Stumbled onto another DC hit and miss

 

My Twilight post is never going to happen, is it? At this rate, I am probably going to post it when Edward Cullen betrays his vampire friends for the Bat team. Waiting for the post to be somewhat relevant is actually not a bad idea. I won’t do it, but I feel satisfied with my notice of such an opportunity. The last reason for postponing my Twilight post was current events, Greek and American insults to democracy. This time round it was, once again, DC. A strictly American insult to its viewers. Wonder Woman 1984 was released on HBO+ because of the pandemic, making it a whole lot easier for us who were not willing to risk a ticket expense for another DC movie to watch it illegally. It is the one good thing Covid has done for me. Because rest assured I would have been very upset to have spent money for this movie.

I don’t even know if it’s worth spending that much time describing what a disappointment Wonder Woman 1984 was. It was definitely more worth singing all of Hamilton with my friends while watching it (New Year resolutions not going so well). George Orwell worked hard to make that year a landmark and DC worked even harder to ruin it. First of all, it is yet another prequel which doesn’t really clear up the ‘current’ story; ‘current’ being the events of Batman v Superman and Justice League. We still get no justification as to why Wonder Woman is not famous after WW1, or during the whole Doomsday situation. Also, we have all gone along with the ridiculous reasoning behind Superman’s secret identity, achieved with a pair of glasses, but they are not even making that minimal effort for Diana Prince. I guess the shiny ensemble is too distracting and no one looks at her face. And these two comments are the least annoying plot holes in the script.

Scratch that, there was no plot. There were a bunch of introductory sequences and a whole lot of 80s nostalgia, surely triggered by the success of Stanger Things when the script was first written all those years ago. There is not plot to discuss, it was pure idiocy; the resolution was once again corny and ridiculous and further proof that Zack Snyder is working through some childhood trauma and instructed Patti Jenkins to direct the superhero version of ‘You can’t always get what you want’. Why am I assuming this is once again Snyder’s fault? Because the credits suggest he was more involved with this movie, and so does the outcome.

Let’s ignore the plot; what the fuck happened with the graphics? I am not pretending to have the visual solution to riding lightning like a badass, but I would leave it out of the script if I were to do it like they did in the 80s. Oh, I see what they did there. No, that doesn’t work. And what about the villains? I am not sure what happened to them in the end; did Cheetara renounce her wish? Did Mando go to jail? Is his kid a boy scout and is that why he was randomly running out of the woods? Is Wonder Woman a sex offender after using a man’s body without his consent? I will admit, my biggest complaint revolves around the misuse of Pedro Pascal. I am working through a major, MAJOR crush on Pedro Pascal (hence the full name at every opportunity) and that movie almost did the trick. He is at such a good point in his career; did he really read the script and think ‘this is the way’?

Apparently it was worth spending at least some time describing what a disappointment Wonder Woman 1984 was, because I did. Who knew. This is much bigger than this movie, though. This actually made me revisit Wonder Woman (2017) and realise that that movie was not that good either. They built up this sweet coming of age story with Diana realising that War wasn’t an entity, but the worst part of human nature, and then knocked it down with bad CGI. And made Professor Lupin a fiery, villainous monster. He is and always will be a furry, loveable monster. Wonder Woman was simply better than Batman v Superman and we all got confused, it seems. That was four years ago, Justice League happened in the meantime. We are currently all wondering; what is happening with DC? I must confess, after my essay on why I hate Snyder and how I am sure that the Snyder cut will be a self-righteous joke, I got a bit worried. Snyder is doing more reshoots after all, with the benefit of multiple feedback sessions that other people simply do not get on multimillion projects. Let me remind you that the Snyder cut will be the third draft of the Justice Leauge movie; two drafts more than I got for my Master’s dissertation. But I am once again assured that the DCEU has no idea what they are doing. Please, for your own sake, can you just badly imitate Marvel? That will produce much more satisfying movies. You have tried it your way, kudos for that, and it simply doesn’t work. Shazam worked; bring in whoever made that! Make Zachary Levi play Superman now that Henry Cavill is out, give the producers a small budget, drop the gritty life lessons and you’ve got yourself a movie!

I have not tried to hide my love for the MCU. It would be useless if I did. Even their worst of films are adequate. If not adequate, ahem Thor: The Dark World, ahem, they bring in awesome New Zealanders to fix them. But, I swear I am still rooting for DC to catch up. My favourite superhero of all time is Batman after all (yes, I am that basic), and we have new one coming up and I would love it if it were decent. Please keep Snyder away from him. Pretty please.