Let's talk about 'Wonder Woman 84' and 'Tenet'
One is good, one is flawed. The one I enjoyed more might surprise you.
Welcome back!
I hope you had a restful holiday season. I returned to work this week following some extended time off, both to allow for a mental reset after all the changes of 2020 and to get myself into a proper rhythm for the year ahead. As a result, I feel more clear headed and energized than I have in months, and I’m excited for how this newsletter will shift and grow. For the time being, I think this is going to be my home base for writing about movies and television. I’ll have more to say next week about why that is and my goals for this publication, but for right now I’m just excited to get going.
When I signed off work on Dec. 23, I assumed the following two weeks would allow me to indulge in a nonstop marathon of movies and TV. I envisioned myself lying on the couch all day and late into the evening, catching up on movies I’d never seen and shows I’d fallen behind on. That didn’t exactly happen, as the demands of the holidays and life with kids intervened (also, it just felt a bit lazy). I did manage to see a few things, though, some of which you can read about in this issue’s “Chrisicisms” section (there are a few I’m holding back on for a future newsletter). But this week, I wanted to talk about two big 2020 releases from Warner Brothers.
I didn’t have an opportunity to review either Tenet or Wonder Woman 1984 for Big Heads Media Pop Culture. Tenet’s big-screen release in Michigan came about a month after the film had already been out around the world, and there were no screenings around here prior to its release (I believe the closest was in Ohio); Warner Brothers didn’t make digital screeners for it available, as a big part of the marketing push was that it was one of the very few big films to get a theatrical release in 2020. Wonder Woman 1984, on the other hand, was WB’s response to the lukewarm box office reception that greeted Tenet; Patty Jenkins’ sequel to her 2017 hit is the first film to be released under Warner Brothers’ new model for 2021, which will see its entire slate get a simultaneous theatrical release and a one-month debut on HBO Max. I was sent a screener for this one, but the rush of the holidays prevented me from viewing it. I ended up seeing both Tenet and Wonder Woman 1984 within a few days of each other.
In hindsight, I’m glad I didn’t have to worry about doing a formal review for these films. There’s no way I could write about them without sounding like a hypocrite. One film is objectively better than the other; the problem is that the other one is the one I enjoyed more. While there is absolutely an objective component to criticism, you also can’t deny its subjectivity. As Robert Warshow wrote — and Roger Ebert was fond of quoting — “A man goes to the movies. The critic must be honest enough to admit that he is that man.”
The other reason I’m glad I didn’t have to bother with a formal review is that I don’t have to avoid spoilers. I don’t think every film discussion needs to dive deep into a movie’s plot details, but sometimes it helps to be able to pinpoint exactly what works and what doesn’t. With these two movies, addressing these specifics might be helpful to understanding why some things worked better for me than others and why some flaws are serious issues while other complaints are just a matter of taste.
All that to say….
Spoilers for Wonder Woman 1984 and Tenet to follow
Let’s start with Wonder Woman 1984, a movie that became the source of many angry tweets quickly following its Christmas Day debut. The film’s initial reviews were positive, but as of this week, its Rotten Tomatoes score is hovering in the low 60% range. Despite being available to stream at home, the film also had the healthiest box office debut for a movie released in the pandemic, but dropped precipitously in its second week; whether that’s due to intense dislike or simply because the very few people willing to go risk their lives to see a movie in theaters that they could watch at home weren’t willing to do it a second time remains to be seen. But the overall impression, particularly online, is that Patty Jenkins’ latest DC movie is a bust.
The first Wonder Woman remains one of the best films of the weird DC Extended Universe experiment, which was quickly launched in the wake of Marvel’s success but has been filled with several stumbles and only a few successes. The origin story works, thanks to Jenkins’ sincere direction, Gal Gadot’s charisma and an optimistic tone that felt like a new direction after Zack Snyder’s cynicism. It’s not a perfect movie — the third act is a mess — but it’s overall a funny, exciting and charming film.
Let’s be clear: WW84 (as it will henceforth be known) is a flawed movie, largely owing to a script that was never given a second pass for questions of logic, motivation or story economy. I don’t have any problem with centering the plot on a magic wishing stone — it’s the kind of silly threat comic books have been based around for years, and Marvel made a whole saga out of magic stones. But the rules are vague at best, nonexistent at worst.The Monkey’s Paw element — in which everyone who makes a wish also suffers dire consequences — is bafflingly inconsistent; sometimes, as in the case of the man who wishes his wife would drop dead, the payback is immediate. In other situations, such as Diana losing her powers, it seems to take several days. And I still can’t wrap my head around the logic of Maxwell Lord wishing to be the stone (I guess it’s the loophole around wishing for infinite wishes) and having to physically touch the person making the wish, which then finds its ultimate fulfilment in … satellites revealed via convenient PowerPoint?
