Perhaps one of
the few good news for 2020 is the almost total absence of superhero movies.
That and that, probably associated with the general famine, there have been far fewer series set in the 80s than there normally are (324 a year more or less).
You know, the
magical
decade
when older people like me saw
The Goonies.
on a VHS.
The problem is not the juxtaposed combination of two concepts that, in the end, like any other common mixture (let's say gin and tonic), the only thing that gets (and is appreciated) is a tickle in the throat.
The serious thing is the overexposure to the gamma rays of nostalgia that always and inevitably ends badly.
And even worse is when the culture industry turns this super-lame supermelancholy into a commodity of ordinary traffic until directly inventing a mythical decade that never existed.
The '80s, whatever we get, they were ugly, they sounded bad and almost didn't end in World War III.
Wonder Woman 1984
is a superhero movie and takes place in the Reagan 80s.
Even for that, 2020 had to be a disaster. Until the end, the year of the pandemic hurts.
Don't panic though, it's not all bad news.
There are features (of the good ones) of the first installment that remain intact.
Director Patty Jenkins is convinced that she adapts nothing more than a comic strip
and her main weapon of approach to the stalls is none other than lightness and naive splendor.
Without complex.
And that, between so much vigoréxico-macho-facho with conscience problems so common in the genre, is enjoyed.
Again, the entry into the film borders on perfection.
WW1984 takes
us to
the island of Neverland (Themyscira)
to offer us the first steps of Diana Prince (she is) in the world of mythological heroics.
This dazzling start associated with the no less spectacular closure makes up for a good part of the routine trip for what is in between (which is a lot: there are two and a half hours of footage).
The dazzling start associated with the no less spectacular closing makes up for a good part of the routine journey for what lies in between.
The film strives at all times to repeat the most celebrated keys of the first
(feminine empowerment, irony and happiness)
while adding a second, let's say more intense reading.
And here, without a doubt, the mismatch.
The story is told of the villain Maxwell Lord (Pedro Pascal), who one day decides not so much to use a kind of miraculous lamp that transforms wishes into reality as to become it.
Anyone who goes to him gets what he wants.
If someone sees in the metaphorical artifice the reflection of the consumer society
(or even savage neoliberalism)
that is directly devastating the planet and those close to us, they may be right.
In fact, the film plays at that: to make the audience aware of the risk of manipulation and corruption of their most intimate desires.
Of course, Wonder Woman herself will fall into the trap and with her, her other rival who is embodied by a
really remarkable
Kristen Wiig
(except when she transforms into a cat from the movie
Cats
and simply makes a fool of herself).
The problem is not even the pretense of the argument that, it is fair to admit it, makes the naive and unprejudiced celebration of the comic from the first installment look somewhat compromised;
nor the digital confusion that at times the action feast goes through;
far from the always cheerful interpretations (the first robbery in the commercial surface preserves the silly and great air
of Richard Donner's
Superman
).
The problem, we said, is the lack of focus, the effort to normalize Wonder Woman by claiming her own psychological depth (the sacrifice will be her last superimposition) alongside her superhero colleagues (almost all men) always tortured.
And there, Jenkins slightly betrays himself.
We liked him better when he seemed to laugh at all the superhero movies than now that he seems to ask permission to enter the club.
Either way, Gal Gadot remains unrivaled.
And that said, we can only hope for the worst: all the superhero films of 2021 and all the series set in the 80s.
That will be a second pandemic.
+ The couple formed by Gal Gadot and Kristen Wiig deserve a saga all by themselves- Two and a half hours for an easily summarized plot on the corner of a napkin is too much
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