she can be the studious professional but she can also command great strength, but there’s a cost. There is always a cost to doing the right thing. This might sound simplistic and silly but it’s profound. Pedro Pascal is necessarily over the top in a role that’s a contrast to his most famous role as The Mandalorian, and he takes his place among so many others as the bad guy with the European accent typical of the movies of the 80s—the decade we endlessly look back on with nostalgia and a bit of a smile.