Listen, I get that it’s a comic book movie and unreality is part of the game. But internal logic goes a long way toward helping audiences suspend disbelief.
But the logical inconsistency is the least of WW84’s worries. The script is weighed down by ideas that are more complex than the film requires and could have easily been smoothed out. Take Steve Trevor’s return. Yes, Diana wishing him back is fair game in a plot like this. But I don’t understand why the film tosses in endless complications to accomplish this, including having him possess an unwitting man’s body. When a film’s plot is centered on magic rocks, simply conjuring a man out of thin air is probably not too far a stretch. The film gains nothing from having Steve Trevor inhabit another person’s body and the choice introduces some head-scratchers that the film doesn’t have the time or interest in dealing with. Diana sleeps with Steve Trevor; does that qualify as non-consensual sex? What about the days this ordinary man loses while his body is inhabited by a dead WWI hero? The film never takes these issues into consideration. The film can’t deal with that in the space of its runtime; but the problem wouldn’t have arisen at all had any of the film’s three screenwriters realized the plot point over complicated everything and the story would still work without the possession.
Likewise, I like the choice made not to kill Maxwell Lord and instead give him an emotional redemption at the end. And yet, there’s a lot of huffing and puffing the script does to put him into position to have that change of heart. Throughout the film, his son is seen pining for time with him and Maxwell rebuffs him. It seemed apparent to me that an effect of the Monkey’s Paw curse would be to have Maxwell’s choice cause his son to disappear or for his son to wish himself away. It would have preserved the emotion and been a cleaner narrative approach. I understand Jenkins wanted Diana to solve the problem by addressing the world, but there’s no reason she couldn’t have addressed the world and had Maxwell solve his problem without all the contortions of the final 30 minutes.
Most egregiously, the plot never gives Diana a real struggle. Throughout the film, she mentions that her life isn’t as great as it seems, and there’s a sense that she’s disappointed with it enough to be in seclusion. And yet, the central issue seems to be that she misses a man she had a short relationship with 70 years prior. The film opens with a flashback to Themyscira, and the first film established that upon leaving her home, Diana couldn’t return. Wouldn’t a much richer conflict have been to have Diana missing her home (Griffin Newman at the Blank Check podcast also brought this up on a recent episode)? After seven decades, in which her friends have passed on and she’s seen how tough the world could be, perhaps a stronger conflict would have been her trying to find her way back and ultimately having to choose her new home over her old. Instead, we’re treated to several scenes of a beautiful, rich, intelligent white lady moping because her boyfriend’s gone. It seems decidedly unheroic and almost an invalidation of the first film’s aspirations.
Tenet, meanwhile, doesn’t have these script issues. Christopher Nolan’s screenplays are nothing if not logical, and thisis another of his films in which the plot unfolds like a finely tuned machine. With his latest film, Nolan has made a James Bond movie with a physics-defying Macguffin: materials and people that can travel backward through time. And while I don’t know that I understood half of what was going on, I never doubted that Nolan did. As usual, the script brims with exposition that shows he’s thought through every aspect of the concept, and I have no doubt that if I were to sit and watch it a dozen times, I’d be able to decipher just how sound the film’s internal logic is.
It’s not just a writing logic, either. Visually, Nolan is most energized when exploring how his inverted protagonists and antagonists interact with a world in which time is moving in the opposite direction. The set pieces in Tenet are some of the best I’ve seen. The early fight where John David Washington’s character fights a masked man in a hallway feels clunky and stilted at first; when it’s replayed so that you’re aware he’s fighting his inverted self, it becomes one of the coolest things put to film. The car chase is amazing no matter which timeline we’re in. And Nolan’s love for physical set pieces and blowing real things up is put to good use in the film’s plane crash sequence — which is badass at first blush and then becomes one of Nolan’s greatest action moments when he plays it again in reverse.
