Why Wonder Woman 1984 is Terrible | Cynical Reviews

sponsored by raikon life is good but it can be better what's wrong with your face where do you even start with this one the hotly anticipated sequel to the 2017 movie wonder woman 1984 dropped less like the hottest new mixtape and more like well insert poo joke here the first movie was decent enough but the sequel is the cinematic equivalent of after birth and i would argue that it's the worst entry in the dc cinematic universe thus far and i understand that that's quite a claim given that it's dc we're talking about but i stand by it because as florida's suicide squad batman vs superman justice league aquaman and birds of prey work wait isn't that like most of the dc cinematic universe [ __ ] hell in my opinion no other dc movie has so little regard for good writing which for me is all important when judging a movie i can't even cover every aspect of how awful it is because this review would then be longer than the movie itself so consider this merely the scummy crust of the turd sandwich to better understand what follows it would be very useful to have a quick summary of the plot so spoiler warning since the events of the first movie diana prince has spent the last 66 years keeping to herself or not keeping to herself but we'll get to that a magic wishing rock a magic wishing rock gets delivered to the smithsonian institute where she works she still hasn't moved on from her one and only love steve trevor who last time we saw him was deader than trump's twitter account so she wishes he could come back and he does but in another man's body her colleague and awkward loser barbara minerva wishes to be like her so she acquires her powers but at the cost of her own kindness and eventually becomes wonder woman's iconic arch enemy cheetah flamboyant 80's style con man max lord steals the stone and turns himself into it with a wish it's kind of like asking a genie for more wishes it feels like cheating [Applause] he gets greedy and starts granting everyone's wishes but taking what he wants in return but because it acts like a monkey's poor the entire world goes to heck for diana the price was losing her powers forcing her to renounce her wish and lose steve for good after defeating cheetah she interrupts lord as he grants the world's wishes via satellite showing him the error of his ways and convincing everyone to renounce their wishes and the world goes back to normal okay i think we're good you just hate it because you hate wham no no i don't i go back to huffing paint but you know what else doesn't hate women raycon i mean it's true isn't it raycon's premium wireless earbuds offer up to six hours of battery life superb noise isolation added bass and easy connectivity via bluetooth they look great they feel great they fit great they stay in great they taste great actually they don't don't put them in your mouth or anywhere else you shouldn't you know who you are i even use them during my live streams on twitch they're great value and easily comparable to other premium wireless earbuds on the market and you can bag yourself a special discount and help support the channel by going to buyracon.com cynical reviews that's byrakon.com cynical reviews link in the description now where were we oh yeah stupid arguments first of all saying that other superhero movies have the same issues doesn't mean that they aren't issues also no not every superhero movie has these problems and if they do they don't have them to this extent and i maintain that no other superhero movie not even the other dc movies comes close to the amount of ridiculous nonsense in wonder woman 84. and i don't care that it's a comic book movie that's not an excuse audiences deserve better than this i shouldn't have to turn off my brain in order to enjoy a movie but this one clearly wants me to because the plot has more holes in it than the poor sword who tipped off the feds about geoffrey epstein and these aren't just nitpicks that can be dismissed out of hand they're fundamental deficiencies in the manner in which the story progresses and i've never felt more vindicated in my belief that plot holes are both a real thing and a valid subject of criticism but hey who cares about story and characters right ironic well before we dive into the maelstrom of sewage that is the story let's talk about the characters gal gadot still cannot act and is responsible for some atrocious line delivery of course this is nothing new no what the hell was that but she was paid 10 million dollars for this so you'd think she'd put in more effort but she presents with all the emotional range of ray skywalker she's more convincing when she's lying on twitter and this time around diana is really bad at being a superhero she repeatedly saves people in ways that could have very easily gotten them or others even more badly hurt she buys this guy's taxi and then leaves him stranded in the middle of the desert and she straight up drop some dudes off a building and onto a police car which really should have killed them she does save some arab kids though or really fake looking dolls which is kind of ironic or things considered but before this comment section becomes even more cancerous let's move on to kristen wiig as barbara minerva she also cannot act she plays the same character in every movie and here she's not comedic enough to be funny she's not intimidating enough to play the villain and she's not a good enough actor to play the tragic victim she tries way too hard to be awkward in fact her conversations with diana are more awkward than that time they tried to inspire poor people by singing imagine from their multi-million dollar mansions [Music] it's easy if you try they also pretty much queerbaited her character throwing the lgbt community a bone by making it seem like she has more than just friendly affection for diana without openly stating it so they can reassure those territories that get pissy about that sort of thing nah it's cool bro no homo here while we're talking about [ __ ] though cheetah's character design is lame she looks like chester cheetah's crack [ __ ] cousin you can find more interesting character designs on deviantart don't try it though for the love of christ the decision to set their confrontation at night was a terrible one because you can barely make her out against everything else it not only ruins her look but also that of the golden armor that was so hyped up in the marketing the cynic in me thinks it was done to hide the bad cgi which is on