Read Ron's takedown at WWAC and Mon's review at Bam Smack Pow.
This is Part 2 of the episode transcript. Read Part 1 here.
Ron: Representation issues aside, let's talk about Barbara.
Now, we enjoyed her introduction. I honestly thought that they were going with something more with her interactions with Diana. I found it a little bit disappointing that at the end of it all, she turned out to be a straight person, I guess. It was heavily queer-coded. Also, for some random reason, Barbara asked her about whether she has been in love during the very first lunch meeting, and also mentioned that she very easily falls in love with people. That seemed to imply that that's how she felt about Diana and then later for Maxwell, but nothing happens with the either of those, so I don't know what they were doing with that.
Mon: Yeah, it's like we get this build up for something which could be a romantic liaison between Barbara and Diana, and we do know that in the comics Diana is canonically supposed to be queer. How often it’s represented is different, but DC has said that that is part of Diana's backstory. The issue is that in this movie suddenly we go into the heteronormative romances that is completely expected in comic book films. And I just don't know why they built up this chemistry between these characters beforehand then.
Ron: And not only that, then we have the sequence when Barbara is turning into dark Barbara, or rather, Cheetah, as she’s known as later. Now the whole scene, it happens when she basically meets her would-be attacker from the earlier scene. But now, because she's stronger, she can actually fight back. The thing is that fighting back against an attacker does not a villain make, but this film seems to suggest that this is the downfall of Barbara, because she is aggressively attacking this man—and she is very aggressive—that this means that she is now no longer a good person. I don't think that worked. I think simply attacking somebody as retaliation for what she's been through makes sense. The fact that she was rather excessive about it could be seen as showing that she is losing her moral center.
I think the scene at the White House was a better representation of how Barbara was really losing that goodness inside her, because she was ready to fight Diana to protect Maxwell Lord. Not because she liked Maxwell, but because she could protect her own interests by saving him.
Mon: Yeah, I agree with you on that, because with Barbara, she's basically an average person who has to put up with the daily hassles of life, including people harassing her, haranguing her or, you know, feeling a little bit unsafe in the middle of the night. Completely understandable.
The problem is that she just doesn't get enough screen time, we have to intuit everything about her. And I don't mind that. But she has to be given that screen time because there's one lot of viewers who will understand exactly where Barbara is coming from. And the other lot who, unless they’re hammered over the head with exactly why she is reacting in this fashion, will not understand why Barbara should be a sympathetic character or is a sympathetic character.
If Barbara had gone after her homeless friend, then we would have known that she's a villain, but she's not a villain. She's just lacking that restraint that comes with being a normal human being.
Ron: Barbara comes across as somebody who has suddenly come into power and is abusing it. That is pretty much what happens with Maxwell Lord as well. So, they're both very obviously doomed from the start, but their journeys are so different.
Despite having given away the stone to Maxwell, she and Diana continue to be friends. Diana turns to Barbara for help once she has a little bit more information about the stone. I liked that bit. I really really would have liked more of those interactions because it would have been a better way of showing us how the stone works on people, and what exactly it takes away.
Barbara’s very sudden shift away from being Diana’s friend, it isn't very well signaled.
Mon: Again, it comes back to the writing, because if you keep writing Barbara out then her reactions to Diana, or to her new life just don't come across as authentic enough because we just haven't seen what's going on behind the scenes.
I'm not sure why they decided that Diana could spend time with Steve but not with Barbara; she could have done both and she could have witnessed firsthand just how much this stone is affecting Barbara.
Ron: Diana's understanding of how the stone works, and the negative effects that it has comes from realizing that she herself is losing her abilities and is unable to heal.
Mon: And it comes from one expositional scene with Babajide. You don't need that if you have these two intelligent women using their smarts to understand what is going on, what this artifact is, how it affects people. And then try and make the conflict about how these two people want completely different things but they're both good people. I think that makes such a stronger story than what we got.
Ron: But it comes from the fact that the moment Steve comes back, Diana is immediately extricated from every other circumstance and everybody else that she knows and is only paired up with Steve. Now, that works in a way to show us how important Steve is to her life and how losing him again is so difficult. But at the same time, it's doubling down on the ‘Diana has to be lonely’ trope.