From a technical perspective, Tenet is an accomplishment. Nolan’s a director who has made some of the most ambitious and remarkable studio films of the last 20 years. Memento blew my mind, The Dark Knight is easily one of the top three comic book movies ever made, and both Inception and Dunkirk left my jaw on the floor. Like a more bombastic, genre-focused Richard Linklater, Nolan seems obsessed with cinema’s ability to explore the effects of time. Tenet feels like the inevitable evolution of what the director’s been doing since Memento, and there’s a giddy glee in watching him meticulously figure out how to stage these sequences.
But while Tenet allows Nolan’s strengths to shine, it also allows him to indulge his worst habits. Technically, it’s as fine-tuned as a Swiss watch. But narratively, it has the character and emotional weight of a story problem.
I’m not the first to raise my eyebrow at John David Washington’s character being known only as The Protagonist. It feels like Nolan nakedly embracing his charges of aloofness and disinterest in character and finally throwing up his hands and saying “yeah, I don’t really care enough about this stuff. I won’t even give him a name.”
Washington is really good in this film, almost as solid as he was in Spike Lee’s BlackKklansman. He has a strong, cool presence and there are moments where he navigates sequences with the same charisma and intelligence as his father. But Nolan’s script never stops to create a character for him to play. I get it, Nolan wants to make him James Bond, so we don’t need a lengthy back story. But we’re given nothing else. No family information, no personal involvement in the case, no loved ones (it’s a Nolan film without a dead wife!). There aren’t even the flourishes we get with Bond; the Protagonist isn’t seductive or suave. He doesn’t have a chip on his shoulder or seem overzealous. Even presented with information that upends his entire understanding of physics and reality, he just brushes it off and quickly accepts it. He’s not baffled, concerned or even awed by this new world he’s caught up in.
Everyone in the film is treated with these shallow strokes. Elizabeth Debicki, so good a few years back in Widows, gets the worst of it. She’s saddled with a character identified only by her love for her son; something we never see, but only hear about again and again (when one character explained that if the villain wins, everything in space and time would be destroyed, and Debicki sniffs “including my son.” It was the only time I laughed in the entire film). Kenneth Branagh lays on the Russian accent so thick I began to wonder whether Nolan’s big twist would be that he was trying to kill Moose and Squirrel. Michael Caine shows up to play a character called “Sir Michael” who has one scene where he eats exquisite cuisine and ladles on exposition; for all I know, he was just playing himself at a nice restaurant. Only Robert Pattinson comes off relatively unscathed. His sidekick doesn’t have to be saddled with much emotional baggage, and Pattinson brings a breezy charisma to the role. He’s eventually the only character given some sort of arc, but I don’t know that his eventual sacrifice in the end packed the emotional wallop Nolan hoped it would. The character’s choice is fine, but he and the Protagonist don’t have the emotional connection necessary for his death to make sense. It’s a clever concept, but never hits you in the feels.
Nolan’s often been branded a cold filmmaker, and I think it’s fair to say that logic has overridden emotion in the majority of his films. But there’s always some sort of attempt, whether it’s the tragic story of Sammy Jenkiss in Memento, the Cobb/Mal relationship in Inception or Matthew McCounaghey’s attempts to get back to his family in Interstellar, to ground the film emotionally. It could be argued that Dunkirk was light on characterization, but there it made thematic sense, as the story depicted thousands of men working as one unit over the course of several days. With Tenet, the refusal to dig any deeper and create real characters turns the film into nothing more than a very cool technical exercise.
And, I get it. This is what many love about Nolan. He’s a filmmaker with actual ideas, and he’s the rare director who gets to play around with big studio money to bring those ideas to life. I’m in favor of that; I’d rather have a dozen Tenets than another generic comic book movie (and I like comic book movies!). I have several friends who loved Tenet, and they look forward to going back several times to put it together, figure it out and see how Nolan connects everything. If that makes you happy, I’m glad for you. But I don’t know that I’ll be able to summon the strength; without any emotional anchor to invest in or dint of humanity to cling to, it just exhausted and frustrated me. Tenet isn’t a bad film, but it also isn’t one I particularly enjoyed.
Conversely, WW84 isn’t a good film, but there are aspects of it I enjoyed immensely. The three writers involved may not have been able to put together a coherent script, but Jenkins salvages what she can with a silly, playful tone. She’s pulling right from the playbook of Richard Donner’s Superman and Superman II; there’s a mall rescue scene early on that would have fit in those films perfectly, with its villains so over-the-top in their ‘80s clothing, kids being safely slid into the laps of teddy bears and Diana turning to wink at the camera. It’s fun and joyful in a way comic book movies — particularly DC comic book movies — aren’t allowed to be anymore.
