GAL AND HER LASSO WILL ROPE YOU IN
THERE isn’t much that Gal Gadot’s Wonder Woman can’t do with her golden ‘Lasso of Truth’, that shimmering, computer-generated rope that sends villains to their doom and rescues children from precipice edges.
But her greatest challenge awaits. Can she and her lasso haul the multitudes back into cinemas — those that remain open — as the pandemic continues to bite? I hope so. Wonder Woman 1984 is a blast.
Notionally a sequel to the 2017 hit Wonder Woman, it really offers a standalone story beginning with a kind of ancient-world version of It’s A Knockout, as freckly young demi-goddess Princess Diana of Themyscira (13-yearold Scottish actress Lilly Aspell), bests her elders in front of an amphitheatre full of toga-wearing Amazons. You might call her an Amazon prime.
The action then shifts to Washington DC, 1984. All grown up and now played by Gadot, Diana Prince (Wonder Woman’s civilian name) works as an anthropologist at the Smithsonian Institute. There she bonds with the diffident, hapless Barbara Minerva (beautifully played by Kristen Wiig), just hired as a gemologist, who yearns with all her heart to be as ‘strong, sexy, cool and special’ as her new pal Diana.
Fortuitously, an ancient stone with strange mystical properties duly grants Barbara’s wish, but she casts off the shackles of her former personality way too enthusiastically, becoming the villainous Cheetah.
In the meantime, a failing corporate con-artist called Maxwell Lord (Pedro Pascal, also excellent) has got his hands on the stone, transforming his business fortunes and making him the world’s most powerful person. Incidentally, director Patty Jenkins felt compelled to deny that Donald Trump was in any way the influence for Lord’s character.
Whatever, Lord cannot contain his greed, and, in league with Cheetah, propels the planet, still in the icy grip of the Cold War, to the very brink of nuclear catastrophe.
That’s OK, though, because averting global cataclysms has been Wonder Woman’s stock-in-trade pretty much since she first appeared in comic-book form in 1941.
On the other hand, she is distracted this time by some wish-fulfilment of her own: her lover from the first film, World War I pilot Steve Trevor (Chris Pine), has been conveniently reincarnated.
At first the essence of the plot seems almost childlike: after all, wishes coming true power all the best fairytales. But it becomes clear that Jenkins and her cowriters are subverting the idea.
In keeping with Wonder Woman’s mythical origins, this is a King Midas tale repackaged for Reagan-era America. Its not-so-subtle message, but one we should perhaps all take to heart, is: ‘Be careful what you wish for.’
Wonder Woman 1984 is in cinemas now. A longer version of this review appeared in Wednesday’s paper.