Back when Wonder Woman 84 was streaming on HBO Max, I managed to catch it the day before it was to be taken down. I hastily wrote down some thoughts late that night, and swore I would review them and post in the morning. A lot has happened since then. I’m sorry this is not being shared in a more timely manner, but I think it’s still important. It turned into less of a review of the movie and more a critique on the “new normal” of releasing movies direct to streaming for a limited time. I like HBO’s formula of having it be included in the subscription better than Disney’s having to pay a $30 fee on top of your normal sub, but I will always prefer movie theaters. More on that later. For now, let’s focus on WW84 and what I loved and didn’t about it.
To give you an idea how good a movie WW was, I loved it even though I had an awful experience. HBO Max (or at least the xbox app) is awful. Usually things will freeze once or twice and not completely ruin my experience…. So of course while trying to preserve the movie theater feel as much as possible, it froze more times than I could count, crashed entirely once, and once blew out the sound on my xbox and I had to restart the whole system. I was so grumpy that by the time the big fight happens between Diana and Cheeta I barely was able to enjoy it (literally said “this fight is gonna be great” seconds before the app crashed).
If HBO is going to release the next year’s worth of movies On Demand, they need to make an app that works better. Having said that, there were plenty of things to love about the film itself. Even though the fight scenes would have been better on a big screen, they still were enjoyable with what I had to work with. My favorite part, however, was when Diana is talking at the end about Truth and making everyone remember how things used to be. I realized when this movie was supposed to come out and how powerful it would have been having Wonder Woman talk to us about truth in the face of a fraud who wanted to amass power. There’s a lot about my experience I will never be able to get, and that saddens me. But overall it was a great sequel that I can’t wait to buy so I can watch it on a physical disc that (hopefully) won’t freeze a million times.