Cinemavenger

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Wonder Woman 1984

Talk about shitty Xmas gifts. The Rona fucking up our plans with family and friends - not to mention cancelling the annual Cinemavenger Polymorphously Perverse Xmas Orgy. No PS5 but loads of goddam socks. And the least sugar plum-y of all, Wonder Woman 1984, a sequel so bad it retroactively Cleveland steams all over the good will toward men and women that the original so joyfully rained down upon us.

It's got the same director, Patty "Cake" Jenkins, and the same stars, Gal "Friday" Gadot and Chris "Tall" Pine, but the stable of new writers apparently has never heard of Wonder Woman, movies, or storytelling fundamentals.

That's right, Pine's WWI Steve Trevor, who died heroically - and completely unnecessarily - in the first movie, is back nearly 70 years later and not looking a day older. How? Because - SPOILER ALERT - all the action in Wonder Woman 1984 is driven by a wishing stone that grants every person who touches it one wish. Wonder Woman aka Diana Prince wishes that Steve was somehow alive and well with his head clamped vice-like between her Amazonian thighs. Mousy doormat Barbara Minerva (Kristen "Sony" Wiig) wishes she was more like the beautiful, confident Diana.

We already know that Minerva will transform into Wonder Woman's nemesis, the Cheetah, but the real big bad is meant to be Pedro "PP" Pascal's conman/businessman in Trump drag, Max Lord. Lord's wish is to become the wishing stone, which it turns out is more of a monkey's paw that grants wishes at the price of whatever the wisher holds most dear. Well, it does that to Diana so that the movie can have the tired-ass "the hero loses her powers" bit. The stone doesn't really take anything from Minerva, and once Lord "becomes" the stone, he doesn't lose anything at all and can suddenly choose what he wants to take from each subsequent wisher. Oh, and Steve Trevor comes back by possessing some random dude's body . . . and Wonder Woman is totally ok with that.

The story makes no sense, it has no internal logic, and the villains' motivations are absolute fuckery! Lord doesn't really have a plan other than to become rich and powerful so that his son, who already loves and respects him, will love and respect him. Minerva somehow gets a second wish and becomes the Cheetah . . . all so there can be one, two-minute fight scene between her and Wonder Woman that doesn't have anything to do with anything else in this shit stain of a movie.

The only wonder here is wondering how the fuck Wonder Woman has gone from first to next-to-worst in the DC Universe.

January 1, 2021