Gal Gadot returns as Diana Prince in “Wonder Woman 1984” which has seen its release date shift a few times due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The film has started to open overseas and will arrive in the U.S. on Christmas day with a limited debut on HBO Max as well. The story sees Diana now living in Washington D.C. in 1984. Diana is popular but has refused male companionship as she still longs for her late love Steve Trevor (Chris Pine). Diana works in the Smithsonian Institute in antiquities and keeps her secret identity under wraps even when a daring mall heist forces her to leap into action. A shy and passive employee named Barbara (Kirsten Wiig); who is afraid of her own shadow and largely ignored by her peers is befriended by Diana and they discover one item from the heist is inscribed with the ability to grant a wish. Unknowingly Diana wishes for Steve to return and Barbara wishes to be more like Diana which sets a chain of events into motion. A shady business man named Maxwell Lord (Perdro Pascal) has his site on obtaining the relic as he believes having the ability to grant wishes will allow him to save his failing business and give him the power he craves. With such a promising setup; the film ultimately does not deliver on its premise and becomes bogged down in drawn out sequences with surprisingly little action and gaps in logic that defy even standards for a comic book film. The first 90 minutes of the film has roughly 10-15 minutes of action tops and we are instead given lengthy scenes of Steve trying to find an 80s fashion look; flying over fireworks, and Maxwell trashing from one locale to another without much needed continuity. An action scene involving a convoy chase through the desert seems very inspired by “Raiders of the Lost Ark” and ultimately does not deliver especially with such a long gape between the action sequences. The final act does attempt to redeem the film as seeing Barbara transform into her new persona is interesting and Wiig does a very solid job with the role. This sadly is undermined with a single line of dialogue which takes away a big part of the transformation that audiences deserved to see. There was also a sequence where Diana races down the streets and takes to flight with her Lasso and then discovers she can fly like Superman. Not only is this not in keeping with the character; but we see this extended fast moving sequence where she is clearly heading away from D.C. at great speed only to arrive at a destination with an item which had been established to be back at her home in D.C. It is this sort of sloppiness that really detracts from the film. There is also the fact that Steve has to fly her around on a jet that even as a pilot he should not know how to fly as he has never flown a jet aircraft in his life. When the big confrontation comes it is a letdown as it is not overly epic and the CGI really does not seem to mesh. What is an even bigger disappointment is that a certain character stands emoting for several minutes while Diana gives such a bland and extended speech that even my wife had to ask “who wrote these lines”. The film was not a total disaster as the characters were interesting and worked well with one another making the film entertaining in parts despite being really disappointed with it. The film strikes me as a product of the talented Patty Jenkins being able to do whatever she wanted after the success of the first film. Jenkins not only Directed but did the screenplay for it. Considering the amazing job she did writing “Monster” I had high expectations for the film but to me it seemed like it could have used a bit more attention to several aspects. My summary would be the following… good cast, entertaining in parts, not much action over two hours, takes huge liberties with Diana and her abilities, massive gaps in logic even for a comic movie. It aims to be epic and comes up lacking. At least the mid. credit scene was worth it. 3 stars out of 5

Heroes are only as good as their villains. Nothing sums up the disappointment of WW84 more than this. Maxwell Lord & Barbara Minerva are two of the most dangerously dark psyches in DC lore, both fond of extremely nasty, deliberately sociopathic behavior. Whoever it was pretending to be them in WW84, it wasn't those two from the comics. We had some namby-pamby twerp called "Max Lord" who was just a misguided fool trying to fill that emptiness in his pathetic life with a magic dream. Yawn. Also, some good-hearted ditz called "Barbara Minerva" basically became inadvertent collateral damage whilst Lord's dopey plan panned out. Admittedly, that's vaguely similar to one of Cheetah's later origin stories, but it completely discounts her propensity for choosing the pure evil path. It could have been fun watching a proper mind-controlling Lord and a proper soul-possessing Cheetah fight over the "ownership" of some red shirt. Alas, no. What an absolute WASTE of two A-grade narrative heavyweights! But then, that's the problem. You simply could NOT use characters like Lord & Cheetah appropriately in a movie targeted towards a family audience, and it's obvious that "make this family friendly" was plastered all over the script in red sharpie. Nothing's likely to change for the third WW installment, where, in keeping with the cinematic PG-downgrade of supervillains, Circe is portrayed as a lonely kid's party magician who gets angry when her balloons get popped, so she turns everyone into pet unicorns.