Wonder Woman 1984

Skippable, and it is the sharpest decline between a film and its sequel in this catalogue. The premise is a wish-granting stone that takes something from everybody who uses it, which is a fine fable, and the film cannot make it work at any scale.

The problem that most viewers stop on is the handling of Steve Trevor's return. He comes back by occupying the body of a living man who is never asked, and the film plays the resulting relationship as romance for most of its length without acknowledging what it is. Once that lands, very little of the middle recovers.

Around it are choices that do not cohere. Diana flies now, and lassos lightning, and there is a long opening at an Amazon athletics tournament that has no bearing on anything. Pedro Pascal's Maxwell Lord is the best performance in the film, a failing infomercial salesman who is genuinely pitiable, and the ending resolves on a global broadcast asking everyone to renounce their wishes.

It was released simultaneously to cinemas and streaming during the pandemic, which complicates any reading of its performance. Nothing in the DCEU depends on it.