Mon: That's a good observation.
So, one of the things I really liked was the final scene between Diana and Steve. Honestly, as somebody who often struggles with the romantic subplots in genre films, I have to say I really like the one between Diana and Steve. As you mentioned earlier, they’re so much fun. And more than anything, they have fun together. And that comes across in every frame and it really helps the viewing experience.
So, in the end, when we see Maxwell Lord, really going to town with his powers, affecting everyone—and because the power is activated by something so simple, people say the nastiest things which are now coming true. And so, when Diana returns home, she is surrounded by this devastation, and it's a scene which is a direct throwback to the first Wonder Woman film, where Diana witnesses for the first time, the effects of war, this man-made war, and we know that she does not react well to devastation.
I thought that this was one of the scenes that really worked in this film. That's when you see the brilliance of whoever wrote and directed this scene, because you understand the character, you understand the motivations and it really begs the question, why wasn't the rest of the film just as good?
It's a very simple scene, Diana is with Steve, she's injured, and she's looking around at all these people in the city that she now calls home, and you can just see the wheels turning in her head. she's wondering to herself, ‘if I'm powerless, how am I going to help these people? They need me.’ You can just see it. There's no dialogue, and you can just tell that she's asking herself, you know, in her head, what is she gonna do?
I remember when I was watching that scene I was like, ‘oh my god what is Diana going to do now?’ And she does exactly what she needs to do, which is she renounces her wish. It's just an amazing, amazing scene—the build up of that scene is amazing, her conversation with Steve is so so emotional and fantastic.
What I love about Steve is that he knows when to take a step back, and that of course comes through the writing. You also have to have a very brave male actor who can say, ‘yes, I'm gonna take a step back and let the lady take the lead’, which Chris Pine has been fantastic at doing in these two films. I have to give it to him for that, which is a sad thing to say, but it's just the way Hollywood is.
But Steve is telling her—while she's proclaiming that Steve is the love of her life and she's never gonna love again—and he's constantly telling her that there is a world of people out there who really, really deserve to be given a shot. I just loved that about it. But it's just so raw and emotional. I just love the way they did that scene.
And when she renounces her wish, you just feel it, you feel that sadness and devastation. But now she's got her power back and she can help the world, and this is all that matters. As sacrifices go, I just think that this movie really does that right, really well.
Ron: I loved that entire sequence. That is my favorite sequence of the entire film, I think. And honestly, that level of emotional connection and the pacing, the editing, I really wish that the entire film had been like that. Because it was so good. Like even as Wonder Woman is leaving Steve, she doesn't want to see him transform back to who he actually is, you can hear his last words to her declaring that he will always love her, and she's running through all this destruction around her. It's such a fantastic scene.
It harks back to that No Man's Land scene, it's not the same, but you have a similar connection to Wonder Woman in that moment, as you did in that No Man’s Land scene.
I really wish the rest of the film had had this kind of intensity.
Mon: I just don't understand why it didn't. How can we not have a polished product, especially when they've had so much time to make this film, and worse they've had so much time to mull over releasing this. It's not that this film was affected by the pandemic. The release date was, but not the film in production. So, what happened? What is the excuse?
Ron: One of the things that I struggled with in this film was the action sequences. I thought the first film did it really well, but in Wonder Woman 1984, for some reason, the action scenes slow down. There's something wrong with the way that you see Diana in a sequence as she is maybe using the lasso of truth or she's punching somebody or she's dodging out of the way, or she jumping to rescue someone, everything seems a little bit too long. And I particularly did not like the jumping sequences, at all.
And this is something that I've had a problem with superhero films for a while now. The superpowered jumps never look right to me. You can almost always tell when there's a string attached. And while watching this film, I realized what the problem was, it's the trajectory.
When you’re jumping, you're not going to be sailing through the air in one position. You need that momentum to build up, but that doesn't look like it's happening here. I was wondering whether that was a way for the creators of this film to show us that Diana can actually eventually fly, but that doesn't come across. It just looks like somebody jumping with strings attached.
Mon: Yeah. The over reliance on CGI, on strings, was the biggest problem with the action scenes here, because what happens is that nothing comes across as practical. The lack of hand-to-hand combat really took me out of these action scenes, they just don't look natural. They don't look normal.
