‘Wonder Woman 1984’ Receives Polarizing Reviews

On December 25, the highly anticipated DC superhero film Wonder Woman 1984 was simultaneously released on HBO Max and in movie theaters. After experiencing months of delays due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the film was finally able to be seen by audiences and critics. A week before the movie was officially released, many critics praised Wonder Woman 1984 as a worthy successor to the original Wonder Woman movie from 2017. Several people complimented the direction by Patty Jenkins, lighter tone and performances of Gal Gadot as Diana Prince/Wonder Woman and Pedro Pascal as the villain Maxwell Lord. However, the film received a massive amount of backlash after it was officially released.

Many fans criticized the film for its long runtime at two and a half hours. The slow pacing was heavily panned for being too boring. In addition to this, many complained about the story for it being too confusing and the inclusion of Cheetah (Kristen Wiig) being pointless. A number of people were also not impressed by the more campy tone and believed it to be more annoying than endearing. However, one of the biggest aspects from the film that received criticism was Steve Trevor’s (Chris Pine) role in the story. Some people took offense to the plot point of the character possessing another man’s body and accused it of having an agenda, claiming that the filmmakers would not even have attempted to write this storyline if the genders were reversed. The film originally received percentage of 89 on Rotten Tomatoes, but has since dropped to a percentage of 65 at the moment. Overall, while many fans enjoyed Wonder Woman 1984, others were much more hard on the film, believing it to be a massive step down from the original Wonder Woman, with them even calling it the worst movie in the DC Extended Universe.