Gods on the Screen

Superhero movies have gone meta. "Bloodshot" (2020) with its control-room of computer programming in the vein of "Déjà Vu" (2006) for its comic-book fare, "Glass" (2019) with the orchestration of superheroic action for the cameras, and Marvel's "Spider-Man: Far From Home" (2019) with visual-effects projection. Now, DC has done it with "Wonder Woman 1984," a blockbuster picture that seemed destined to be streamed into the personal screens of audiences at home, or perhaps that's only what one wished for in these troubling times, as the movie is about just that, of wish fulfillment transmitted to televisions around the world. ("Joker" (2019) also prominently featured TV to similar and different effect.) This might be another contrarian opinion, as this sequel is already receiving poorer reviews than the first "Wonder Woman" (2017), and given that the other aforementioned superhero flicks weren't critical darlings either--even the performance of "Far From Home" was comparable to what I consider its inferior predecessor, "Homecoming" (2017), and "Joker" received considerable rebuke for a Best Picture nominee--but "Wonder Woman 1984" is an improvement upon the prior entry.

Granted, there's nothing in "Wonder Woman 1984" quite like the first movie's No Man's Land scene; although the flying scenes in this one are good, they're not so awe-inspiring. But, then, the sequel doesn't entirely devolve into a bloated boss fight in the third act, either, whereas did "Wonder Woman." I like smart pictures, as I'm sure many others do, too, but it's clear such doesn't mean the same to everyone. The first movie was mostly a war genre piece with a superhero origin story grafted on--"Captain America: The First Avenger," but with magical Amazons and fish-out-of-water humor as Diana Prince learned about the world of man. Entertaining but not especially clever, except for perhaps that it was framed within a photograph as a nested story. The brilliance of an ever more reflexive work such as its sequel is basically in the tradition of the Greek gods that the DC comics are rooted in, that aphorism--or general truth--from the Delphi Oracle: know thyself. That's the ken of a movie that alludes to its own deconstruction; it's known to be exactly what it is.

That there's the usual CGI, action-packed spectacle on top of this self-awareness, all the better. It's their raison d'être, after all. Sure, it's nothing new in this regard--at least as far as I can tell, and, indeed, the figures are considerably weightless in their movements, as some have criticized, but there's fun to be had here. I like the silly lightness of the opening heist in a mall--a very 1980s setting and the first of many retro gags for the decade in the same vein as another female superhero flick, "Captain Marvel" (2019), with its placement in the 1990s (and the nostalgia of "The Guardians of the Galaxy" (2014) before that). This is added to a gender and character reversal of the babe-in-the-woods act from the first movie onto Steve Trevor this time. Plus, the climactic fighting isn't as exhausting here. I find it funny, too, that Diana dresses in the armor of a bird to fight a cat (or "Cheetah"). Best of all, though, there is no question or red herring now to the existence of the gods. They're real, and they're fully integrated in the narrative, from Themyscira and the ancient or classical world to Washington D.C. and the 1980s. Even the end-credits scene fits and isn't merely a stupid joke or sequel teaser. It recalls TV, too.

The dream stone is remarkably congruent with the prominent placement of TV in the narrative and reflective of the making of these superhero movies, which are all about people doing the physically impossible--the godly--and via CGI and digital film, the photographically impossible. And, then, we have the magic of personal screens, which now include computers of phones in our pockets, but began with the boob tube, a life-altering magic box for good and bad that regardless changed the world. I can see how some might consider the picture as messy as its delayed release schedule: part 4th-of-July fireworks display and part winter-solstice celebration, part theatrical blockbuster and part enticement for streaming subscriptions. Nothing is really made, probably fortunately, of a character portrayed by an Israeli actress (the wonderful Gal Gadot) getting involved in a land and oil conflict in Egypt (not that it'd matter for those who hate the series on the basis of sex or ethnicity anyways), and, more disappointingly, nothing comes of the sapphic tension between Gadot's Diana and Kristen Wiig's Barbara, which is all-too-quickly undermined by their fondling the phallic dream stone and their turning to talk of boys (in front of the Washington Monument no less). Despite the TVs and 1984 setting, not much is done with the Orwellian connection, either, beyond a bit of video surveillance. And, from Egypt, the threat to civilization moves to riots in D.C. and a White House battle beside an idiotic president. Amazon Olympiad in a mall. For all the channel changing, the consistent throughline remains in a wish granted around the world, whether you renounce it or not, of gods on the screen.