par with superman's mouth and justice league oh god what's wrong with your face i doubt even furries will be able to gift to this not that i would know anything about that of course what what are you looking at pedro pascal and his performance as max lord are arguably the best thing about the movie i mean look at him he's adorable and was obviously having a lot of fun with this imagine no no pedro my dude what are you doing but dc couldn't bring themselves to break their pattern of making their villains act so over the top that you can't take them seriously but at least he can actually act and his character feels more real three-dimensional and sympathetic than diana which is also more than i can say for steve trevor who's just kind of there he's so bland a real shadow of his former self which i guess is somewhat thematically appropriate he does bring some much needed comedy even if most of it falls flat because of the execution which is also true of the rest of the forced and unfunny humor oh look chris pine has a fanny pack here zomber and the parting scene between him and diana is so anticlimactic that it's hilarious on that note let's now move on to talk about the story we've already seen a couple of examples but the writing really took a nosedive off the cliff patty jenkins herself co-wrote the story and screenplay her first since 2003's monster which was pretty good so it's not like she can't write there's being rusty and then there's just not caring because the writing in this movie is utterly ridiculous so much of it comes across as corny hammy even downright juvenile and this is only exacerbated by its execution it brazenly contradicts facts established in previous dc movies in both batman vs superman and justice league diana insists that she didn't help humanity for 100 years after the events of the 2017 film a hundred years ago i walked away from mankind men made a world where standing together is impossible yet here she is out in the open apparently not for the first time and you can't just say that this isn't a sequel and therefore it's fine to do whatever you want when it clearly is a sequel you're not fooling anybody but it isn't just about the inconsistencies in the law this lack of concern manifests itself in the myriad of writing issues present in this script some of this writing simply doesn't work because it shouldn't or doesn't convey its intended meaning such as when diana gets wounded at one point which is supposed to show that she's losing her powers but she's never been established to be bulletproof so it's like okay i guess that's bad the story also heavily relies on some of the most egregious deus ex machina solutions i've ever seen in a mainstream film they have a problem well here's a solution that comes completely out of nowhere and is never used again perfect 10 out of 10 ign her lasso of truth can now do literally anything she needs it to she doesn't have her shield this time for some reason but she can spin it fast enough to stop bullets and then never does it again she can lasso a bullet out of the air and then never does it again she can reach an airplane from near the ground because she can swing on lightning because not only can it force others to tell the truth but it can also force others to see the truth which would have been very useful to have during that scene in justice league when superman wakes up and forgets who they are but i guess she just kind of forgot about that oh and thanks to steve she learns how to fly which also might have come in handy in future but i guess you just kind of forgot about that as well and then there's the magic wishing rock which can also do whatever the plot needs it to the way it operates is incredibly inconsistent and having this as the mcguffin raises so many questions that the film doesn't even attempt to answer in fact it's actually quite impressive how many things the movie does very little to explain or establish given how much time it has to do so but on the other hand the movie doesn't trust its audience to work out quite obvious things for themselves that's why they have steve's speech about flight play over the scene where diana learns how to fly because they think you'll forget what inspired her to do so if you hadn't fallen asleep already and then there's a load of writing that's just straight up dumb in lieu of running through the entire movie beat by beat because this movie is two and a half hours long so that i want to highlight just one scene that exemplifies just how batch this film is and bear in mind that there's a lot more that i'm leaving out but this should give you an idea of the level we're on after they discover that max lord has the wishing rock they have to go to egypt to find uh maybe steve doesn't but the well-off guy whose body he's inhabiting might the person that he actually looks like i guess they just kind of forgot about that but because of this contrivance she decides to steal a plane from the smithsonian which just so happens to be fully fueled ready to fly and totally unguarded none of which it would be and steve just so happens to be able to fly it despite it being drastically different from world war one biplanes not only that but this type of plane has a maximum range of a thousand miles so it wouldn't be able to reach egypt in one go like they need it to oh i forgot to tell you what radar i can't explain now with lcs anywhere even in the dark oh by the way there's radar why are you only telling him this now well [ __ ] diana but to solve this problem she suddenly has the ability to turn things invisible and despite only doing this once before off-screen on a coffee cup she manages it and they get away right that's not how radar works but even ignoring that saying oh but it's magic like they pretty much do is a [ __ ] excuse and the fact that she suddenly pulls it out of her back pocket is also [ __ ] and of course this ability never gets used or even mentioned again they then take a detour to fly through some fireworks somehow slowing the plane down without stalling it not like they're on a super urgent mission or anything not to mention the dangers and why does steve sound like he wants to the plane knowing how to how to ride it how to catch it at a join with them this one scene this one scene could have been the video oh god what's wrong with your phone but what about the movies themes well what about them oh you want more than that okay well the movie [ __ ] up its themes too it tries to have a message about how truth is all important it's