Wonder Woman 1984 Movie Poster

The following post is my review of Wonder Woman 1984 (2020) movie. This post contains spoilers and will discuss elements from the movie. Please do not read this review if you are trying to avoid movie spoilers.

Wonder Woman 1984 Review

Wonder Woman 1984 Movie Details

Wonder Woman 1984 (2020) is the sequel to the Wonder Woman (2017) movie and stars Gal Gadot as Diana Prince, also known as Wonder Woman. Chris Pine returns as her love interest, Steve Trevor. The antagonists in this movie are Barbara Minerva and The Cheetah (played by Kristen Wiig), and Maxwell "Max" Lord (played by Pedro Pascal). The movie was written and directed by Patty Jenkins, with screenplay credit to Patty Jenkins, Geoff Johns, and Dave Callaham. Full credit for cast and crew can be viewed here. This film was released in the United States in both theaters and on HBO Max simultaneously on December 25, 2020. The film began opening in some international markets without HBO Max on December 16, 2020. 

Note: As of December 27, 2020, Wonder Woman 1984 had made $85M USD worldwide and $16.7M domestically, and was given a greenlight to make a third movie, with Patty Jenkins in charge to create.

Wonder Woman 1984 Review: Themes, Story, and Plot

Wonder Woman 1984 (2020) is a movie about many things, the biggest themes are about love and greed, and attaining power that one does not deserve at the expense of others. 

The movie opens during athletic games in a large colosseum in her native Themyscira, where we see a young Diana Prince competing against Amazonian women in their 20's, and doing well ahead of everyone. But she encounters a setback while on horseback, and young Diana attempts to get back into the race by taking a shortcut. When taking the shortcut, she misses her blue checkpoint, and her Aunt Antiope stops her at the end from throwing her javelin through the last hoop. Her Aunt is teaching young Diana a life lesson and tells her that she can't take shortcuts and win fairly.

The film then fast forwards 66 years to 1984 for the rest of the movie.

Diana Prince is working as an anthropologist at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington D.C. when not fighting crime in secret as Wonder Woman. There she meets Barbara Minerva, a woman that is clumsy, insecure, and lonely. At first, Diana doesn't care much to hang out with Barbara, but after Diana learns more about the "Dreamstone" being researched by Barbara, Diana takes up Barbara on going out for dinner and gets to know her. After Diana reads the Latin inscription on the relic, she reads out loud how it grants wishes, and she wishes in her mind to have her former lover Steve Trevor back.

The wind blows when the Dreamstone is granting a wish, and shortly after, Steve Trevor shows up in the movie, after embodying some random man in the movie. How Steve does this is not explained sufficiently. Then we see many scenes of Steve trying to acclimate to life in 1984. Meanwhile, Barbara Minerva first wishes she was like Diana and gains agility and strength, like Wonder Woman. An unsuccessful businessman, Max Lord, then discovers the Dreamstone in Barbara's possession, and recognizes it very well, as if he was very familiar with it. He then seduces Barbara and convinces her to let him look at it for further examination. His wish upon the stone is to become the Dreamstone. He then begins granting wishes to everyone, in exchange for whatever he wants. As he grants more and more wishes, it takes a toll on his body, He knows this and says that he can always take health from someone later on after he gains great power in the process.

As Diana and Steve are trying to locate Max Lord, she starts to realize that she is weaker, and her powers are suffering because of her wish to have Steve. They together learn that to stop the chaos taking place on the Earth, everyone that wished upon the Dreamstone must renounce their wish, in order for everything to be restored on the Earth. Diana has a touching final goodbye with Steve because she realizes that she cannot keep him forever, and she needs her powers to face Max Lord, and The Cheetah. 

Diana then puts on her ultimate winged suit of armor and flies to the location where a technologically advanced studio is located. She first faced off with The Cheetah, after Barbara gets additional powers from Max Lord on the jet on the way over. Diana and The Cheetah fight and Wonder Woman subdues The Cheetah with electricity and moves into the studio to confront Max Lord, who is granting everyone wishes in exchange for power.

Diana's ultimate scene with Max Lord is in a 360-degree studio that allows him to "touch" everyone in the world while granting their wishes. This plot point of how it works exactly (the movie science behind it) is not sufficient. Diana manages to get close enough to Max Lord with the Lasso of Truth so that she can speak truth to the world while he is roped, and the world starts to renounce their selfish wishes. The world starts to do this leading up unto Max Lord himself renouncing his wish so that he can save his son that has wandered into a chaotic and dangerous world. He runs out and finds his son, and shortly after is seen embracing his son and telling his son the truth about his rise to power.

This movie may not win many awards, but I liked that greed was addressed. The story is similar to King Midas, who could turn anything he wanted into gold. The main point is that great power gained with unscrupulous means will end very badly. I also liked the theme of love. Diana had everything she wanted in life, except love. She missed Steve very badly. And for Barbara Minerva, she wanted to be popular and liked but lost her kindness and compassion along the way.