Superhero sequel simply wonderful in looks and sound
After the rip-roaring triumph of 2017’s Wonder Woman – still easily the best of this current crop of DC superhero franchise launchers – it was never going to be an easy day at the office for director Patty Jenkins to top what she had already achieved.
Wonder Woman had spectacle, wit and heart to spare. In fact, if just a little of the excess of humour and chemistry in that film could have been bottled and poured over the benighted Justice League debacle, maybe even that unloved mess could have been saved.
But, an origin movie is often the most successful in a series, for the simple reason that a character’s beginnings, their exploration of their powers and then eventual triumph in their first real test – which is roughly the arc of every superhero origin yarn I can think of – is a well-established blueprint for a script.
Without resorting to quoting Joseph Campbell and his hugely derivative ‘‘hero’s journey’’ nonsense, superhero origin movies pretty much arrive with a decent story to tell guaranteed.
The second film in the series, not so much. That is why even the most die-hard Marvel fan will agree that Iron Man 2 is the only real stinker in the franchise.
But, back to DC, which clearly has thrown a king-hell marketing budget and many of its hopes and expectations at this Wonder Woman being able to right its Covid-ravaged balance sheets. And the trailer, the one scored to a reorchestrated version of New Order’s Blue Monday, really is a thing of wonder.
So much so, that I walked into the preview screening of Wonder Woman 1984 pretty much prepared to accept nothing less than greatness as a pass mark.
And, Wonder Woman 1984 is pretty darned good. It’s just that the film is hobbled by a script that needs to tell the origin stories of not one, but two villains, reintroduce boyfriend Steve Rogers 70 years after we saw him die, then world-build a credible introduction to the wonders of big city North America at the height of the Reagan era and Cold War fears of ‘‘the bomb’’.
It’s a hell of a lot to fit in, while still finding room for all the action and fun that we demand of the genre.
So, that Wonder Woman 1984 mostly succeeds at doing all of the above is a stunning achievement. But it comes at the expense of a two-and-a-half-hour running time, featuring many scenes of dialogue, exposition and explanation that bog the story down far too often.
After a superb opening stanza – putting us back on the Amazon’s mythical island as some sort of ritualised multi-sport contest is about to get under way – the film kind of lurches into the modernday setting and then abruptly sets up a female buddy comedy between Gal Gadot’s Diana Prince – now working, quite credibly, as an anthropologist – and a geeky, shy Kristen Wiig as new workmate Barbara.
The plotline yields decent moments and laughs – you can’t point a camera at Wiig without at least a few great things happening – but then veers off again to introduce and set in motion the character of Max Lord, played as a slightly-too-obvious Trumpimpersonation by a vamping and flamboyant Pedro Pascal.
It’s not a bad performance at all. But compared to the menace and volcanic intensity of David Thewlis and his actual God of War in the first film, there’s never really any doubt that our heroine is going to triumph in the end.
Visually and aurally, Wonder Woman 1984 is appropriately wonderful. Even while the introduction of the invisible plane was a bit groan-inducing, the view from the cockpit as it soared through the heart of a Fourth of July fireworks display was a gorgeous conceit.
I guess, after the 2017 film and that thunderous trailer, Wonder Woman 1984 had an impossible task, to live up to all our hopes and expectations.
That it gets close enough to still be well worth recommending – especially on the biggest screen in town – is damn near a miracle. But I was still left feeling just a tiny bit deflated.
Maybe if that version of Blue Monday had actually made it in to the film, I would have been happier.