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Acceptably Cinematic: WW84

 Well. That was a thing. 

First, let me say, I'm not here to yuck your yum. If you like this, fantastic. I loved the first Wonder Woman. It was a solid movie that I think was the first of the new DC movies that really, completely, understood the character that was in the movie. And the first scenes of Wonder Woman in the 80's where she's in the mall are fantastic. And having a big, dumb, fun, colorful movie after 9+ months of death, doom, gloom, quarantine and pandemic might just be what you needed. Fair play to you. I hope you loved it.

That said... What the hell was that? What do I mean by that? Well, let me ask you a question: why is it OK that Steve's ghost possessed some innocent dude and then he and Diana drag that guy's body around the world into dangerous situations, risk that life, have sex with, and generally rewrite this guy's life into their personal couple vacation? Not to engage in whataboutism, would you have been ok-ish if that had been a woman? Why was that a plot point at all, if they weren't going to address it? It's a moral choice that someone wrote up, and then they decided to ignore it. That's not good movie making. That's lazy and evidence of a chopped up mess of a film that died in editing.

Also, I understand that asking for realism in a superhero movie is dumb and arguing the rules of how powers work is just stupid. That said, there is still a quality of verisimilitude - seeming true to itself and its own internal logic. And then there's the question of "how does this wishing stone thing actually work?" Is it always a monkey's paw where it just twists your wish against you? Is it a devil's bargain where you get what you ask for, but lose what you most care about? Is the weight of the cost balanced by the value of what you asked for? Did "I want a coffee" guy end up losing his sense of taste and smell? Something worse? Sure, the limits are what the plot requires, but when you don't define any rules at all, that ends up being lazy and just stupid.

The worst thing of all about this film was that it was so boring that I just stopped watching it and came back the next day. It just was too boring to keep going. An hour and change into the movie, and nothing really happened that was any real conflict of any interest or that was any real obstacle to Diana. The entire opening set piece in Themyscira was pointless and far, far too drawn out. Diana as a child was better than all the other Amazons. OK, fine. She has a moment of arrogance and it leads to her cheating to win. Well... Make it more interesting. Let he be second or third on her own and choose to cheat rather than being better than everyone as a child. Make it be a less defensible choice so that when she makes that choice again later, it carries more weight.

So, was this movie terrible? There were moments that were really nice. But if you were thinking about getting HBO Max just for this, maybe reconsider.

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