We finally get a look at “Wonder Woman 1984” in motion. I’m a fan of the package director Patty Jenkins and actress Gal Gadot have put together.

So what’d I think?

“Wonder Woman” – illusory roadblocks

Back when Jenkins and Gadot made the first “Wonder Woman,” there existed a great deal of undue pressure.

“WW” was the first big female-led superhero movie in forever. There was stuff like “Catwoman” and “Elektra,” but they’re better left forgotten.

Comparing those two box office, fan-hated, and critical duds to what could be “Wonder Woman” was highly unfair.

No one ever looked at the failure that was “Green Lantern” and said, “Gosh darn it, male-led superhero movies don’t work.”

Hell. “Green Lantern” was so bad its star Ryan Reynolds had to save himself from doing it in “Deadpool 2.”

This was the hellscape Jenkins and Gadot marched into.

Add to that the lackluster grim-dark sludge that was the two previous DCEU entries under Zack Snyder and whatever the hell “Suicide Squad” was. “WW” was the last gasp that could make or break the DCEU.

At least Gadot had one thing going for her: in a movie called “Batman v Superman,” Wonder Woman was the best thing in it.

“Wonder Woman” reaction

When “Wonder Woman” finally dropped, people were not only pleasantly surprised; they were outright ecstatic.

Jenkins and Gadot, aided by a great script from Allan Heinberg (and cinematography from Matthew Jensen to die for), brought us a kind, caring, strong hero who used her feminity not to stand and look pretty but to inform how she interacted with the world.

This was a hero born of love. She strove to find the best in all but was willing and able to throw down with the violence as a last resort should that become necessary.

(Keep that one in mind if the villain is indeed Maxwell Lord.)

“Wonder Woman” also gave us the hands-down best superhero reveal we’ve seen since the opening of “Blade” with No Man’s Land.

The studio wanted to delete the scene; Jenkins wisely kept what embodied all that Wonder Woman is.

Watch it again. I’ll wait.

(BTW – that score by Rupert Gregson-Williams!)

The reveal of Steve Trevor’s sacrifice (played by Chris Pine, whom I’d written off as a pretty face, but damn he nailed this part!) was right at the edge of what Martin Scorsese would call cinema.

Unfortunately, as fantastic as “WW” began, it had trouble sticking the landing. The CGI villain turned a film with real emotions into a cartoon. And the reveal was a bit predictable and disappointing.

Nevertheless, the film garnered well-deserved accolades from critics (RT score of 93%) and fans. As of December 2019, Box Office Mojo lists it as the DCEU’s third highest-grossing release.

“Wonder Woman” is also the DCEU’s highest domestic box office earner. It even beats “Joker” domestically, but that’s not part of the DCEU anyway.

Looking ahead to “Wonder Woman 1984”

Jenkins and Gadot have a tall order ahead of them: how do you capture the magic of the first film but give us something new?

Sequels have a leg up on their predecessors. The first film has the weight of delivering a reason for the hero’s existence and establishing their world.

This usually results in the hero being the “lesser identity” until they find themselves in the last half of the movie.

The movie ends with the hero we all came to see.

The second movie dispenses with the origin crap. The hero starts as the badass we came to see. “WW84” has that going for it.

The thing that bothers me is that damned title.

This eighties nostalgia craze is getting a bit much with stuff like “Stranger Things,” which kinda beget “It,” which now extends to “Ghostbusters: Afterlife,” the thirty “Star Wars” and comic book projects coming…

Whew. Exhausting.

(Hell, the whole nostalgia craze itself is a mess. I blame Disney for buying our childhoods and selling it back to us. But I digress.)

Sure, it makes sense for a 1984-set Wonder Woman movie considering the character’s story within the DCEU. But the push to go all-in complete with the “Blue Monday” song and the graphics are so… “Thor: Ragnarok.”

At least “WW84” is actually set in that time. “Ragnarok” was posing.

So Mark… about that trailer…

Anywho, it’s a trailer: a bunch of disjointed images assembled in a fashion to make you think you see something when you really have no idea what you just saw.

It looks pretty; Gadot is beautiful, powerful, and deadly. Whoever the guru guy is (Max Lord? destined for a bad neck injury?) is… creepy.

How the hell is Trevor back? We could speculate, but why bother? Let’s wait so we don’t get disappointed.

We do get to see Kristen Wiig as the human side of Cheetah. I’m sure they’re holding back on her animal side until the next trailer.

For once, the trailer doesn’t tell you everything. Hell, the trailer uses parts of the same hallway fight, like, two or three times!

In case you missed it, I’ve got the trailer for “Wonder Woman 1984” below.

What’d you think? This enough to get your butt in the theater? Burnt out on superhero movies yet? Cinema snob who won’t see them?

Leave a comment below and discuss!

Shameless self-promotion

Wanna see another trailer? Come back this Friday after 3 pm EST for a link to the trailer for my short horror film, “Where the Heart Bleeds!”