The Problem With Wonder Woman 1984
Superhero origin movies are easy to do. When audiences enter the theater they don’t expect much except to see their favorite superhero on screen rising from infancy to eventually become the character they all know and love. The movie doesn’t have to do much except provide an early villain, a believable origin, while satisfying the die hard comic book fans. The first Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Shazam, and Superman movies all were well received just for this reason.
Now the difficulty comes in the second movies. It isn’t enough to just show the hero learn new tricks or engage in epic battles with a new villain full of advanced CGI and other eye-candy. Maybe 20 or 30 years ago this was enough. In the past, long standing TV shows and movie series with DC characters did well and were well loved in pop culture. Audiences did not care if the stories were not nuanced or complex, they just wanted some entertainment which this media provided.
Fast forward to today the story has completely changed. Now there is TOO MUCH entertainment. If you want the feel good movies with simple plot and eye candy there are so many to choose from that audiences have become saturated with this content. If a large studio is looking to spend millions to take a superhero movie to the big screen they need to do something different so audiences stay engaged.
Take the Joker for example (you can view my past blog post on the Joker here). The Joker was one of the first examples of a movie solely dedicated to the origin of the villain. The dominant opinion was no one would want to see a villain origin story since audiences always want to feel morally righteous. However, the Joker shattered this expectation and signaled to the big studios that audiences can stomach a grittier movie that touches on complex themes without the flashy Hollywood CGI. One could arguably claim that the Joker was a result of Logan carving out a new niche but I digress.
Now we get to WW1984. The problem with DC, specifically Superman (SM) and now Wonder Woman (WW), is the heroes are too morally righteous and have no real character flaws. In the comics this is definitely not the case but in the movies there’s no question that WW and SM want peace, justice, etc. WW and SM have never really faced a foe that they could not overpower through brute force except when their powers were weakened by Kryptonite or some wishing stone. As a result the conflict in these movies seem cheesy, shallow, and artificial.
In WW1984, WW had to learn how to let go of Steve Trevor in order to regain her powers and save the day. Here the conflict in WW is learning how to let go of her past and live among the humans instead of shutting herself off. The movie centers about the concept of truth and the importance of embracing and accepting the truth especially when love is involved. On first glance this seems to be an interesting premise, but the movie spends little time to actually address any fundamental flaw to WW character. Instead WW is able to let go of Steve after he tells her she needs to let go of him to save the world in a single tearful scene. As quickly as the conflict emerged it was resolved in a couple of seconds as WW returned to become the morally infallible character and saves the day. Audiences don’t buy this! We were never really worried for WW and a result the conflict seemed contrived and not as impactful. As a result, the whole movie felt somewhat empty and was mostly carried by the nice visual sequences.
As a side note I felt that there were many other directions they could have taken. For one thing how did WW feel after WWI, WWII happening only a few years later? How did her optimism fare in the face of the atrocities like the Holocaust? Or what about the fact that WW killed those Germans in WWI? How did she reconcile with the non black-and-white nature of conflict and how not every German was an evil brute? I understand WW wanted to free people from Ares, but is the only way to free these German soldiers killing them?
As the gears start turning for Wonder Woman 3, I hope we finally get to see a Wonder Woman who is not morally infallible and actually has to face lasting and interesting flaws in character.
