Indeed, WW84 is so positive that even the villains are sympathetic. Barbara ends up fighting Wonder Woman, but she is more of a wounded soul than a typical mass-murdering malefactor, and Wiig’s nuanced performance emphasises her humanity, even when she mutates into a cheetah. The other villain is Maxwell Lord (Pedro Pascal), a smarmy oil baron in a double-breasted suit who nabs the wishing gem. It may have been a mistake to cast an actor with a strong Chilean accent as a tycoon inspired by the all-American “Greed is Good” anti-heroes of Wall Street and Dallas, but, again, Maxwell is more desperate than malign: there is a sweet fairy-tale aspect to a bad guy who causes chaos not by killing people but by granting their wishes.
Still, if WW84 is more optimistic than most of its 1980s equivalents, not all of the updates are so welcome. The CGI stops the action sequences being as visceral and believable as they were back in the days of practical stunts. And 1980s blockbusters usually wrapped things up in around two hours, whereas WW84 keeps going for 151 minutes – and it feels like it. The prologue shows us Diana as a girl in her idyllic all-female city state. She competes in a spectacular tournament which is essentially the Amazonian answer to a Quidditch final, and while pre-teen viewers will love it, this lengthy segment has almost nothing to do with the rest of the story. The section with Diana and Steve strolling around Washington is in no hurry, either, and the last act gets noisier and more jumbled the further it drags on.
Jenkins has said that she would have liked the film to be 15 minutes longer. Some viewers might have liked it to be 15 minutes shorter. But, for most of the running time, they will be happy to be in Wonder Woman’s uplifting company. In its old-fashioned, uncynical way, WW84 is one of the most enjoyable blockbusters to be released since 1984.
★★★★☆
Wonder Woman 1984 is on general release from 16 December, and released in cinemas and on HBO Max in the US on 25 December.
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