“Wonder Woman 1984” Review

The action-adventure, fantasy movie Wonder Woman 1984 is not only exciting for comic book fans, but also for women advocates as it is one of the biggest superhero movies with the main character being a woman.

The PG-13 movie is directed by Patty Jenkins and stars Gal Gadot as Diana, or otherwise known as Wonder Woman herself, Chris Pine playing Steve Trevor, Kristen Wiig who portrays Barbara Minerva, Pedro Pascal acting as Maxwell Lord, and many more important actors and actresses.

The movie begins with an extremely competitive athletic competition consisting entirely of Amazon women. One of the competitors is young Diana who is competing against all older women. Throughout the competition, the young Diana remains in the lead until she falls off her horse and takes the short path to victory.

Everyone watching the competition is on the edge of their seats waiting to see the results. As the competition comes to an end, young Diana comes running towards the finish without her horse, thus proving more so that she decided to “cheat” or take the short path once she fell behind. Since it was obvious that she was not honest, she was disqualified from the match.

Although she is upset about her loss, Diana and the viewers learn an important lesson about honesty and truth. As spoken by Diana’s aunt Antiope, “No hero is born from lies.” I personally believe this is an important lesson and it shows real life viewers where Wonder Woman’s value of honesty comes from.

In the year 1984, where the majority of the movie takes place, Diana works as an anthropologist at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C. where she is shown what she later learns to be the “Dreamstone”. The Dreamstone is important because if someone wishes something while holding the stone, their wish will come true.

Before actually knowing the true power of the stone, Diana and her coworker Barbara both unknowingly make wishes on the stone. Diana’s wish is not spoken out loud but is shortly revealed to be her deceased love, Steve. Barbara, however, makes her wish out loud, asking to be just like Diana.

Before the power of the stone is known, businessman and seemingly conman Maxwell Lord steals the dreamstone and wishes that he would become the stone, thus granting him the power to grant others wishes.

The twist, however, is that not only can he grant wishes, but he will also take whatever he desires in return. As Maxwell continues to grant wishes, he slowly starts to die but creates more and more chaos in attempts to become “successful”.

In my opinion, the fact that as more and more people have exactly what they want the more chaos the world is in, holds a little more truth than people think. In reality, if everyone had their wishes come true, contradiction is bound to happen. Also, without having to work for what they want, people have no sense of accomplishment.

Since Diana wished on the stone and got her wish, the stone took her most valuable thing, which was her powers. Unable to use her powers, Diana is unable to stop either Maxwell or Barbara, who now has her powers.

With much sadness, Diana has no choice but to say let go of her loved one once again and renounce her wish in order to save the world. It takes so much strength to sacrifice the thing she wanted most in the world but she does it  and with the help of her famous truth lasso, she is able to tell the entire world the truth and convince the world to renounce their wishes to set everything back to normal.

The lesson I believe that Diana renouncing her wish to save the world actually teaches viewers is that sometimes you must sacrifice what you want for the greater good.

Overall, I think Wonder Woman 1984 is not only a very entertaining action movie but also I believe it can be used to teach a few important lessons including the importance of truth, and the importance of sacrifice.

Another important thing about this movie is that it shows a strong, independent woman as the main character, thus giving younger girls a great role model to look up to.