all you need it's beautiful and so forth the truth is bigger than all of us nothing good is born from lies barbara and you cannot have it all you can only have the truth and the truth is enough the truth is beautiful yeah tell that to the people in auschwitz you should know you were there apparently but they justify the overly long opening competition scene by tacking on this message right at the end except her origin story in the first movie was a lied i guess i just kind of forgot about that much like the 2017 movie wonder woman 1984 markets itself as a women's empowerment piece and leans heavily on its feminist aspirations which is fine you can do that but then don't have diana's defining characteristic and motivation be that she hasn't moved on from a dead guy she barely knew for a week 70 years ago and who is still pretty much the focus of her story even steve points out how crazy that is you're the only joy i've had or even asked for i am so sorry but that's crazy so empowering and just because the film is meant to be inspiring that doesn't excuse it being [ __ ] and to argue otherwise it's just patronizing to young women it also falls into the lazy trap of saying man bad in order to say woman good barbara's colleagues refuse to help her and only pay attention to her after she gets hot because man bad multiple men creepily hit on her and diana because man bad a man tries to assault barbara in the park and then again despite getting his ass kicked the first time because man bad every man bad except steve and he's in someone else's body which we've now gotta talk about because it's very weird and it's led to controversy around a particular scene that's been described as a bit rhymes with grapey it's ambiguous as to whether or not they actually do the dirty but even if they didn't she's still being physically intimate with steve while he's in another man's body so it doesn't change the essential problem of that man being unable to consent she even acknowledges it and doesn't care how about this guy how about him i don't want him i want you why for once can't i just have this one thing steve this one thing it goes beyond just a moment of weakness and trying to defend this by talking about power dynamics is a bit silly because um she's a superhero and he's unconscious how is he the one with power and just remember that this was the first hollywood movie to sign up to the pga's new hashtag metoo guidelines so so it's pretty ironic all things considered and instead of making her point clear enough in the movie itself patty jenkins had to retweet someone else's defense of it yeah that's exactly what i was trying to do totally but even if you don't care at all about the writing and just want to see flashy on the screen the movie is an absolute slog to get through at two and a half hours it's unjustifiably long has horrendous pacing and i'd rather gargle toenail clippings than watch it again and i had to watch it multiple times i hope you're all happy you know why i had to watch it multiple times because i kept zoning out because it's so slow and boring there's a 45 minute stretch where barely anything happens to keep your attention which in this kind of movie is unacceptable and given jenkins's adamant refusal to remove two overly long and almost pointless scenes at the beginning of the movie it's difficult to avoid the impression that this was an exercise in self-indulgence honestly the most fun you're gonna get out of this comes from the truly laughable action scenes and utterly nonsensical shots it does seem to be a running theme that dc just can't quite get their cgi to look right and while it doesn't reach justice league levels of awful for the most part it still looks goofy enough to make you wonder where that 200 million dollars went while we're on the subject of looks this movie is painfully drab compared to its colorful marketing they failed to utilize the bright and distinctive visual styles of the era they were shamelessly nostalgia baiting for leaving us with nothing that our eyes would remember after blinking come to think of it this movie has barely anything to do with the 80s but the 80s are so hot right now i guess so they throw in a bunch of 80s stuff mostly at the beginning but it's all window dressing that makes no tangible difference to the story like for sake they didn't even include 80s influences in the soundtrack that's one of the best things about the 80s instead we have han zimmer phoning it in with a completely unmemorable score and how [ __ ] lazy do you have to be to use adagio in d minor for one of the movie's climactic moments you know that mozart piece you've heard before in every trailer ever but speaking of lazy there are an intolerable amount of factual errors historical anachronisms continuity errors and immersion breaking production goofs which individually wouldn't amount to much but the fact that they occur so often and so blatantly here speaks to a lack of care and attention to detail they're just the sprinkles atop this filled doughnut look i've rambled on for long enough but you get the idea wonder woman 1984 is terrible and a perfect exercise in how not to write a movie the more you try to unpack it the worse it gets i could have gone into so much more detail but i just didn't have the patience it's boring self-indulgent nonsensical and an utter waste of everyone's time and that's why i'd say it's the worst dc movie so far anyway i'm off to drink myself into a coma so i can forget that i ever saw it here's a picture of wonder woman scissoring enjoy [ __ ] diana thanks for watching folks if you enjoyed it give it a like and a share and all that good stuff if you want to support the channel check out the sponsor raycon grab some merch from bonfire become a patron on patreon or a youtube channel member your 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Channel: Cynical Reviews

Views: 353,110

Rating: 4.8849468 out of 5

Keywords: Wonder Woman 1984, Wonder Woman, Wonder Woman 1984 Review, Wonder Woman 1984 Movie, Wonder Woman 1984 Movie Review, Wonder Woman 84, WW84, Wonder Woman 84 Movie, DC, DCEU, Diana Prince, Cynical Reviews, Cynical Reviews Wonder Woman 1984, Cynical Reviews Wonder Woman 84, Justice League, Batman Vs Superman, Wonder Woman 2017, Patty Jenkins, Gal Gadot, Pedro Pascal, Kristen Wiig, Movie Review, Commentary, Critique, Satire, Parody, Criticism, Film, WW84 Review, WW84 Movie, review, ad

Id: Z0wzVnYZ6Fw

Length: 21min 13sec (1273 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 07 2021