Wonder Woman 1984
Wonder Woman 1984 had the hardest job in superhero cinema: follow up one of the genre's most beloved entries while navigating a global pandemic release. It did not pull it off.…
Full analysis belowThis film draws you in for a significant portion of its runtime with traditional or neutral content before springing its woke agenda. Know before you go!
Not a woke trap. The film's feminist framework is visible from the trailers and marketing. Gal Gadot as Diana Prince was well established from the 2017 film. Audiences knew they were getting a female-led superhero story. The progressive elements, particularly the anti-greed and anti-wish-fulfillment messaging, are baked into the premise and not hidden. Conservative audiences can make an informed decision upfront.
Wonder Woman 1984 had the hardest job in superhero cinema: follow up one of the genre's most beloved entries while navigating a global pandemic release. It did not pull it off. But the reasons it fails are more interesting than a simple bad sequel verdict, because the ideology at the center of this film is genuinely mixed, not simply progressive.
Let's start with the premise. The film is set in 1984 Washington, D.C. A magical artifact called the Dreamstone grants any wish, but at a price: each wish costs the wisher something they deeply value. Max Lord (Pedro Pascal), a failing oil magnate and TV huckster, wishes to become the Dreamstone itself, giving him the ability to grant wishes to others while absorbing their life force. The world spirals toward nuclear apocalypse as world leaders wish for weapons and power. Diana's wish brings back her dead love Steve Trevor, which begins draining her Amazonian powers.
The ideological read of this setup is straightforward: greed and desire destroy. 1984 America, with its Reagan-era materialism, excess, and mall culture, is the setting because Jenkins wants the critique to land somewhere specific. Max Lord is a composite of every '80s prosperity gospel huckster: the slick TV pitch, the failing business propped up by charisma, the son he's trying to impress. The film is not subtle about this. When Max Lord tells the world 'you can have it all,' it sounds like an ad and is meant to.
Here's what's genuinely interesting from a conservative perspective: the film's core moral is NOT progressive. The resolution requires every single person on Earth to renounce their wish. Not just Max Lord. Everyone. The film argues that human desire itself, when unchecked and indulged without cost, leads to catastrophe. Diana must renounce her wish for Steve Trevor. She has to let go. She has to choose duty over longing. That is a deeply traditional moral framework. Self-denial. Sacrifice. The subordination of personal desire to communal good. The ending is, in its bones, a story about why you cannot have everything you want, and why accepting that is the condition of civilization.
The film undermines this by not earning it dramatically. The Steve Trevor subplot is a mess. Steve comes back inhabiting another man's body, which the film treats as a romantic reunion without addressing what happened to the man whose body was borrowed. Diana essentially has a relationship with a stranger's body while the stranger's consciousness is suppressed. The film ignores this completely. It is the most significant ethical blind spot in the script and it taints the romance that is supposed to give the film its emotional weight.
Kristen Wiig's Barbara Minerva is the film's most interesting character and its most wasted one. Barbara starts as a socially invisible scientist, overlooked and awkward, who befriends Diana before wishing to become her. The film links Barbara's transformation into Cheetah explicitly to her growing sexual confidence and physical power. As she becomes more powerful, she becomes more sexualized. She goes from forgettable to predatory, framed as a loss rather than an achievement. This is a genuinely conservative reading of female ambition: power-seeking corrupts women specifically through vanity and sensuality. Whether that reading is intentional or accidental, it's there.
Pedro Pascal's Max Lord is the best performance in the film and the most enjoyable element. Pascal plays Lord as a man who genuinely believes his own pitch, which is more interesting than a straightforward villain. His scenes with his son are the film's most emotionally honest. His arc, renouncing his wish when his son's life is threatened, is the film's clearest emotional moment. A father choosing his child over everything else. That is about as traditional a resolution as you can get.
The action is competent but uninspired. The mall opening with young Diana is the film's best sequence. The White House car chase is fun. The Cheetah fight is poorly rendered, lit in darkness to hide the CGI limitations. The final confrontation between Diana and Max Lord is not a fight at all but a moral argument, which would be fine if the moral argument were more tightly constructed.
The 1984 setting creates nostalgia that works against the film's critique. Jenkins clearly loves the era she's skewering. The mall is beautiful. The clothes are fun. The period production design is one of the film's genuine pleasures. But you cannot critique an era's materialism while making it look this appealing. The film wants to have its shopping mall and condemn it too.