Now, look, we are talking about superpowered people, obviously none of this that they're doing is natural, but you have to feel that visceral action, you know. There was a slickness to the way Patty Jenkins did the action scenes in the first Wonder Woman, that really had your heart pumping. You were pumping the air because you knew that, yes, Diana can do this. She's so cool. She's so powerful, you don't get that power in this movie.
Ron: I think the only time the action scenes felt like they did in the first one was right at the end, between Wonder Woman and Cheetah. I think that really worked well because they lent into Cheetah’s new abilities of being predator. The way she's moving, the way she's dodging Diana, the way she's attacking her; those bits came across as very realistic, which is crazy to say because there's a human-size Cheetah over there. That was the only time that it felt like this was a well-edited and well-thought-out action scene.
Mon: Yeah, I don't understand why they decided that the Lasso of Truth has to be used at every instance.
Ron: Where is Wonder Woman’s shield?
Mon: Yeah, I don't know…
Ron: Her sword is gone; her shield is gone. It's just the Lasso of Truth. Now the thing is, I understand what they were doing with that. This film is trying to show us how much of a pacifist Wonder Woman has become. She's very clear that she does not want to hurt anybody—good guys, bad guys, whoever it is—she does not want anybody injured. Which is why she gets so distressed when Barbara arrives in the White House because she's actively harming these people, and they're just security guards. They're not doing anything.
I understand that, and the Lasso of Truth, that makes sense, but why not the shield? She needed something else.
But also, as you said, the hand-to-hand combat, they should have had more. We do get to see a bit of that when she's fighting Barbara in the White House, and later on, Cheetah. Those are the only times when I felt like yeah, this is action.
Mon: And you're talking about an actor who has shown that ability with her action scenes, with her stunt sequences. Here if you're just going to have her flying in the air and whipping the Lasso around, you can do that with anyone. That's not why you hired her in the beginning, and that's not why you should keep giving her this role. You're undermining her abilities.
Now, I don't know if there was a reason why they did this, but it just doesn't work. And it slowed down the pace of all the action sequences.
What's worse is, they edited it so badly. From time to time, Diana is doing something, but she's hidden behind a car. What is she doing? We cannot see it. It was so frustrating, because the whole package felt so unpolished that you really have to ask the question, what happened here?
And as I said, one of the reasons why this film just doesn't work is because it feels like a DCEU movie, and that is precisely why we all loved the first Wonder Woman, and the Birds of Prey film. It's because they took a stand to be different, they took a stand to be refreshing and be as polished and accomplished as possible. This one just isn’t.
Ron: So, I guess we’ve got to talk about that third act now. I like the middle of the movie. That's usually when you lose interest but in Wonder Woman 1984, that's actually the strongest section for me. The whole mystery, the suspense, you don't know what's going to happen and how Wonder Woman is actually going to win the day. But then the third act happens and as payoffs go, this one just didn't work for me.
Mon: I feel like what you said earlier about this film being a better viewing experience on the second watch might help the third act a little bit, because you'll be concentrating on what's being said. Because in the third act, Barbara turns into cheetah. So, we have a full-on boss fight between Diana and Barbara, which is good.
We also see that Barbara is completely passed saving, so Diana washes her hands off her, quite literally. And she goes on to fight the other battle, which is with Maxwell Lord.
Now Maxwell Lord, he's got his hands on new tech which allows him to touch a lot of people at the same time. Honestly, I'm not sure why, but this film has so many Batman Forever and Batman & Robin throwbacks, I guess that sort of explains why some of it feels the way it does. It's tacky, and you know what, tacky can be fine, but not when it's got so many other problems.
So, Maxwell is hooked up to this giant machine, and he's basically turning the whole world upside down. Everyone's fighting, there's destruction, war, everything breaking out all over the world. Diana knows that her fists cannot win this fight. It has to be her compassion.
Ron: Yes, especially because Maxwell is surrounded by a force field which Diana literally can't get through. She does what Wonder Woman does best, she appeals to the best in humanity.
I quite like that, it gave me Supergirl vibes from Season 1. I think that's a great way of progressing this character’s journey. Wonder Woman has, from the very first film, believed that humanity can save itself. She has always thought of human beings as being better than they even think of themselves. That's why she left Themyscira, because the Amazons thought human beings were the worst. But that's not what she thought.