As I said back at the beginning, there are criticisms of this film that are fair game, and its script is one of them. But I don’t think its general ideas are bad ones. I’ve seen people criticize the concept of a wishing stone just for existing. I get it if some find that silly or campy; it absolutely is. But Jenkins knows it is, and she approaches it with an awareness of that silliness. Your mileage may vary on whether you want that out of a comic book movie, but after two decades of grim-and-gritty faux badassery, I find it refreshing. These things should be fun, and Jenkins films her action scenes with energy and lightness.
Gal Gadot and Chris Pine’s chemistry lent the first film a lot of charm. They have a lot of fun reversing that dynamic in this film, as now it’s Diana trying to help Steve acclimate to a new world. The ‘80s fashion and art jokes are a bit obvious (I could go my whole life without hearing another parachute pants joke), but the two have an easygoing rapport that I enjoyed watching. LIkewise, I’m always a fan of awkward Kristen Wiig characters; watching her ramble and fade out her voice in embarrassment is something I’ll always find funny. It felt like she was ready to break out into comedy stardom with Bridesmaids and then Wiig largely pivoted into indie films and quirkier fare, with the occasional Ghostbusters feeling like an anomaly. So I’m more than happy to see her here. She’s 100% playing the Michelle Pfeiffer in Batman Returns character here, down to the glasses and hairstyle. But Wiig finds humor in it, particularly in the first hour or so of the film. Once she makes the transformation into a supervillain, things get a bit dicier. Wiig can pull off a villain role, but some of the film’s choices are questionable. I don’t know why, for instance, anyone thought it was a good idea to have her attack a sexual assaulter as proof of her badness. And everything with Wiig in the final 30 minutes of the film is just bad, an action sequence that looks like a deleted scene from Cats. But when she gets to play a real character, Wiig is a lot of fun, and it made me realize how much I miss her on screen.
I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen a comic book villain portrayed with as much gusto as Pedro Pascal brings to the role of Maxwell Lord. There’s a fair argument to be made that the film focuses too much on Lord at the expense of Diana, but I didn’t really care, simply for the energy Pascal brings. I’m only familiar with him from The Mandalorian, where he’s largely hidden behind a metal helmet and speaks in a monotone. I didn’t expect him to be so exuberant, funny and caffeinated as he is here. There’s a goofiness to the performance that I don’t mean as an insult; Pascal is all in on this performance, and the film is most alive every moment he’s on screen. And I appreciate that Jenkins allows Lord to be a full character; in the end, there are reasons for why he makes the choices he does. And while those choices bog down the narrative, the flashbacks we see of Lord trying to assimilate and find success in America have real emotion and a touch of tragedy to them. It’s a comic book movie that doesn’t forget its antagonist is a human, and I appreciate that Jenkins wanted to make a movie like this that didn’t end with its hero killing the villain (well, things don’t turn out too well for Cheetah, I guess).
The Wonder Woman franchise’s aspirational appeal is what sets it apart from the other films in the DCEU. These are not cynical films. In fact, the final 15 minutes of WW84 work because there is an unabashed sincerity to it. Logicwise, I have no clue what was happening regarding the magic satellite, Maxwell Lord as a sentient rock, and Monkey Paw mumbo-jumbo. But watching a world gone mad because people couldn’t accept reality? A story that told us that our shortcuts and greed will only destroy us? An ending in which a hero saves the world with an emotional plea for rationality and selflessness? Maybe it’s only a result of watching a movie in these crazy times, but I was invested. It worked for me. It’s hokey, but I’m fine with that. It excuses absolutely none of the movie’s very real flaws, but I found myself entertained and amused by much of Wonder Woman 1984.
And in the end, I’ll take flawed enjoyment over cold precision any day. Yes, Tenet is an objectively better film than Wonder Woman 1984. But I know which one I had more fun watching. I’m not likely to watch either film again. But if I had to pick, I’d much more look forward to a few goofy hours with Diana Prince than sit through another math problem with the Protagonist.
