‘Wonder Woman 1984’ is Pure of Heart, Light on Depth

Three years after Wonder Woman’s 2017 premiere, the world looks quite a bit different–including the cinema world, as COVID-19 slowed the industry to a pause and major blockbusters were limited to those that were filmed in the Before Times. One of those movies that completed its production was Wonder Woman 1984, and while Warner Bros. is likely happy to have such an ace up its sleeve, the film’s rollout is, in many ways, a testing ground. Similar to other big-budget films like Mulan and Tenet, impressions of the Patty Jenkins-directed Wonder Woman 1984 come minus the typical fanfare of a theatrical release. Rather than watching on a larger-than-life-sized screen surrounded by other audience members, I watched the press screening on an approved app on my iPhone with no one but my dog. Such a context undoubtedly molds the experience of this type of movie in particular, where part of the thrill–sometimes much of it–are courtesy of bombastic action sequences and the camaraderie of fandom. Without them, Wonder Woman 1984 (and, to be fair, many films like it) are victims of circumstance. Standing on its own without the flare, it reminds me of the GLEE episode about “hairography” where the kids learned a smaller performance was covered by big, dramatic whips of hair. Details aside (we’ll get into those in a moment), the story in Wonder Woman 1984 is a pure, but bland one. Decades after Diana Prince (Gal Gadot) and Steve Trevor’s (Chris Pine) adventure in the first Wonder Woman, D…