Superhero movies really need only two things to successfully attract an audience: humanized and relatable characters, and the suspension of disbelief necessary to accept that these characters fly, handle magical laxs and use powers in “real life” scenarios. Bad acting and writing can get in the way of the first, and bad special effects can destroy the second.
“Wonder Woman 1984” definitely hits the first of those things. In fact, the strongest parts of the film are rooted in its characters: Diana’s struggle to choose the right thing instead of the easy one; his relationship with Steve Trevor (Chris Pine); The loneliness, envy and frustration of Barbara Minerva (Kristen Wiig) for being constantly ignored; and the desperation of Maxwell Lord (Pedro Pascal) to be seen as important and successful at all costs.
As for the other part? Well, “Wonder Woman 1984” contains approximately two hours of truly spectacular spectacle. The opening sequence is the same as some of the most insane heights of “Aquaman”. The film in general is full of brilliant visuals and eye-popping that look just as good in photos as in motion. And the action choreography is perfect for a dancer. And then, when it’s more important, he drops the GCI ball like a pixelated dead weight.
Read too: The crazy climax of ‘Wonder Woman 1984’ explained
Specifically, Cheetah, Barbara’s alter ego and one of the oldest enemies of Wonder Woman comics, looks like hot garbage.
Cheetah’s appearance comes late in the film – which is disappointing in itself because. Yes, Barbara gets some cool action beats before that, like the battle at the White House, or when she actually gives the job to an idiot for drunken sexual harassment. But she still looks human in these scenes, and it is only during the final battle that she becomes fully the cat-based supervillain of the comics.
Now, to be clear, Wiig does a great job before that point. She imbues Barbara with subtlety and, somehow, also with camp tones that allow us to immediately empathize and sympathize with her.
Read too: ‘Wonder Woman 1984’ Mid-Credits Scene Explained: Who is Asteria?
And that provides the pleasant surprise of feeling sorry for her, rather than disgust, when Barbara finally makes her villain’s turn in the last half of the film. It is a pity, then, that much of the impact of that turn is later undermined by how bad it looks when fully transformed.
And man, uh, we mean bad. You can see for yourself in the photo above, but it is really something best experienced in context. The clue, of course, is that the battle takes place outside at night, under a moonlit sky – although the scenes just before and after the climax take place in broad daylight. Darkness is, of course, a time-honored trick to mask SFX not surprising.
But the dimmer cannot hide the strange non-presence of Wiig in the scene, the semi-floating quality that is the hallmark of CGI below average. He can’t hide the weird, muddy and dyed quality of CGI hair that looks more like a glaucoma test to the observer than an effect.
Read too: ‘Wonder Woman 1984’: everything you need to know about Dreamstone
And we were particularly impressed with how deep in the mysterious Cheetah valley it gets during close-ups. It’s just a little bit better than something taken from 2019’s “Cats”. Fortunately, we assume, it’s a short scene and as a result, we don’t need to spend a lot of time focusing on it. Even so, we hate that the moment we spent the film waiting took us out of the film completely.
We know that this problem has affected many of the recent films based on DC Comics. Who could forget Doomsday in “Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice.” Or that painful and painful thing with the Sorceress in “Suicide Squad”. Even the first “Wonder Woman” encountered some major obstacles when it came to special effects – specifically, that hilarious and clearly forced CGI battle in the film with Ares at the end.
Read too: Should the president in ‘Wonder Woman 1984’ be Reagan?
But Patty Jenkins had a lot more control over this movie than over “Wonder Woman”. She still had to make the ending smoother as she wasn’t allowed the last time. Unfortunately, it seems that a lapse of special effects still needed to be performed.
We think Dreamstone really gives us what we want, after all … for a price.