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. 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