Five years ago, the DC Extended Universe, the comic book publisher’s first crack at a cinematic universe to rival Marvel’s, was on a streak. Not exactly a hot streak, mind you. In terms of box office, there were several underperformers like the premature team-up Justice League and the smaller-scale Harley Quinn spinoff Birds of Prey. The latter got good reviews, but plenty of bigger hits like Batman v. Superman and Suicide Squad had taken critical lumps. One thing the DCEU had not done in its seven years of existence, however, was produce a traditional sequel. When they finally did, it was a harbinger of doom.
Some reasonably interpreted the lack of sequels in the first place as evidence of DC bumbling. To some extent, it might have been. Had there been a clear popular mandate for a straightforward follow-up to Man of Steel, then someone would have made it. Instead, executives dialed up Batman in a panic to create the Frankenstein’s monster-style Batman v. Superman. That movie’s fellow 2016 smash with a terrible reputation, Suicide Squad, eventually had Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn extracted for a mostly-unrelated follow-up that owed more to Guy Ritchie crime comedies than superhero tie-in albums of the mid-2000s. These non-sequel pivots were indicative of broader problems (a lack of movies well-liked enough for sequels) while also supplying an accidental freshness. At least these non-sequels genuinely mixed and matched various characters from this vast universe. How many film series could get eight movies deep without a traditional part-two?
Still, it made sense to follow a more traditional path for the only DCEU movie to generate both huge box office and great reviews: Wonder Woman, the first unqualified DC hit of this era. Though sequels to the global blockbuster Aquaman and the well-liked Shazam! were also in the works, Wonder Woman 1984 would come first. It was an honor… until the movie came out. On Christmas Day. During a pandemic. Six months after it was scheduled. Mostly on HBO Max.
After some forgiving and carefully selected early reviews, Wonder Woman 1984 quickly gained a reputation as something of a disaster. Despite the return of stars Gal Gadot and Chris Pine and director Patty Jenkins, the movie struck many as overlong, action-light, campy, and tone-deaf in a variety of directions. In retrospect, it feels very much like the last straw for the DCEU: OK, if they can’t make a sequel to one of their biggest and best-loved hits work, can’t even get it to outgross its fellow pandemic-limited sequel The Croods: A New Age, then maybe it’s best to tear it all down.
As much as some of the bad reception might have something to do with most audiences first seeing it on their television sets as they live-tweeted their reactions from embittered pandemic isolation — this is a movie that probably would have likely made at least $250 million domestic had it come out in a normal summer — it also seems inarguable that the reception helped poison the DCEU for the post-pandemic box office, especially for direct sequels. DC’s biggest movie in its post-pandemic years was somehow Black Adam instead of an Aquaman sequel. (James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad, more indicative of their usual not-quite-sequel approach, also did poorly, though it eked out a little more than WW84’s subdued release during a time of more closed theaters.)
That’s the financial context, which is pretty cut and dry. Less so is Wonder Woman 1984 itself. It may be a traditional sequel, with several attendant pitfalls, as well as some bizarre problems of its own making. It’s also a singular entry in the DCEU that manages to stand apart from its predecessor as well as just about every other movie in this series, while still maintaining a strong lineage to its various inspirations and source materials.
Perhaps foremost in a world where desaturated superhero movies are routinely described as “colorful,” Wonder Woman 1984 is gorgeous. The colors are saturated (note that the sky in many of the outdoor scenes is actually blue, rather than overcast-looking white or gray), Diana’s costume pops with a genuine shine that was appropriately muted by the previous film’s World War I setting, the night scenes have contrast rather than murk, and at least some of the movie was shot on celluloid, adding a layer of era-appropriate grain without keeping the movie in constant self-conscious cartoon-’80s day-glo (though there are some choice fashion moments; Kristen Wiig, playing the woman who will become Cheetah, gets to preen in a bright teal workout onesie). The action sequences, while far from wall-to-wall, are crisply shot and easy to follow, with less obvious reliance on digital doubles than the (nonetheless excellent) original film.
Both aesthetically and tonally, WW84 recalls the Richard Donner/Richard Lester Superman movies; it’s closer to the silliness of Lester with some Donner-style guilenessness limiting the Lester-style goofy gags. The film’s first sequence with Gadot as Diana — the actual opening is a child-Diana flashback that would have looked great in IMAX — has her quietly performing smaller acts of heroism around Washington, DC before foiling a mall robbery. Iit’s like a more focused version of the opening to Lester’s misbegotten Superman III.
This is, admittedly, a deeply strange touchstone for a superhero movie to recall in 2020 (or any time, really, following the release of Superman III). It also, alongside nods to Superman II like Diana’s diminished powers, forms a much-needed contrast between Wonder Woman 1984 and the many, many modern-era superhero sequels that preceded it. This is an optimistic, open-hearted movie. Jenkins is also admirably unafraid to introduce ridiculous plot points — this one is premised on the existence of what is essentially a magic wishing rock — and treat them with sincerity.
The wishing rock does lead to the movie’s most convoluted and misguided idea. Steve Trevor (Pine), Diana’s love who sacrificed himself for the greater good in the first film, is wished back to life — but for him to exist in this physical world, his consciousness must inhabit someone else’s body, which he more or less uses as he pleases. Diana just sees Steve and the audience just sees Pine, so we’re discouraged from thinking further about the puppeting of a somehow-vacated body whose actual consciousness goes… where? To hell? Purgatory?
It’s important to remember that depiction of ghoulish body-snatching does not equal endorsement of ghouish body-snatching. The movie’s story does conclude that lives dominated by fantastical wishes aren’t really tenable, and Diana must give up her love again before the film’s climax. It’s a sequel-y solution to an unforced error treated too casually by the film’s characters. Yet the whole business of a wishing rock bringing a long-dead fighter pilot back from the dead in someone else’s body is, unavoidably, extremely comic-book-y. So is the swirling madness that eventually results from villain Maxwell Lord (Pedro Pascal) himself becoming the wishing rock and granting a litany of ill-advised wishes — an apocalyptic scenario that actually depends on human nature and weaknesses, rather than some kind of garbage-beam vortex. Though the The Flash is DCEU movie that shares some surprising kinship with the DC Universe reboot that would follow it (and earned some obligatory praise from the new boss on its way out the door), the wide-eyed goofiness of WW84 feels even more compatible with the new DCU, and less sweaty about it. Even as it sequelizes the best and most successful movie in the old DC series, it stands apart. Contemporary superhero movie culture has prized a certain more-more-more sense of fandom muchness, and though WW84 is undoubtedly a megaproduction attempting to give fans more, it also rebukes some of that greedy wish-fulfillment.
That doesn’t make it quite as refreshing as Gunn’s Superman, and it certainly isn’t as cheerfully funny. Still, in its own way, Wonder Woman 1984 might be weirder and bolder, with a climax where Diana extends empathy to Lord, who’s far more pathetic than he is evil. Her monologue is corny as hell, threatening to go on forever as the movie makes a mawkish attempt to assemble an international coalition of tortured pathos. But the movie does capture, however hamfistedly, some cultural attitudes of the decade where it’s set, and connect them, however indirectly, to their festering re-emergence closer to our time. Five years later, this kitschy period piece still feels more vital than plenty of Marvel’s increasingly insular offerings. It’s also an endearing tribute to the power of sequels that resist easy franchise maintenance.