That worked to her advantage in the first film. Here again, she manages to save the day by telling people this. But the way the scene was executed…
Mon: Again, this is the problem with the entire film, and it culminates in this really poorly sequenced third boss fight.
Ron: I don't mind the fact that we don't have Maxwell and Diana duking it out.
Mon: Maxwell would so lose.
Ron: Maxwell wouldn’t stand a chance. He's just an average man.
Diana speaking to the people through the Lasso of Truth, and to Maxwell in a sense, that was fine, but the cadence, and the loudness didn't match Maxwell. He's standing in this beam that is transmitting everything that he's saying to people, but he is so loud, so intense and Diana is so quiet, that I honestly thought that they'd shot it on two different sound stages or something.
Turns out they apparently didn’t. Pedro Pascal and Gal Gadot were actually together in the same room. I just don't know how they managed to make it sound like that, because there was no synchronicity between the two of them.
Mon: As much as I love how they're reiterating the fact that Diana is a non-violent person, and she's using her compassion to win the day, especially since, as we discussed in our very first Stereo Geeks episode, violence beget violence, which is why we don't think that Batman is as effective as he could be.
My problem with this scene was that it was again making up the rules as it was going along. How does this beam of light help Maxwell touch more people? Up until that point, he was physically touching people to get the wishes to work. Now it's through satellite? That doesn't make sense.
The powers of the Lasso of Truth keep changing. Yes, it can be used as a weapon, that's fine, but it's supposed to compel people to speak the truth. Maxwell is not speaking the truth. He's got the Lasso of Truth around his ankle and he's still going on telling people do this, do that do the other. Why doesn't it eke that hatred and greed out of him? And how does it compel other people to do that? We don't see him say ‘renounce, renounce, renounce’. It’s her saying it. How’s her voice getting through to them? This just doesn't make sense.
Ron: And the bit where Maxwell’s son, Alistair, runs out of the Black Gold Cooperation [sic] offices looking for his father whose voice he can hear, and he can just see that everybody's going crazy around him. How does Maxwell see his son through the beam of light? There is no connection there because Alistair is in the middle of nowhere. There doesn't seem to be any screen around him, but for some reason we're supposed to believe the Maxwell can somehow see him.
And apparently the Black Gold offices are close enough to the facility where Maxwell is making these transmissions that Alistair can run out into the middle of the road, find his way there and Maxwell can run and find him as well. It just didn't make sense.
And I think that this would have been something that we would have glossed over, had we not already had issues with the rest of the film and especially this third act.
Mon: And also, let's not forget the backstory of Maxwell, which is suddenly shoehorned in in the last scene.
Ron: I really wish they'd left it out. I just… [exasperated sigh]
Mon: I have no idea. It's just really distressing to watch. I don't know why they included it. And also that's yet another stereotype—the Latino man has a really bad Latino father. Again, representation done wrong in a film where there have been so many moments of terrible representation.
You know what would have been stronger? If he'd been a Latino man who had been overlooked at every juncture, and now this is his only recourse.
Ron: I would have preferred to see a very happy young Maxwell getting love and affection from his family, being told that he could do whatever he wanted because he had the ability, he had the skill, he had the brains to do it. And then coming to a place like America, which is supposed to be the land of dreams, especially in the 1980s, and finding out that because of his race, everybody was standing in his way.
Mon: You know, an hour after watching this film, I was super excited to go and watch it again. I was thinking of all these wonderful scenes and all the action and all the color and I was like, ‘you know what, I really want to watch it again’. And then I stewed in it a little bit longer, and all these other things started coming back to me, and it just irritated me. Because, you know what, we have put a lot of faith into the creators of this franchise, and they should do better by us. Wonder Woman, especially, has fans from around the world, across cultures, and for the creators to be so blinkered in what they executed is not only disappointing, but it just shows us that we need to be careful about who we call our heroes.
Ron: At the same time, let's be cognizant of one thing. Had this movie been made, written and produced by men, nobody would be complaining.
Mon: Oh, I absolutely agree with you. There is no doubt that there’s some kind of perverse pleasure being taken by swathes of fans, critics and casual viewers in denigrating this film in every aspect.