That’s the weird thing about movies. Sometimes something good just doesn’t hit. Sometimes something flawed does. We bring our own weird histories, preferences and quirks into the theater (or onto the couch) with us and react to this form in unpredictable ways. That’s one of the most fascinating things about it and why I’ll never laugh at anyone for having a favorite film that seems out of left field. It’s why writing about film, with its mixture of the objective and subjective, is so fun and such a challenge. But it’s also what makes modern reviewing, with its focus on brevity, fear of spoilers, and rush to be first, so frustrating. It’s why a change is in order to the way I write about film.
But that’s for next week.
Note: Due to the holiday, I didn’t have any other writing or podcasting done, so there is no Dispatch this week. But I think I’ll have a new We’re Watching Here for you next week.
Chrisicisms
The art and pop culture I’ve engaged with over the last few weeks
Ted Lasso (Apple TV+) -- I’ve talked about Ted Lasso before, so I won’t belabor this. I’ve raved about how much I love Jason Sudeikis’ ultra-optimistic, folksy soccer coach. I liked this Bill Lawrence sitcom so much, I refused to binge it. Instead, I’d sit down when I was really in the mood for it and savor an episode or two at a time. Ending it as we said goodbye to 2020 felt right, like a way to ring in 2021 with the right attitude. I don’t have much to say except that it stuck the landing and confirmed that this was one of the best shows of last year. It ended up with several moments that made me cheer, made me smile and a moment of forgiveness that choked me up. This is genuinely good TV, in every sense of the word, and I can’t wait until season two.
The Flight Attendant (HBO Max) -- I’m about halfway through this comedy-thriller series’ first season. I bailed on The Big Bang Theory about halfway through; I just couldn’t take its sitcom punchlines and faux-geekdom anymore. But I always appreciated its cast, and I thought Kailey Cuoco held her own really well in that ensemble. She’s even better headlining this HBO Max series, in which she stars as a flight attendant embroiled in a murder mystery. Cuoco is fantastic playing a hot mess of a woman who parties too hard and has lost much of her life to a haze of alcohol and has to pull herself together to get out of another mess. She’s funny and heartbreaking in equal measure, and the show deftly balances suspense and humor without tipping too far into silliness or bleakness. It’s a fleet-footed, engaging show, and the first real gem from HBO Max.
Cobra Kai season 3 (Netflix) -- As I wrote a few months back, I binged the first two seasons of Cobra Kai when they hit Netflix this fall. I found the first season of the belated Karate Kid sequel to be one of the most clever and entertaining attempts to revive a dormant franchise. While the second season got bogged a bit too much in the teenage drama, it still largely hit whenever it dealt with William Zabka and Ralph Macchio’s characters, and it ended on a hell of a finale. The third season, which was released on Jan. 1, is so far an improvement over the second season (I’m halfway through). It’s still funny, but it’s also a little more sincere in places. The balance between teenage drama and adult rivalries is much better this season, and Martin Kove as villainous sensei John Kreese is given a lot more to do this time around. The back half of the season begins to suggest an endgame for the series (which has at least one more season to go), and I’m eager to see where it all leads.
The Karate Kid (available to rent) -- My 8-year-old son is too young for Cobra Kai, but this weekend I decided to give him his introduction to the Miyagi-verse. John G. Avildsen’s Rocky is one of my all-time favorite films, and it’s very clear that Avildsen saw The Karate Kid as a way to recapture that magic for a younger crowd. What surprised me with this first viewing in about a decade is how well it works. The Karate Kid doesn’t have the loneliness or desperation of Rocky, but it does accurately convey the frustration of constant bullying, the unfairness of being at the whims of your family and the way teenage life feels fraught with danger. Macchio is actually better here than he is in Cobra Kai; I forgot how far his teenage charm and charisma took him. Zabka, who gets center stage in Cobra Kai, is less of a presence here than I’d remembered, and I think the TV show has done a great job of fleshing out a character who was a pretty one-note villain. But, of course, this film belongs to Pat Morita as Mr. Miyagi, possibly the greatest big-screen sports mentor of all-time. Morita is funny and charming, but I’d forgotten how well he plays the emotional beats when Miyagi remembers his late wife and child. The chemistry between Morita and Macchio powers this entire thing, and of course Avildsen knows the beats of a good sports movie, including the importance of a good montage, inside and out. It’s a family film that’s so much better than it has any need to be, my son has now announced that he wants to take up karate (you know, when it’s safe to be within kicking distance again).
That’s it! Thank you for reading. I have some fun things in store for this newsletter in the coming months, and I can’t wait to share it with you all!