At 151 minutes, WW84 is significantly overlong. The Steve Trevor fish-out-of-water sequences, while charming, eat into time the film needed for its villain arcs. The middle act sags under the weight of too many subplots that do not fully connect.
For conservative viewers: the film's central moral is actually compatible with traditional values. Unchecked desire is destructive. Self-denial is heroic. Family bonds (Max Lord's son) override personal ambition. Sacrifice for the greater good is required of everyone, not just the villain. The feminist framing is present but not dominant. Diana is powerful, but her power is rooted in discipline and moral clarity, not identity politics. The film's failure is not ideological. It's structural and dramatic.
Wonder Woman 1984 is a disappointment that still managed to say something real. Greed corrodes. Desire without discipline destroys. Sometimes you don't get what you want, and the willingness to accept that is what separates civilization from chaos. Jenkins made those points with a sledgehammer when a scalpel was needed, and the film never recovers from its own structural mistakes. But the message, if you can find it under the mess, is more traditional than its progressive reputation suggests.
Formula: Weighted Score = Severity × Authenticity Multiplier × Centrality Multiplier
🔴 Woke Tropes
| Trope | Severity | Authenticity | Centrality | Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Female Superhero as Superior Moral Agent | 3 | 0.7 | 1.8 | 3.78 |
| 1980s America as Reagan-Era Greed Critique | 4 | 1 | 1.8 | 7.2 |
| Male Villain as Embodiment of Toxic Ambition | 3 | 1 | 1 | 3 |
| Female Friendship Without Male Mediation | 2 | 0.7 | 0.5 | 0.7 |
| Female Power Linked to Sexual Confidence | 2 | 1 | 0.5 | 1 |
| Anti-Nuclear World Peace Framing | 3 | 1 | 0.5 | 1.5 |
| Body Possession Played as Romance (Ethics Ignored) | 2 | 1 | 0.5 | 1 |
| TOTAL WOKE | 18.2 | |||
🟢 Traditional Tropes
| Trope | Severity | Authenticity | Centrality | Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Universal Renunciation of Desire as Resolution | 4 | 1 | 1.8 | 7.2 |
| Father Chooses Son Over Power | 4 | 1 | 1 | 4 |
| Truth as Sacred Principle | 3 | 1 | 1 | 3 |
| Sacrifice and Loss as Heroic Requirement | 3 | 0.7 | 1 | 2.1 |
| TOTAL TRADITIONAL | 16.3 | |||
Score Margin: -2 WOKE
Director: Patty Jenkins
CENTER-LEFT. Jenkins is a liberal filmmaker but not an ideological provocateur. Her first Wonder Woman (2017) was praised across party lines. With WW84 she leaned harder into progressive themes: male villainy through greed, wish-fulfillment as selfishness, and a story structure that frames desire itself as corrupting. She has been vocal about gender equity in Hollywood.Patty Jenkins directed Monster (2003), which earned Charlize Theron an Oscar, before helming the first Wonder Woman in 2017. That film made $821 million worldwide and was widely credited with proving female-led superhero films could dominate the box office. Jenkins returned for WW84, which was plagued by the COVID-19 pandemic, released simultaneously in theaters and HBO Max on Christmas Day 2020. She has been public about her belief that Hollywood does not give women enough opportunities to direct big-budget films. Her approach to Wonder Woman is rooted in old-school heroism and optimism, which is more traditional than most of her contemporaries, even if the ideology beneath the surface skews left.
Adult Viewer Insight
Conservative adults may be surprised to find a superhero film arguing that you cannot have what you want and that accepting loss is the condition of civilization. That is exactly what Wonder Woman 1984 argues. Its failure is dramatic, not ideological. The Steve Trevor subplot in particular is a sloppy ethical mess that undermines the film's credibility as a moral story. But Max Lord's arc (a father who chooses his child over power) and Diana's arc (a warrior who must let go of the man she loves to save the world) are both rooted in traditional values: duty over desire, sacrifice over self-gratification, family over ambition. The critique of 1984 materialism will read as liberal. It is also just true. The '80s prosperity gospel was real, and its promises were hollow. That critique is available to conservatives who believe greed is a sin, which most traditional Christians do.
Parental Guidance
PG-13. Safe for ages 12 and up. The action is superhero-standard. Parents should be prepared to discuss the Steve Trevor soul-possession subplot, which raises consent questions the film avoids. The Cheetah transformation is mildly scary. No sexual content beyond kissing. Themes of desire, sacrifice, and the cost of getting what you want are age-appropriate for middle schoolers and up.
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