There are so many hot takes; so many hot steaks. I'm just shocked. Have you read this one, which is my complete favorite—Diana is mean to people who are trying to help her. I'm not joking. I have seen this on several tweets. I'm still trying to figure it out. Did you see that? Did you see Diana be mean to people who are trying to help her? Did you see Diana being mean to people, period?
Ron: No, not at all. Where are people coming from with this angle?
Mon: I actually don't know. Is it that, you know, all these people who are trying to be “friendly” at the parties and events that she's going to? They're not being friendly, they're being creepy.
Ron: Oh my God, please don't tell me people think those people are friendly.
Mon: I don't know, I can’t think of anything else.
Ron: And that White House intern guy, please don't tell me people think that he was being friendly.
Mon: Well, I think that explains the world to you now.
Ron: Oh my gosh. Because of these hot takes, I actually feel like defending the movie because we are living in a world of Zack Snyder is getting to make his own version of Justice League by putting in more money, even though the film has already been made, and nobody likes it. Why are we getting after this film which stars a female character and is being written and directed by a woman?
But we can't ignore the issues that this film has, and the representation issues are really dire.
Mon: Let's just compare some of the issues that we've seen in this film with some of the films that people hold in high regard. In Captain America: The Winter Soldier, we have an actor of Hispanic origin playing an Indian government agent. Nobody said anything about that.
In the first Iron Man film, the reason why we have so many superhero films, he’s kidnapped by a Pakistani terrorist…
Ron: …because superhero films.
Mon: No one said anything about that. Iron Man is everybody's favorite. So, if you're going to ignore all those issues, then ignore them here as well. Though we don't recommend that because, as you said, pop culture does not exist in a vacuum.
Ron: Also, if we're calling out the problems in Wonder Woman 1984, you got to call out the problems in all the other films as well.
Mon: Exactly. You want to say that a film is entertaining, despite not being well executed, then support this film. If you're going to support stuff like Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2 then, why doesn't this film have your support? This is the problem.
When people whose voices have not been heard for a really long time get the opportunity to make something which is so beloved, and then they do it wrong, there are so many levels of disappointment. And it's not fair, because you can't expect perfection every single time. We can expect them to learn, we can expect them to address these issues—they're not going to do those, we can just hope that Wonder Woman 3 does not have these issues. But the problem is that it's just always going to be held at a higher standard.
And not all critics are going to critique and analyze every property at the same level because unconscious bias is always going to be there. You can love something dearly, but you have to accept that it is not perfect. And you also have to look at it from the point of view of how other people from different cultures and communities are going to feel about it when they watch it.
Ron: Now, these are things that have been around with the DCEU as a whole, and the superhero genre, even more. Wonder Woman was the first DCEU film to star a female character; the Marvel Cinematic Universe took 20 films to have a female character in the lead. These are issues within themselves. And as much as you want them to be perfect and representational in an intersectional way, you need to have people behind the scenes, representing those communities so that you can have that kind of diversity and inclusion on screen.
At the end of the day, you and I didn't enjoy this film. I think we will enjoy it a lot more second time around. Having said that, we both know that had this film been made by men, it would not be as heavily criticized as it is now.
Mon: And as intensely. The moment we unmuted the Wonder Woman 1984 words from Twitter, it was everywhere. I have never seen such a drove of takes and critiques by everyone about a film that fast. And I understand that it was during the holiday season-
Ron: It was literally on Christmas Day.
Mon: Yeah, and it was accessible to certain amounts of people. But my goodness, I'm shocked. I am surprised at how much people felt the need to get on Twitter, and immediately lambast this film.
And it's so funny that this same courtesy is not extended to quite badly made films like Suicide Squad, BvS, Justice League, just to name a few. We're not even going into Marvel Cinematic Universe, which also has its issues and some poorer films.
Ron: On the flip side, there are a lot of people who are saying that they loved the film, and yes you can love the film, but also please listen to the people who are criticizing it from a representational standpoint.
Mon: There are valid criticisms to every property, listen to those people and don't just go diving into the hot takes.
Ron: Yeah.
Mon: I really wanted to love this. And you know what, I still think that there is a lot to love, maybe in small doses.
