As I write this I realise that many Wonder Woman fans across the UK, and the world, will not yet have been able to see Wonder Woman 1984, and so I will try to avoid too many spoilers. After a long period of anticipation – the film had been scheduled for release in cinemas in December 2019, but was delayed until summer, then winter 2020 – the release date was finally confirmed for 16 December 2020 in UK cinemas, and 25 December in US cinemas and via HBO Max, the US subscriber streaming service. But with many cinemas closed due to COVID-19 restrictions the UK window to see the film in December 2020 was tantalisingly short – my own local cinema in Sussex was open to screen the film on its release but then closed again on 26 December when the region moved to Tier 4, prior to full lockdown. This is a shame, as Mark Kermode tells us Wonder Woman is ‘the superheroine 2020 needs’.
Who doesn’t need a bit of love, truth and saving of the world right now?
A modern lens on the ancient world
Wonder Woman (2017) left out the Amazon games from the comics and the pilot episode of the 1970s Wonder Woman television series, in favour of a battle on the beaches. These games form the spectacular opening of Wonder Woman 1984, in a flashback to Diana’s childhood as an Amazon girl on Themyscira. The young Diana competes with adult Amazons twice her size in a spectacular athletics sequence involving an aerial obstacle course, swimming, and archery on horseback, taking the participants through the lush vegetation of the island of Themyscira. Diana takes the lead, but looks back and hits her head on the branches of a tree and is thrown from her horse. As the other riders overtake her she sees a shortcut, and slides through a tunnel in the hill to be met by her bolted horse, to come out in the lead, although having missed one of the archery targets. She returns to the arena and is about to throw her javelin through the target as the winner when her aunt Antiope catches hold of her and stops her. Antiope tells her that she ‘cheated’ and that she needs to accept the truth – ‘no true hero is born from lies’. Hippolyta comforts her weeping daughter, whose time to win will come. She points towards the golden statue of Asteria as a role model, an Amazon who became a hero through ‘true acts of bravery, like patience, diligence and the courage to face the truth’.
In the 1980s, alongside catching criminals as a mystery superheroine, Diana Prince (Gal Gadot) works at the Smithsonian museum in cultural anthropology and archaeology. She befriends new colleague Barbara Minerva (Kirsten Wiig), expert in ‘geology, gemology, lithology and part time cryptozoologist.’ Despite her impressive credentials, unlike the beautiful, graceful Diana, Barbara is clumsy, frumpily dressed and goes about her life invisible to those around her. She admires Diana’s animal print high heels, and Diana’s ability to walk in them. In an aspect of the film that might be uncomfortable for feminist viewers, high heels become an emblem for female success, as Diana assures her fellow academic that scientists sometimes do wear heels.
Diana helps Barbara to read the latin inscription on a crystalline object that was retrieved from the thieves Diana apprehended in Wonder Woman mode earlier in the film, after they took this from a room at the back of a jewellery store containing black market antiquities; ‘Place upon the object held but one great wish.’ This signposts viewers to Diana’s classical background, which is less central to Wonder Woman 1984 compared with the first Wonder Woman film.
Diana immediately knows what she would wish for, although she does not express this to Barbara, who makes her own wish later that night. Barbara wants to ‘be like Diana; strong, sexy, cool, special’. Barbara’s transformation begins, with a sexy new look, while Diana’s wish also gets fulfilled with the return of her old love Steve Trevor. And someone else also is interested in the powers of the crystal; the film’s male villain, entrepreneur Max Lord.
A film set in the 1980s to speak to us in 2021
The title of Gloria Steinem’s latest book, published in 2019, is The Truth Will Set You Free But It Will Piss You Off First. I return to Steinem as she was instrumental in the rehabilitation of Wonder Woman as superheroine and feminist icon by lobbying DC comics to return her superpowers, and putting her on the cover of the first issue of Ms magazine.
Steinem’s ‘hybrid title … inspired by Vietnam protest signs’, just as relevant in the current time of ‘crisis and dissent’, could be a fitting subtitle for Wonder Woman 1984, where all the main characters must face the truth underlying the things that they wish for (Steinem 2019, ‘Introduction’). Since Steinem’s latest book was published, and since Wonder Woman 1984 was made and its release delayed, we have found ourselves in an even greater global crisis. In the UK we are in a stringent national lockdown with soaring deaths from Coronavirus, and the in the US pro-Trump protestors have stormed the Capitol in Washington DC. Right now Wonder Woman as president sounds like a good idea.
Wonder Woman 1984 is set in the 1980s world of consumerist illusion, fast cars, fast food and throw away fashion, where Max Lord is seen on television screens offering people ‘everything you’ve always wished for’ without the ‘need to work hard for it’ through investing in his company, Black Gold. Lord and his world are set up as the antithesis of the Amazons, and the empty promise of Black Gold is set up against the true gold of Asteria, the Amazon champion. This consumerist dream is amplified when Lord harnesses the power of the crystal. As Barbara allies herself with Lord and takes on more of Diana’s attributes than she expected, Diana has already found out the truth about wishes. They come at a cost. She warns Barbara that for whatever Barbara has gained she must also lose something. ‘Where’s your warmth, your joy, your humanity?’
Diana must lose the thing she most wishes for in order to reach her full potential, while Barbara has a new wish ‘I don’t want to be like anyone anymore. I want to be number one. An apex predator.’ The result leads to one of my favourite lines in the film, from Diana, as Barbara first appears as Cheetah; ‘Barbra what did you do?’
So What’s the Verdict?
Wonder Woman 1984 is no Wonder Woman (2017). It was never going to break overall box office records with much of its potential cinema-going audience in lockdown, but it did garner the biggest box office sales for the opening weekend of a film released during the pandemic. And the model of simultaneous theatre and streaming service releases is one we can expect to see more of in the future.
There is much in the film to enjoy. Themyscira is stunningly imagined in the opening sequence, and the 1980s are successfully evoked through costume, from Lord’s power suits to Barbara’s gym wear. But as a child of the 1980s I was hoping for a strong eighties soundtrack. The only contemporary song we hear is Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s ‘Welcome to the Pleasure Dome’ playing in the background at a party. New Order’s ‘Blue Monday’, which is used so well in the trailer, is nowhere to be heard. This feels like a missed opportunity. Gadot shines as Diana, literally when she dons the gold armour of the Amazon Asteria at the end of the film. And Barbara and Lord are believable villains with sympathetic back stories. But in Wonder Woman (2017) Diana was a leader of men. In Wonder Woman 1984 she is constrained by her love for a man. And Barbara’s gradual transformation into Cheetah works well, but I was hoping to see the two female characters, Diana and Barbara, team up, as they do in the recent comic series Wonder Woman: Dead Earth.
So as a classicist, a feminist, and a Wonder Woman fan, do I recommend that you should see the film? Yes, see it when it is safe for you to go back to the cinema, or the film is available to you at home. We all need a bit more Wonder Woman in our lives, and it is worth seeing for the opening scene on Themyscira alone. But maybe we need to wait for Wonder Woman 3 to bring Diana the storyline she and her fans deserve. Meanwhile we also potentially have the Gadot/Jenkins Cleopatra to look forward to.
Check out Amanda’s earlier blog post on classical reception in Wonder Woman (2017) – An “Awesome” Ancient Hero for the Modern World