Wonder Woman 1984 (Patty Jenkins) - 2020

This movie starts with the young Diana competing in an athletic competition with other Amazons on that mysterious island hidden by fog in the middle of some ocean that is really not that far from London.  But we saw all of this stuff in the 2017 movie that somehow placed Diana (Gal Gadot) as a young woman at the end of World War I although the comic book origin has her fighting the Nazis in 1941.  However, this movie review will never get anywhere unless we just ignore all of the origin information such as: being sculpted out of clay by her mother, Queen Hippolyta.

So, it is 66 years after the origin movie and Diana (same Gal) has not aged that much.  She is working as an anthropologist at the Smithsonian where the FBI has asked her to identify some very strange antiquities that include a curious crystalline formation that someone has been named the "Dreamstone."  In very short order, the audience learns that the Dreamstone grants wishes to anyone near it.  One guy gets a cup of coffee but Diana gets a return of her boyfriend who died in 1918.  This viewer wonders if the Wonder Woman movie series will always find a way to resurrect Chris Pine. 

Anyway, a really bad business entrepreneur (Pedro Pascal) learns about the power of the stone and he wants it.  Kristen Wiig (aka Barbara Minerva, the Cheetah) who is also an anthropologist/gemologist and friend of Diana takes the stone home and loses it to Pedro.  However, before losing the stone Kristen gets her wish to be strong like Diana.  Meanwhile, Pedro decides to use his one wish to become the Dreamstone so he can ask people to trade their powers to him for one wish.  How Pedro knew that this would work is beyond me.

When Diana/Wonder Woman learns that evil Pedro is in Cairo and is using his power for world domination, she steals a jet plane and makes it invisible to thwart her capture by federal aviation authorities.  At one point, Pedro is back in Washington, DC where he walks into the oval office and steals national secrets from a very lame POTUS.  Later, Wonder Woman realizes that she can actually fly without the invisible plane.  This would be news to DC comic book writers who went to great lengths to create this see-through method of transportation.  

Things were looking really bad for the world until Diana remembered that her magic lasso was also a powerful communication device.  Those of us who lived through 1984 probably do not remember that near global catastrophe.  As superhero movies go, this one wins the prize as the most convoluted and cartoonish.  Gal Gadot deserved a better script.  [JAM 12/28/2020]