Ron: I mean, Pedro Pascal was amazing in this film. He has the scenery-chewing performance in there, but he does a great job. And I really liked the bond between Maxwell and his son Alistair. Pedro is definitely becoming the go-to guy for superheroes with children. But yeah, I think he did a great job.
You could really understand his motivations without being told. And he really brought his A-game here. He looked like he was enjoying himself, and it made for a very compelling performance.
Mon: Yeah, there is this sense of urgency that comes from everything that Maxwell Lord does because he's so desperate, you know. We can see that he’s behind on his payments, and he's so desperate to be the successful father that he imagines his son wants him to be. I feel like those layers, irrespective of what the script had in it, he really brought it. And so even if there are these moments which are not really quite believable or just seems silly, you get it, you get this character. And I really wish the rest the cast had been given that much depth with the characters.
Ron: I think we’ve already mentioned how much we enjoyed WonderTrev.
Mon: Oh, are they called that?
Ron: Yes.
Mon [laughs]: I love it.
Ron: WonderTrev, once again, was an absolute joy to watch.
I quite liked Barbara's initial characterization. I assume that since the film doesn't end with Barbara and Maxwell immediately being sent off to jail, that we might see them again. I hope so. These two are both compelling characters in their own way, and we deserve to see more of them.
Mon: Yeah, I wonder if there's like some residue of the wishing stone which makes them immortal or at least gives him a few more years so that they turn up in Wonder Woman 3 [both laugh] as Pedro and Kristen Wiig, because I really love these characters. The way they came across, the actors really seemed to be enjoying themselves and, yeah, I would love to see them again.
Ron: We also had a lovely little cameo.
Mon: I loved it!
Ron: Which was just amazing.
We all knew that Wonder Woman was going to get a new suit in this movie. And we see where the suit comes from. The golden suit with the wings actually belongs to Asteria, a great Amazonian warrior who actually had to stay behind on Earth to protect the Amazons.
After much searching, Wonder Woman finally finds the suit, but she does not find out what happened to Asteria. We got a glimpse of that story, but we only see Asteria’s very green eyes. And in a mid credit scene, we see a woman, who, from the back looks like Wonder Woman, but turns out not to be her. It is in fact, Asteria, and she's played by Lynda Carter, the original Wonder Woman!
Mon: And she's wearing her famous blue dress, which was homaged in the first Wonder Woman film. I just love that! It was so sweet.
Ron: I love that these childhood heroes for so many people, who only got a shot at, you know, a couple of seasons, one film, they're getting a resurgence. We've seen Lynda Carter on Supergirl as well—she was playing the president, and it was lovely to see her there.
And we’ve seen other women actors from the superhero franchises from before turn up on Supergirl, so it's great. And I hope Wonder Woman continues the trend.
Mon: Let’s briefly talk about the last scene of the film. Not much happens in it, but again it's a throwback to the first Wonder Woman film where Wonder Woman is basically enjoying the triumph of her work. In the first film, it was the sacrifice of Steve, so it was a bit mellow. In this film, yes, she's also sacrificed Steve again, but it's far more hopeful.
Ron: Yes.
Mon: So, a lot of people are comparing how Diana was very excited when she saw her first snow in the first film, and how mellow her reaction was after the end of the war, and in this film and she's enjoying the snow. She's much happier, she's much lighter. And I feel like this could be the start of a trajectory where, at least for a short period of time, we might see Diana actually imagine herself living in society, instead of being in the shadows.
Ron: I hope so too.
Mon: She does meet the handsome man who was taken over by Steve briefly. I really hope they don't go anywhere with that, because, no thank you.
Ron: I think it'll just be yug!
Mon: I agree with you, like, why was he even there? Why even remind us that he was non-consensually in this relationship? But he is wearing the outfit that Diana likes, which was very funny.
Ron: Yes.
And there you have it that. That’s our review of Wonder Woman 1984. What did you think of the film? We would love to hear from you.
Ron: You can find us on Twitter @Stereo_Geeks. Or send us an email [email protected]. We hope you enjoyed this episode. And see you next week!
Mon: The Stereo Geeks logo was created using Canva. The music for our podcast comes courtesy Audionautix.
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Transcription by Otter.ai, Ron and Mon.